Learn how expert data visualization designers reason about their craft
In The Art of Insight: How Great Visualization Designers Think, renowned visualization designer and educator Alberto Cairo, in conversation with several leaders in the field, delivers an inspiring exploration of how they make design choices. The book is a celebration of visualization, and a personal journey that dives into subjects like:
- How the professional background and life experiences of every designer shape their choices of what to visualize and how to visualize it.
- What designers from different countries and cultures, and working in different fields, such as data art, data analytics, or data journalism, have in common, or how they differ from each other.
- How designers reflect on research, ethical reasoning, and also aesthetic judgments, to make decisions such as selecting the most appropriate ways to encode data, or the most appealing visual style.
Perfect for data scientists and data journalists, The Art of Insight will also inspire artists, analysts, statisticians, and any other professional who uses data visualizations.
Table of Contents
About the author xii
A note on typography xiii
Introduction: On Magic (with Shirley Wu) 3
Part I: Pragmatists 17
Chapter 1: Unruly Stripes (with Ed Hawkins) 19
Chapter 2: A World of Conversation 29
Part 2: Eccentrics 43
Chapter 3: The Eternal Wanderer (with Jaime Serra) 45
Chapter 4: A Certain Inner Light (with Nadieh Bremer) 59
Chapter 5: A Mindful Artisan (with Sonja Kuijpers) 71
Chapter 6: Living Visualization (with Pedro Cruz) 79
Chapter 7: Data and Persons (with Federica Fragapane) 89
Chapter 8: Souls Before Numbers (with Mohamad Waked) 101
Coda 108
Part 3: Ambassadors 113
Chapter 9: Building Bridges (with Allen Hillery) 115
Chapter 10: The Good Fighter (with Amanda Makulec) 127
Chapter 11: Making Data Friendly (with Alli Torban) 139
Chapter 12: A Reporter Among Engineers (with Aaron Williams) 149
Chapter 13: The Therapy of Visualization (with Deniz Cem Önduygu) 159
Chapter 14: The Public Intellectual (with Attila Bátorfy) 171
Chapter 15: The Discerning Outsider (with Harkanwal Singh) 183
Second Coda 192
Part 4: Narrators 197
Chapter 16: A Journalism of Care (with Alyssa Fowers) 199
Chapter 17: No Treasure Hunts (with Lena Groeger) 209
Chapter 18: Smart Brevity (with Danielle Alberti, Jacque Schrag, and Will Chase) 219
Chapter 19: Visceral Visualizations (with Gurman Bhatia) 231
Chapter 20: The Determined Learner (with Jane Pong) 241
Chapter 21: The Jack-of-All-Trades (with Simon Ducroquet) 251
Chapter 22: A Journalist at War (with Anatoliy Bondarenko) 261
Epilogue: Teachers, Mentors, and Meaning 271
Acknowledgments 280
Bibliography 282
Index 286
