Springing into Action on the Nightingale Print Edition!
Plus Three Questions with Emilia Ruzicka, getting to know the editors, and making icons in Figma
Spring has officially sprung (at least in the Northern hemisphere), and signs of growth are all around… including at Nightingale. We’re grateful for your enthusiastic support for our print expansion!
Over the last month, we’ve formed an Expansion Committee comprised of teams focused on Design, Editorial, and Operations. While there’s a lot of exciting news to come, we are so excited to welcome Julie Brunet — a.k.a., datacitron — as our Creative Director! We will begin our fundraising drive next week, so please reach out to nightingale@datavisualizationsociety.org if you or your organization want to learn how you can lend your support!
In addition to work on the print edition, we have more digital news: after being established as a Medium partner publication, Nightingale is now establishing our own website. This move allows Nightingale to become its own entity with the ability to write our own rules with greater flexibility and control how and where people interact with our content. Stay tuned for launch updates! Woohoo!
Three Questions with… Emilia Ruzicka
This month, we’re getting to know one of our regular Nightingale writers, Emilia Ruzicka. Emilia studies data journalism at Brown University and will graduate next month. Her current work includes a year-long personal data collection project chronicled in Nightingale, a podcast about the United States Postal Service, and her senior thesis. Find out more at emiliaruzicka.com or follow her on Twitter @EmiliaRuzicka for regular updates.
1. If you could be any type of chart, what would you be?
I’d be a network diagram because I feel that I’m constantly drawing from a wide range of resources, skills, and processes to create my work. In addition to showing how interdisciplinary tasks can be, a network diagram also represents how individuals are interdependent on both a small and large scale. This has felt especially relevant as the COVID-19 pandemic continues and I prepare to leave university.
2. If you were stuck on a desert island, what viz would you want to create and what would you use to make it?
I would use a chart to track the populations of edible flora and fauna on the island, both so that I can figure out how to feed myself and to ensure that my makeshift lifestyle is sustainable for the island ecosystem. Ideally, I’d search for some wood scraps or tree bark to use as a canvas and then either etch it using a rock or paint it with crushed fruit.
3. What is one visualization that has inspired you?
Giorgia Lupi has been a longtime inspiration of mine, but her collaborative project with Kaki King called Bruises — The Data We Don’t See is something I come back to again and again. It reminds me that data is personal and data visualizations don’t have to be confined to predetermined formats. Bruises also represents a few dataviz firsts for me: the first time I saw a data visualization displayed as a piece of art (at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum) and the first time I heard data sonified. Both of these firsts play a significant role in how I make data representations now and I like to be reminded of what sparked my excitement about dataviz.
Meet the Editors
Ever wondered who’s working behind the scenes to get your articles ready for publication at Nightingale? So far, you’ve met five of our editorial staff; today, you’ll meet two more.
To keep things fun (always a goal at Nightingale!), we’re introducing ourselves with Two Truths and a Lie. Which of these fun “facts” is not true? Read to the end of this issue to find out.
Editor portraits were drawn by Yifan Luo.
Georges Hattab
Georges is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Marburg, Germany. His main focus is developing algorithms and software solutions using Data Analytics and Visualization to solve applied research problems in bioinformatics. Check out more of his work on his website.
Two truths and a lie:
1. I enjoy the algorithmic aspect behind origami. Seeing origami fold into wondrous shapes is both satisfactory and magical.
2. I am fond of physical records, e.g, vinyl, cassette tapes. Owning a musical record as a physical medium is an entirely different experience than clicking on a link or using an app. The intricacies of the storage medium become apparent and are taken into consideration.
3. I didn’t never hike more than 70 km in one day.
Alyssa Bell
Alyssa is a product manager in healthtech with a boundless enthusiasm for learning new (and often trivial) things.
Two truths and a lie:
- I was a rugby player for over a decade.
- I am one of six siblings.
- Friends and I created 35 weeks of virtual quizzo during the pandemic.
In the Wild
In Case You Missed It
Introducing POLLEN!
The DVS Slack workspace contains 70+ channels. Julia Krolik and Owen Fernley set out to make it easier to discover and join them. The result was a novel Slack app that visualizes public channels in a workspace. Go behind the scenes to see how this idea evolved.
Balancing the Tension between Creative Tradeoffs and Client Expectations
How do you balance your audience’s need for intuitiveness and processing ease with your own desire for creativity and data humanism? Not long ago, Ben Xiao facilitated a Topics in DV discussion and he reports here ideas you shared on how you approach injecting creativity into client-based work.
More from Nightingale
Comparing Survey Responses Over Two Time Periods
How and Why We Sketch When Visualizing Data
NEW YORK ALIVE! Blending Performance and Data Art for a Whole Lot of Fun!
Exploring Chart Plugins in Figma
Mapping Overseas France with Tableau
Working with #Dataviz in 2021 — What’s Next? (And What Matters?)
100,000 Folds: The Stabilizing Power of Community
Bloomberg Says > 10 Years, but How Many Years Is It Actually?
The Rhetoric Behind the Coronovirus Propaganda Maps
How to Create a Simple, Yet Effective, Line Plot
Dashboard Redesign: A Look at Chart Choices
Urban Patterns of Police Misconduct
Meet the Editors: Answers
Which of their three fun “facts” were actually lies? Georges: None! All three were true… but he wanted to keep us on our editorial toes by throwing in a tricky double negative. Alyssa: #2
Reminder that we publish The ‘Gale once monthly. See you next on May 13th!
