data illustration
Opportunity
Data illustration was my way into data visualisation. I have a background in hand lettering and illustration and took a data analytics course. I simply decided to combine those skills and see what I could come up with. My very first attempt was illustrating mine and my partner’s toiletries on our bathroom shelf to see whose products took up more space (mine took up 75%). I can’t remember at the time if I had discovered Giorgia Lupi and Mona Chalabi, but they are — as with most people in this field — a big inspiration for any data illustration projects that I do.
Approach
My data illustration projects are typically inspired by what I’m doing in my life at the time. Like binge watching Game of Thrones or running my first half marathon. I thoroughly enjoy working data and that’s the main motivation for these projects — just to just create something cool and have fun doing it. The bonus is being able to push my skills in the field and learn new things along the way.
Tools
Excel
Procreate
Photoshop
Illustrator
The fun in the run
The generic medal collecting dust on my shelf didn’t seem like enough to commemorate a goal I’d been running after for so long. So, I created a data illustration to capture the hard work — and the enjoyment — that went into running my first half marathon to always remember it by.
I explained what went into this data illustration project on Medium. The article takes readers through the the key steps of the data analytics workflow, making the research and making process visual and open.
The time my April went down the moon door
I got into Game of Thrones just before the final series. I binge watched 7 seasons to catch up. So, I decided to ask Now TV for my data to see how much of my life I dedicated to GOT. As it turns out, a lot. It was long listed for the 2019 Kantar Information is Beautiful awards in Arts, Culture & Entertainment Category.
View this visualisation on the 2019 Information is Beautiful long list
If the world’s happiest countries were bouquet's of flowers
For the World Data Visualisation Prize, Info is Beautiful & World Government Summit provided a dataset on global governments. The challenge was to visualise ‘good governance’. So, I represented countries as bouquets of flowers. The ‘fullness’ of each bouquet was based on variables like happiness index and human development. It was long listed as a ‘static’ entry on informationisbeautiful.net.