Visualization

This chapter offers a general introduction to data visualization at Blueprint. Before introducing the typical toolkit, corporate standards, and a gallery of examples, it attempts to speak to the purposes visualization serves in general and at Blueprint in particular.

Recomended Reading

Most of the recommended readings in this section focus on the conceptual approach to tackling visualization problems. This is intentional, since designing the right visualization is by far the deeper and more complex challenge than instructing a computer how to make it.

Andrew Heiss, Data Visualization

A thorough yet accessible free course on data visualization in general, illustrated with practical applications in R and ggplot.

Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

The way that information is visualized in academia, business, and the media makes Edward Tufte sick. In this book, he explains what makes him mad, why it infuriates him so, and how it could be different. While his puritanical minimalism often overshoots its target (occasionally at the expense of clarity), it will transform the way you think about designing charts, tables, and maps for the better.

Alberto Cairo, The Functional Art

Cairo comes from a similar philosophical perspective as Tufte, but is in turns more pragmatic, patient, and permissive. Instead of characterizing any non-informative or redundant element of a visualization as ‘chart-junk’, he develops a useful concept of the different objectives visualizations can be designed to achieve, and discussses the tradeoff between depth and familiarity with a good deal more nuance.

Hadley Wickham et al, ggplot2

An in-depth guide to ggplot2, the standard software package for visualization at Blueprint.