Dear friends, Alberto here.
In the previous post I wrote that the launch of the Open Visualization Academy was a success that exceeded my expectations. The University of Miami has just published an article about it that reflects how happy I feel about that.
Today, we’re making a new course available, Figma for Data Visualization, by Rodolfo Almeida. We hope you’ll enjoy it. By the end of February or early March we’ll release The Craft of Building Stories with Data by Gurman Bhatia. After that we’ll try to publish a course at the end of every month. We have 10+ in the works; the OVA library is going to expand very fast.
A talk (and a book) in progress
On February 3rd, I gave a talk at MIT titled ‘Principled Visualization’. I use my public talks to experiment with ideas, and this wasn’t an exception; I’m in the early stages of writing a new book, and if you want to get a glimpse of where my thinking is going, watch the recording below and download the slides with notes:
Visualizing birds
Besides being a friend, Nadieh Bremer is one of my favorite visualization designers, so it’s always a privilege to collaborate with her. Late last week, Nadieh released a data story we’ve been working on for nearly a year, ‘Searching for Birds’, just in time for the Great Backyard Bird Count weekend, on February 13-16. The project visualizes Google search data (Google sponsored the project) about bird species in the U.S.
As usual when it comes to Nadieh’s designs, ‘Searching for Birds’ is unique, creative, and delightful. I recommend that you spend some time with it; don’t miss the data & methodology section at the bottom.
My youngest son and I recently went to a Trivium show. It was fantastic, so today I leave you with their most popular song, ‘The Heart From Your Hate’. Coincidentally, this performance was recorded in 2019 in Galicia, Spain, where I was born. Try not to headbang while listening:
