🆕 Data Visualisation External Resources

Data Viz External Resources

Below we have put together a non-exhaustive list of resources which explore aspects of data visualisation in more detail plus lots of useful tools which will help you to create impactful data visualisations.

General Data Viz

What is data viz? - This article from infogram is a good starter for ten.

Using bled modes and opacity levels - This blog post explores opacity levels and blend modes and shows some examples of how we can use them together to create effective visualisations.

From Data to Viz – Some interesting examples of different types of data visualization (not just maps). It also provides R, Python and D3.js code to create your own.

Data Viz Catalogue - A library of different visualisation types with helpful links to places you can create your own.

Data Viz Project - A website trying to present all relevant data visualisations, so you can find the right type and get inspiration on how to do it.

Data Viz Checklist - This checklist is meant to be used as a guide for the development of high impact data visualisations.

ONS DataViz guidance - Guidance for creating charts and tables and best practice for using colour in your work.

Datawrapper Blog – Contains lots of useful articles about all aspects of data visualization.

DataViz Resources - A maptastic collection of resources created by Kate Berg of Pokateo Maps.

Financial Times Visual Vocabulary - A superb poster to assist designers and journalists to select the optimal symbology for data visualisations, by the Financial Times Visual Journalism Team.

The ‘Little of Data Visualisation’ Series - This is a collection posts from the 'little of visualisation design' series designed to showcase the small decisions that make a big difference towards effectiveness of data visualisation design.

Mapbox’s guide to map design - This guide is made for designers getting started with maps and experts fine-tuning details for a particular use case.

Axis Maps Cartography Guide - A short, friendly guide to basic principles of map design.

Colour

OS GDV Colour Pallets – quantitative, sequential, diverging and red/amber/green colour pallets for download as pdf with hex colour values, QGIS style file, JSON and ArcPro Stylx file

Colour Brewer - a great tool for selecting colour schemes that are specific to maps, particularly when mapping various classes of data.

Adobe Color - is an excellent application for generating colour themes and allows you to experiment quickly with colour variations and browse themes from the user community. It also has some great tools for checking accessibility in terms of contrast and colour blind safe colour pallets.

Chroma.js Coor Pallet Helper – Helps create sequential and diverging colour pallets with equal steps in lightness

hailpixel Colordothttps://color.hailpixel.com/ - is a wonderful browser-based colour picker from designer Devin Hunt that allows you to create colour swatches with ease. It's also really fun to use!

i want hue – a great tool which allows you to generate qualitative (categorical) colour pallets with optimally distinct colours with options for colour vision deficient colour pallets.

0 to 255 - lets you pick between different shades of one colour which makes it ideal for choosing sequential schemes.

Subtleties of color - This is a fantastic 6-part series of articles about the use of colour in data visualisations.

The viridis colour palettes - These fantastic colour schemes for R help "make plots that are pretty, better represent your data, easier to read by those with color blindness, and print well in grey scale."

HEX to RGB converter - Use this tool to quickly convert hex colour codes into RGB values.

Colour Scales in Data Visualisations - A great 4-part blog from Datawrapper explaining what colour scale to use when creating data visualisations.

Colour in Data Vis – Some great blog posts from Datawrapper about the use of colour in data visualisation

Symbology

OS Symbol library – library of svg symbols available for download

Using Map Symbols – explores various considerations of map symbol design

Maki - a great icon set made for map designers, perfect if you're making a map for web or mobile.

Vecteezy - a whole range of different vector files for download, many of which are suitable for maps.

The Noun Project - a huge library of icons, many of which are great for mapping.

SVG to PNG – SVG to PNG converter

Cloudconvert – SVG to PNG converter

Basemaps

Effective Base Maps - this blog post explores the options available and shares some useful tips for presenting your contextual data effectively.

Basemaps and Data layers – a blog post from ESRI looking at how base map choice influences the colour of data overlays

Software & Tools

For details on software and tools for geographic data analysis and visualisation including options for Dashboards & Analytics, Storymaps and other mapping platforms and resources please visit our software page.