Author Archives: richardbrath

About richardbrath

Richard is a long time visualization designer and researcher. Professionally, I am one of the partners of Uncharted Software Inc. I have recently completed a PhD in data visualization at LSBU. The opinions on this blog are related to my personal interests in data visualization, particularly around research interests related to my PhD work- this blog is about exploratory aspects of data visualization not proven principles.

Maps Leaking Typography into Visualization

Posted on May 29, 2022 by richardbrath

I enjoy typography and cartography. Cartographic labels show more than just the name of the place, such as using font weight to indicate population in a town, or spacing to indicate the extents of a mountain range (previous post). It … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, Isotype, Line Chart, texture, Thematic Map | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Text Visualizations and Proto-Text Visualizations

Posted on April 30, 2022 by richardbrath

Michael Friendly recently sent me this Common Sense Revolution visualization by Scott Sørli plotting a timeseries from 1985-2007 of welfare income for a single person in Ontario; and the names of all the homeless who died on the streets of Toronto … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, Design Space, Text Visualization | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Showing risks, rights & freedoms in visualizations

Posted on March 15, 2022 by richardbrath

The tragic events in Ukraine have left me wondering how quantitative visualizations miss showing complex issues such as human rights. One aspect of this conflict mentioned by various media outlets as well as elected officials is the flow of funds … Continue reading →

Posted in Alphanumeric Chart, Annotation, Data Visualization, Treemap | Leave a comment

Two Y-Axes may be Appropriate!

Posted on February 3, 2022 by richardbrath

Many visualization people are against dual-axis charts. There are research papers that recommend against, websites that recommend against, and some tools don’t support it. Hadley Wickham, the author of the popular R visualization package ggplot2, does not support dual axes … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, Line Chart, Timeseries | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Visualizing with Texture: Lessons from Puzzles

Posted on January 30, 2022 by richardbrath

Over the holidays, we put out a couple jigsaw puzzles, to solve collaboratively or otherwise take a break from holiday mayhem. These are big puzzles, we did a 2000 piece cartoon puzzle and a 1000 piece photograph puzzle. With such … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, Search, Shape Visualization, texture, Visual Attributes | Leave a comment

Lyrics as Tiles: Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy coded with Color and Texture

Posted on December 11, 2021 by richardbrath

Song lyrics depend heavily on rhythm, syllables and rhyme (in some songs such as pop songs). Some poetry visualizations add white space between words and lines, which can then be filled with various visualization techniques, such as forming links between … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, Font Visualization, SparkWord, Text Skimming, Text Visualization, texture | 2 Comments

Modley’s Pictographs and Graphs

Posted on November 30, 2021 by richardbrath

Rudolf Modley was a key figure in the popularization of Isotype in the United States. I’ve previously written about Isotype (e.g. hypothesizing what happened to it, and thematic axes). I recently received Modley and Lowenstein’s book Pictographs and Graphs (1952, … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, Font Visualization, Isotype | Leave a comment

58 Ways to Visualize Alice in Wonderland (+10 more)

Posted on October 31, 2021 by richardbrath

How many ways are there to visualize a book? Bar chart, scatterplot, word cloud… that’s too narrow thinking. And, yes, there are websites showing how academics visualize text. But what happens out in the wild? Artists? School assignments? Professional designers? … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, Text Visualization | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Dashed and patterned lines for visualization (aka 1D texture)

Posted on May 27, 2021 by richardbrath

Bertin and Texture Jacques Bertin discusses texture in visualization, in his landmark book Semiology of Graphics (1967 original French edition, 1983 English translation). Much of modern visualization theory and implementation hinges on Bertin’s framework, including the notion of visual attributes, … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, texture | Leave a comment

Visualizing with Text: Endorsements and more examples

Posted on April 20, 2021 by richardbrath

Thanks everyone who’s bought a copy of Visualizing with Text. I hope you’re enjoying it. I’m really appreciate some of the examples I’m seeing in the wild. Here’s some fantastic examples from Georgios Karamanis. I like the shifted + bold … Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, Microtext, Text Visualization, Thematic Map | Leave a comment