Cat Takeovers, Isotypes, Slope Charts, and More From Last Week on Nightingale
It happened slowly, and then all at once. By the time we realized what was happening, it was too late — our homepage was already overrun. Nightingale officially went to the cats last week.
Rachael Dottle got things started with “How I Go From Zero to Map,” which detailed the creation of her delightful map of Great Britain’s cat population. In addition to the terrific interactive viz and the crucial intermediate step in the Cat Takeover, this piece is a thoughtful reflection on reproducibility, transparency, and process in data viz.
Katherine Mello followed that up with “Visualizing 36 Hours on the Alcan Highway,” and I must say: It’s one of the best visualizations I’ve seen from a cat since we started Nightingale. This article illustrates how a road trip turned into an analog data viz project and experiment in charting multivariate data with a geographic component.
But don’t overlook our non-cat content from this past week. Jason Forrest published Part 2 of his series on Isotypes, “Exploring Isotype Charts: ‘Our Private Lives.’” Jason dives deep into the work of The International System Of Typographic Picture Education (ISOTYPE) to explore techniques and mind-set behind several Isotype charts and how they relate and inform many information design concepts today.
In “Racial Bias in Code and Data: An Interview with Alex Garcia,” Emilia Ruzicka interviewed the titular Alex Garcia about the lightning talk he gave at NICAR 2019 called “Five Ways to Write Racist Code.” The two chatted about how he came to the topic and prepared his talk, ethics in data journalism, and more.
In “Scrap the Bar Chart to Show Changes Over Time,” Alana Pirrone makes the case for the slope chart, which cuts out all the extra noise and displays data clearly and directly.
Maddie Hall interviewed information designer/playwright/actress/illustrator extraordinaire Frederica Fragapane on visualizing theatre, children’s books, and more.
Lastly, do not miss “Data Visualization As an Act of Witnessing” by Mary Aviles. She has written about The Undocumented Migration Project’s powerful pop-up installation, “Hostile Terrain,” which visualizes the humanitarian crisis on the United States’ southern border and will be installed in 150 locations throughout the year.
In other news, Nightingale is looking for writers! In “What Are You Going to Write About for Nightingale?” we’ve laid out some details about the process, some ideas for what to write about, and some visualizations that may answer some of your questions.
