Visualizing Artisanal Data!

This month’s #SWDChallenge by guest author, Mike Cisneros, inspired me to put to use a data sample I tracked in Observe, Collect, Draw: A Visual Journal by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. If you haven’t yet picked up this book, I encourage you to do so! It’s a diary that inspires you to collect data on anything and everything, making you appreciate all of the details in your life. I also bought Dear Data by the same authors. Dear Data is a beautifully illustrated book of postcards Giorgia and Stefanie exchanged with each other for a full year. It’s hard to try to describe just how beautiful and unique these books are! My advice: Just be sure to buy Dear Data in the Flexibound format (instead of the ebook format) for the best experience.

Here is a page showing the data I collected on books that I own and could readily find in my house. I stopped collecting the data when I ran out of room on the page.

My collection of books!

My first attempt to visualize the data was a good example of practicing clean design but it lacked the interesting detail and personality of my handwritten data.

Clean design but lacking anything of interest.

Cole gave me some great advice on how to improve my chart:

So I went back and added annotations and images that helped tell more of a story about my data:

I have a hard time leaving well enough alone and I want to track more data on my reading in order to improve my reading comprehension, so who knows where this will lead!