Data Viz Today

We're exploring creativity in information design from the perspective of amazingly creative people in the field! If it's not a magical process, then what is it? Let's hear how Andy Kirk approaches creativity. We dive into how he defines creativity, what his routines are, what kills his creativity, how he presents creative ideas to clients, where he finds inspiration…and more!

Shownotes

Volunteer to be a Beta reader for my creativity book!

Today, I'm launching a mini-series all about creativity in information design. If you're like me and came from a data background, communicating information in creative ways can feel a bit like a magical process, so over this series, I'll invite creative information designers and dive into their process: What are their routines, what kills their creativity, how do they present creative ideas to others…and more!

Let's hear how Stefanie Posavec approaches creativity in information design…

Show notes: https://dataviztoday.com/shownotes/75

Stefanie Posavec's work

Sign up to be a Beta reader for my new book on creativity in information communication!

Today, we have Danielle Alberti on the show to share a behind-the-scenes look at how to become and be a data journalist! She's the editor of the data visualization team at Axios and shares:

• What's a typical day as a data journalist
• Which skills are important
• What she looks for in a resume and portfolio when hiring for a data journalist position
• What she would do differently if she were starting her data journalist career over again

This interview with Danielle was the special opening segment to the Elevate Learning Community conference — you can watch the whole conference with thoughtful talks about information design here: https://elevatedataviz.com/live

Full shownotes: https://dataviztoday.com/shownotes/74

Today, we have Zan Armstrong with us to share 3 simple alternatives to aggregating time series data in the usual ways so you don't lose important nuance. It's so easy to get pushed into aggregating data a certain way by our software so being aware of some alternatives is really helpful when you're analyzing and visualizing data.

Show notes: https://dataviztoday.com/shownotes/73

I walk you through my process for creating a data viz brief and how to use it!

If you're interested in a short training and getting a copy of the data viz brief template that I use with my clients, shoot me an email with the subject line "INTERESTED!" and if there's enough interest, I'll host a live training! [email protected]

When you're kicking off a data viz project, do you have a series of questions that you ask to uncover the goals, audience, and data? Want to know how to kick it up a notch? I know I do! Recently, I had the pleasure of working with Liz Hatherley, whose whole expertise is wrapped up in pulling this kind of information out of her clients, which has led to incredibly smooth dataviz projects!

In this episode, Liz shares more about what kinds of questions she's asking in her discovery workshops and how we, as data viz designers, can start integrating more strategic thinking into our own workflows. Let's go!

Show notes: https://dataviztoday.com/shownotes/72

Join the Elevate Membership Program!

I invited a few of the best dataviz designers and freelancers I know on the show today (Duncan Geere, Gabrielle Merite, and Will Chase) and we absolutely stuffed the hour with as many dataviz freelancing tips as we possibly could!

In this episode, we demystify the whole process: starting from when someone emails you that they're interested in your work, what you should write back, what you should ask in the discovery call, basics to include in your contract, tips on how to price your work, tools we use to prototype our visualizations, how to present your work to your client, navigating through feedback rounds, and more! I told you this episode is packed!! Let's go…

Show notes: https://dataviztoday.com/shownotes/71

Today I'm calling out the biggest things I learned in the past year. There's just something about naming it that helps me remember to keep doing it in the new year and even how I can take it up a notch in the next year.

In this episode, I'll highlight the three biggest lessons I learned this year, and they all stem from better communication with clients, ourselves, and with our colleagues. Let's get to it!

Show notes: https://dataviztoday.com/shownotes/70

Elevate Membership waitlist: https://forms.gle/wBDXYYm3rEawY3pPA

Have you ever reimagined your tabular data set as a network and discovered new insights? Networks are an obvious choice if you're visualizing someone's social network, for example, but there are so many more possibilities!

In this episode, Dr. Keita Broadwater will explain what a network is, share a couple of examples of tabular data reimagined as a network, and give us a few tips on when a data set might be ripe for this kind of analysis.

How do we future-proof our data viz careers? What skills are important now and 10 years from now as software companies come and go and $5 dashboards pop up on Fiverr?

In this episode, Dr. Jonathan Schwabish and I talk about what our consultant work looks like right now and how we're working to future-proof our careers. This is a joint podcast between Data Viz Today and PolicyViz so we'll both be asking questions. Let's go!

https://dataviztoday.com/shownotes/68