13 Tools and Resources for Better Data Visualization

Helpful links for representing data in beautiful and meaningful ways

Numbers don’t mean anything by themselves; they don’t exist in a vacuum, but are a placeholder for something else: people, places, ideas, values. — Accurat

Data visualizations have the potential to solve complex problems, tell stories, bring clarity, and inspire curiosity. At Spatial, we live and breathe location data, so naturally we interact with data visualizations everyday. But when we started creating our own, we discovered how difficult it can be to accurately and beautifully visualize data — especially complex, large-scale data.

Below are some tools and resources I found helpful or inspiring when it comes to creating better data viz:

Tools

1. Data Viz Project by Ferdio acts as a great reference library
2. Chroma.js is a JavaScript library for creating colors
3. ColorBrewer2 for finding robust color schemes
4. RawGraphs is a free data viz tool
5. Color Oracle for designing with accessibility in mind

Readings

1. IBM’s Data Viz Guidelines has some good guiding principles
2. Giorgia Lupi’s blog challenged my preconceived notions of data viz
3. Dear Data by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec
4. How to choose colors in data viz
5. How to create multi-hue color palettes

Inspiration

1. La Lettura by Accurat on embracing the beauty of complexity
2. The Visual Agency on Instagram
3. The Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards in case you want to enter 😉

Hopefully these helped you in some way! What tools do you use? We’d love to hear what your process is for creating data visualizations.

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