CategoryData Visualization

July 29, 2013 — “Cool” is a rather ambiguous term, and means different things to different people. But when working with data, the term “cool” is often directly juxtaposed with common charts and written off as “boring.” The emphasis on the instant visual appeal of an infographic over the clarity of the presentation of data is a troubling trend that plagues the modern incarnation of the infographic. Read more…

October 21, 2011 — Nathan Yau’s response to Amy’s “Do’s And Don’ts Of Infographic Design” article published a week before. The main point of this post is to show a different perspective at the points mentioned in the original article. Read more…

October 14, 2011 — Infographics iare becoming a powerful tool for disseminating huge amounts of information to the masses. This is why learning how to design a good infographic is a must, and avoiding the common pitfalls of infographic design could mean the difference between landing a big client and losing them entirely. Read more…

September 23, 2011 — There are pros and cons to the wide range of resources available to us, but this tutorial will not explore them all. Instead, we’ll create our graph using a progressively enhanced sprinkling of CSS3 and jQuery. Read more…

May 10, 2010 — A certain category of design gaffes can be boiled down to violations of audience expectations. Websites that don’t work in Internet Explorer are a heck of a nasty surprise for users who, bless their souls, want the same Internet experience as everyone else. Websites that prevent copying, whether through careless text-as-image conversions or those wretched copyright pop-ups from the turn of the century, cripple a feature that works nearly everywhere else on the Internet. Avoiding this category of blunders is crucial to good design, which is why I am upset that one particular pitfall has been overlooked with extreme frequency. Read more…

September 11, 2009 — Data visualizations and infographics can make complex datasets easier to understand and comprehend. By creating a graphical represenatation of data and statistics, complicated concepts and information can make more sense in less time. Many visualizations focus on representing a specific set of data or statistical information. Others focus on less-concrete topics, providing a visual representation of abstract concepts. Read more…

January 14, 2008 — The main goal of data visualization is its ability to visualize data, communicating information clearly and effectivelty. It doesn’t mean that data visualization needs to look boring to be functional or extremely sophisticated to look beautiful. To convey ideas effectively, both aesthetic form and functionality need to go hand in hand, providing insights into a rather sparse and complex data set by communicating its key-aspects in a more intuitive way. Yet designers often tend to discard the balance between design and function, creating gorgeous data visualizations which fail to serve its main purpose — communicate information. Read more…

August 2, 2007 — Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive. There is a variety of conventional ways to visualize data - tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs are being used every day, in every project and on every possible occasion. However, to convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years. Read more…

September 2, 2006 — Being a web developer means not only being able to design websites or program their functionality. Sometimes it also means to be able to explain complex issues clearly and be able to present reasonable and convincing arguments. Read more…