Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere

A nice mention on the ‘Acquired’ podcast!

Andy Kirk — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 16:39:39 +0000

It was a super nice surprise to discover that my ‘Seinfeld Chronicles‘ data viz project had received a generous mention on the latest ‘Acquired‘ podcast.

Hosted by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, each Acquired episode involves a very well-researched, long-form (4 hour!) deep dive into a “single company’s history from its founding until today” with the aim of uncovering how each company was so successful in contrast to others.

In something of a departure from their typical ‘companies’ of focus, such as Disney or Ferrari, they recently released an episode dedicated to the US sitcom, Seinfeld.

"Seinfeld, which ended three decades ago, has been watched by 72 million Americans so far THIS YEAR. Behind that incredible stat is an equally incredible business story: obsessive creators, perfect market timing, an ownership structure that aligned incentives for the long term… all of which created a sitcom that became number one by breaking all the rules."

During the final part of the episode, in a section titled ‘carve outs’ which is an informal post-script to topic of conversation whereby the hosts share specific “related books, movies, gadgets, articles, or cultural finds”, Ben Gilbert was very kind to describe his discovering of my original, limited-edition printed version of the Seinfeld data exploration, created in 2020.

You can hear the section in the bookmarked video clip below (from 3h43m onwards).

Alternatively, here’s a few captioned screenshots from the related Netflix episode to give you the gist of how the project was covered…

My sincere thanks to Ben and David for the delightful mention and for linking to the full digital version of the project on their episode page. (And sorry to disappoint those keen people who have been in touch, as a result, seeking to get a copy – ANY COPY! – of the book, here’s the web viewer version of it at least)

The post A nice mention on the ‘Acquired’ podcast! appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.

The Visualising Data Newsletter – Issue #27, October 2026

Andy Kirk — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 11:33:31 +0000

Welcome to the latest issue of the Visualising Data Newsletter, chronicling the most insightful and delightful data viz content.

Each month I collect, curate, and publish a collection of the best, most interesting, and thought-provoking data visualisation-related works I’ve encountered since the last issue. This latest collection relates to content I came across since August 2026.

Whether you are working on a dataviz, working in dataviz, or even working towards working in dataviz, you’ll hopefully find sources of inspiration and information. If you want to dive in deeper, browse through all previous issues on my Newsletter page.

To sign up for emailed notifications when each issue is published, subscribe here.

Happy Viz’ing!

Andy

LATEST FROM ME...

Some new stuff, recent posts or announcements relating to my professional services.

In a couple of weeks I have the distinct pleasure of reforming with my esteemed peers, Valentina D’Efilippo and Stefanie Posavec, to deliver a one-off online training course ‘The Visual Design of Data’. This will be run across 4 x four hour live sessions (17, 19, 24 and 26 November), with each of us taking a session individually before coming together for a final exercise activity to wrap all the learning together. Only a few places remain! Visit Graphic Hunters for more details and how to register.

Early in 2027 I will be running a 2-day ‘Masterclass in Data Visualisation’ training event, also taking place at Flourish HQ in London, over Tuesday 2nd and Wednesday 3rd February. Visit the course page for details about the course, the pricing, and information about how to register.

VISUALS

Some of the freshest data visualisation, visual journalism, or generally inspirational design works or collections.

1. It’s Not Just You. America Has Gotten Much Hotter. - New York Times ($)

From beeswarm charts, through connected scatter plots, on to arrow maps and misty wildfire maps, this piece is packed with exquisite data representation methods by Gus Wezerek.

2. Mapped.Earth

Discovered via Joey Cherdarchuk, Aaron J. Becker has created an enchanting interactive animated map of the Earth “rendered as data: Winds, currents, terrain, borders, populations: maps and map films about the shapes underneath the numbers” and beyond the live map it has a ton of bespoke view slices of aspects of life, from lighthouses to the average colours of land.

3. How a glacier collapse triggered a deadly landslide and flooding along the Nepal-China border - Reuters

The title does a good job of describing what this about but within the article, which seems to have been a huge graphics-team effort to turn this around so quickly, there’s a perfect blend of visuals covering video clips, photo-imagery, annotated diagrams, maps, and charts to aid the understanding of this tragedy.

4. Where the Shadow Fell - Alexander Bogachev

“Every solar eclipse, 2000 BCE to 3000 CE, placed where it peaked”. A wonderfully designed interactive globe that displays “11,898 points, one for every solar eclipse in NASA’s Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses”. Just dive in and play.

5. Hajj and Umrah inData - Balady Atlas

This is an absolute visual extravaganza, exploring every conceivable angle of data analysis to do with the Hajj and the Umrah, the Islamic pilgrimages to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

6. Every disease is a policy failure - Works in Progress

Elegant visuals and compelling analysis wrapped up in this essay about how much medicine has progressed in our lifetimes but how – and why – it isn’t progressing as fast as it could.

7. Wealth Inequality in America - Youtube

In 2013 the original version of this video went viral and represented, at the time, one of the most powerful cases for storytelling with visuals. 13 years later, here’s an updated version from the same original creator, the enigmatically named ‘Politizane’. Beyond this update, there are a further four video

8. Anatomy of a $100 Bill - Realworth

This is nice project, with a scrollable/browsable series of interactive exploded views of a US $100 note, including “a slider that pulls it apart, three lighting modes including UV, a cross-section through the paper, and a bending mode. Fourteen chapters explain the construction… that you can ignore and just explore it freely.”

9. Decade of Rain - Si Zheng

A vast scrollable feast of sobering analysis exploring how “between 1961 and 1971 the United States sprayed nearly 20 million gallons of herbicide over the forests, mangroves and croplands of South Vietnam. Half a century on, the dioxin it left behind is still being cleaned from the soil. This is where it fell, year by year.”

10. Football analytics heritage - @Unravelsports on Bluesky

Somehow Joris has come across this 102 year old Hungarian football analytics treasure: A momentum graph from the Hungary v Austria derby dated May 1924.

11. See the Scale of Destruction of Nepal Flooding - New York Times ($)

Another piece covering this subject, with Pablo Robles and Weiyi Cai skillfully walking readers through the path of destruction from the Nepal flooding through adjacent before and after imagery.

12. Relief - Bert Spaan

Really elegant interactive relief map for exploring the terrain of the world.

13. Webernaut

Webernaut is a “small independent site for discovering interesting corners of the web” and includes a collection focused on data visualisation: interactive maps, visual explainers etc. which offers a nice growing resource of notable works in a single browsable place.

14. Tracking Western Europe’s heat waves - Reuters

Detailed look at how today’s temperatures compare to the historic average, I particularly liked the human-figures histogram.

15. Trying to survive on JobSeeker’s $68 a day forcing Australians into ‘impossible choices’ - ABC

Really like the opening visuals that take real money away from an initial stack of cash representing a typical budget. Rather than abstracting the subject using (for example) stacked bar charts using images of Australian notes adds a layer of relatability.

16. The Designs That Made Singapore - Straits Times

Beautifully executed visual essay with some gorgeous transitions and ornate flourishes along the way (the letter-by-letter destruction of the article’s title is one of the most enjoyable little moments I’ve had online this year).

17. 9/11 The National Geographic Video Archive

From Graphicacy, the lead design and developers: “Earlier this week National Geographic launched its 9/11 video archive, marking 25 years since the attacks. It holds more than 100 hours of footage, including over 20 hours never seen publicly, with nearly 500 clips organized on a single timeline of the day and sortable by time, location and topic… giving the public a way to move through the firsthand accounts of survivors, first responders and eyewitnesses in the order the day unfolded.”

18. Train.Jazz

Sound on for this lovely experiment by Josh Wolk. “Every dot is a real subway train. Eight hundred of them, give or take, form a small jazz combo (walking bass, piano, sax, vibes, brushes) that has been playing without pause for over a hundred years. On the platforms they are hot, screaming, full of complaint. This is the music inside the noise.”

LEARNING

Some of the latest articles, interviews, or videos about data viz or related matters.

19. A World of Maps, Folded Flat - Chartography

Lovely piece of work and lovely write up about it from RJ, who created a novel miniature of the David Rumsey Map Center’s stairwell into a pop-up book: “We wanted a staircase that could disappear. It needed four walls, rigid steps, and room for extravagant maps. Then it had to collapse flat and ship in an envelope.”

20. A year of digging into our dataviz heritage - Cabinet of Infographic Curiosities

Attila reflects on the first anniversary year since he launched the Cabinet of Infographic Curiosities, a quest to discover, share and discuss “old and rare information graphics, data visualizations and maps”.

21. Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting to Look the Same - Lauren Leek's Substack

Not just an excellent zeitgeist-capturing article but one packed full of smart data and statistical analysis: “What 640 London shopping streets, 4,000 Billboard hits, a million films and synthetic AI personas tell us about why everything is flattening into sameness and how to regulate the algorithms behind it.”

22. Junk Charts

I’m becoming ever more inclined to drift away from contributing to and obsessing over social platforms, and instead return to enjoying the web as it once was – more about visiting and discovering independent websites. Its always good to give a nudge to potentially new audiences to visit some of the OG data viz places, and so this month let me highlight Kaiser Fung’s long-standing Junk Charts site and his frequent smart observations about ways to refine visuals, that we can all learn so much from.

23. Data visualisation’s digital production problem - Graph Paper

In this guest post, Peter Broad, Senior Data Visualisation Specialist at the Office for National Statistics, asked “What did we lose when chart-making switched from paper to programming?” with a nice enquiry about why the digital age sometimes struggles to match the unique qualities of pre-digital data design.

24. How I Used Claude To Create Charts for My Latest Course - FILWD

Some really useful tips from Enrico about how to use AI to help produce charts for presentations and training exercise activities.

25. Fast Turnarounds, 3D, and Creative Iteration - Pablo Robles

“Behind the scenes on mapping Nepal’s severe floods, visual techniques for microplastics, and tracking new shipping routes through the Arctic.”

26. Designing Within the Lines: Practitioners’ Perspectives and Visualisation Tool Evaluation in the Arabic Context - Arxiv

Shared via Mohamad Waked, who was a practitioner interviewed for this research, a new paper looks at Arabic data visualisation and the challenges of designing for Arabic contexts. Multiple authors involved, but led by Muna Alebri who is the go-to person for such studies.

27. Beyond the Layout: Guru Prasad Gokumakula on the Art and Power of Editorial Design - Newspaper Design

I’d not previously come across the incredible work of Guru Prasad Gokumakula, Principal Visual Artist at Telangana Today, but very happy to have done so through this nice interview with TK Sajeev.

28. A selfish manifesto towards rejection of generative AI - Frank Elavsky

“I’ve heard great arguments for rejecting AI for environmental reasons (water, climate, energy) and for ethical reasons (like the theft of all digitizable intellectual property). I’ve even made those arguments myself (see previously linked blog post). But I also want to suggest another angle that can be used in conjunction with these: rejecting genAI for selfish reasons.”

29. Outlier Conference 2026 - Youtube

All 32 Outlier 2026 talks are now on YouTube

30. The UN challenges five centuries of cartography - Not-Ship

“It’s rare that map projections make international news. So last week was pretty exciting for cartographers. The UN endorsed a resolution to promote maps that accurately reflect the true size of continents, dethroning the 500-year-old Mercator projection in the process.”

NEWS & SUNDRIES

Announcements about data viz, new resources, or additional references covering broader data, tech, or design matters.

31. Information+ Conference on Bluesky

An exciting announcement to hear that the Information+ Conference – I might argue for it being the best on the data viz circuit – is scheduled to run in Milan over 7-9 June 2027. I’m definitely going to be there.

32. Freelance Designers Can’t Compete With a $20/Month AI Subscription - We And The Color

“This isn’t a think piece about automation anxiety. It’s a clear-eyed look at what the freelance design market collapse actually means—who it’s hitting hardest, why the middle specifically is disappearing, and what designers can realistically do right now to run a profitable creative business.”

33. 25 Years - Jonathan Corum

With the 25th anniversary of September 11th landing during this period, here’s a photographic essay from Jonathan tracing his life through those 25 years since 9/11: “I became a journalist, got leukemia, raised two children and took more than 30,000 photographs of New York City after 9/11.”

34. Hand-Drawn Game Guides

Came across this via Nathan Yau, “Relive some of your favorite classic game franchises in a whole new way with Hand-Drawn Game Guides free fan art filled PDF guides”

35. Design Notes - Youtube

Wendy Shijia’s creativity blows my mind and here she finds an exquisite way to marry together her final works with her design notes. Like a sensory massage for the brain.

36. Mystery Chart

“The chart is real. Its title is redacted. Five charts a day, all built from live public data. Everything is there except the one label that tells you what you’re looking at.”

37. My first book “Absent Data” is available for pre-orders - Tiziana Alocci

“Absent Data: Why Gaps, Uncertainty, and Invisible Data Matter” (Wiley, 2027) is now available to pre-order and it will be a belter.

38. Every pot is just one curve, turned. - Karim Douieb on Bluesky

‘Line’ a fun tool to create your own pottery family based on a single curve: “Draw the curve, Line generates a whole family of proportional vessels, ready to export at real scale (SVG/PDF/STL). Free, in the browser.”

39. 2025 State of the Data Viz Industry Report - Data Visualization Society

Read the exec summary and then access (for members) the full report to learn about the current trends in the data viz field.

40. Who Crapped on Johnny Depp's Bed - Youtube

You might not think you want to know the answer to that question. You might not think that spending 35m09s getting the answer to that question is worth it. You would be wrong though. Just give in to this remarkable piece of work by Bobby Fingers.

The post The Visualising Data Newsletter – Issue #27, October 2026 appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.

New Course: ‘Masterclass in Data Visualisation’ (London, Feb 2027)

Andy Kirk — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 14:08:45 +0000

I’m happy to announce details of a new public training course: A two-day classroom-based ‘Masterclass in Data Visualisation‘ will take place in London on Tuesday 2nd and Wednesday 3rd February 2027 and is hosted by the wonderful people at Flourish.

This is an essential non-technical course for anyone seeking to develop a sophisticated understanding about the effective visual communication of data.

You can read more information about my training courses, which have been running since November 2011. Further public training events, virtual and classroom, will be arranged in response to demand and schedule availability. If your organisation would be interested in exploring options to arrange a training privately for your colleagues, just get in touch.

What is this training about?

This Masterclass training course provides attendees with a sophisticated understanding of how to communicate data visually in the most impactive way. Delivered over two full-day sessions this training de-constructs this complex, multi-disciplinary craft into an organised sequence of topics towards giving attendees a thorough appreciation of how to navigate through the many creative, editorial, and analytical options that exist.

In contrast to the shorter ‘Fundamentals of Data Visualisation’ training, also offered by Andy Kirk, this course has more breadth and more detail, including additional topics not covered in the shorter course and with more time to allow for opportunities to practice the learning on exercise activities.

Who is this training for?

This training is relevant to anyone who has a role in or undertakes duties involving the analysis, presentation, and communication of data. Whether your work is primarily concerned with building dashboards, creating infographics, constructing data stories, or producing charts for reports, its all part of the same world. This popular course will enlighten you with new ideas and approaches for visualising data in the most contextually-reasoned way.

Please note this is not technical training: you will not receive teaching in the form of instruction based tutorials for how to make charts in specific tools. However, you will learn more about the profile of common tools that are being used in the field today, about the opportunities where collaborating with AI capabilities can be potentially useful, and you will be pointed towards many useful online references to help you develop your technical skills to apply what you learn in the course.

For more information about the course contents and objectives visit the training page where you will also find a selection of testimonials from previous attendees.

Who is this training delivered by?

Andy Kirk is an independent data visualisation expert from the UK and now based in Ireland. He is one of the most in-demand, experienced, and prolific educators in the field, having delivered nearly 450 public and private training courses since becoming a freelance professional in 2010. Visit Andy’s website, visualisingdata.com, to learn more about his training experiences as well as his other work in visualisation design, consultancy, lecturing, and book authoring.

Where will this training be held?

This course will be held at Bersey Warehouse, a premise on the London campus of Canva, located at 293 Old Street on the corner with Coronet Street in the Hoxton area (postcode: EC1V 9LA). This is about 6-8 minutes walk from Old Street underground station. Specific arrival instructions will be provided to all attendees priort to the course.

Hot/cold drinks and snack refreshments will be available throughout the day and an optional lunch will also be provided. The venue is also closely located to many cafes and sandwich shop options.

Timings

On both days this training commences at 9:30am and finishes around 4:30pm. Arrival will be open from 9am onwards. There will be breaks during all morning and afternoon sessions, and a lunch break each day of around 60 minutes.

Technology

Attendees are requested to bring a laptop to use as a workspace for the session. The event is not technical in nature but this will enable you to access the course materials and exercise files referred to during the sessions. You will not require any specialist software beyond Excel/Sheets, a pdf reader, and a browser. Across a day you should expect to need around 3 hours of charge. Power access will be provided for charging devices.

The online whiteboard platform, Miro, will be used extensively during the course to collate and share exercise activities. More details will be provided in the class. Other than using a browser and a pdf reader, no additional tools will be necessary to have access to or skills with for this non-technical course.

Training materials will be issued digitally, including the teaching slides, exercise files and further useful resources, and delegates will receive instructions and information about this prior to the course resources. OneDrive, as a first preference, or WeTransfer, as an alternative, will be the typical methods used for material sharing.

Registration

Registration can be made online using the built-in Eventbrite payment processing system. Click on ‘Get Tickets’, choose the relevant ticket option, and then follow the instructions to complete the delegate registration and payment details.

If you would prefer to register offline and arrange payment via an invoice process for electronic transfer just email andy@visualisingdata.com to reserve your place and progress your registration.

Pricing: Fees, VAT charges, and Discounts!

The standard registration pricing for this course is £700+VAT per person. The total cost will depend on any additional processing fees, your VAT exemption status, and the application of potential discounts.

VAT charges are relevant to the following types of buyer:

All attendees registering from the UK will pay an additional 20% VAT charge.
Any attendee registering from an EU organisation which is not VAT registered in their local region will face the additional 20% VAT charge.

VAT charges are exempt for the following types of buyer:

Any attendee registering from an EU organisations which are VAT registered are exempt from these charges. You should select ‘VAT exempt’ ticket types and enter your organisation’s VAT details in the order form to formalise this exemption.
All attendees registering who are based in any other world region outside of the UK and the EU (eg. US, India, Australia) are exempt from VAT charges and should select the ‘VAT exempt’ ticket types accordingly.

There are FOUR ways of joining this course at a reduced price…

(1) Subscribers to Andy Kirk’s Visualising Data Newsletter will find a promo code for a 10% discount mentioned in each monthly issue.

(2) Do you own a copy of the ‘Data Visualisation: A Handbook for Data Driven Design‘ book (any edition)? If you do there is a 10% discount available when using the promo code which is the full name of the final chart type in the gallery of methods presented in the book’s sixth chapter. The same final ‘chart’ is listed is all editions of the book. Removing the space, the code should be 7 characters in length.

To apply this discount, when you get to the training registration checkout, in the ‘Promo code’ box enter the code (not case sensitive) and this will reduce the price by 10%.

(3) Eventbrite charges a non-refundable processing fee of ~8% which applies to all registration types. To avoid incurring these additional charges you may instead choose to register offline and arrange payment via an invoice process for electronic transfer. If you/your organisation prefer this method please just email andy@visualisingdata.com to reserve your place and progress your registration.

(4) For some people interested in attending such training, finances can be a barrier. Whether it is due to the relative cost of living in your region or specific personal circumstances, it is entirely appreciated that financial obstacles will exist for some. As a commitment to widening access to these training courses, at least 2 places will be made available on this course, no questions asked, at a discounted ‘pay what you can afford’ basis.

If you would benefit from and feel you would qualify to take one of these available places please email andy@visualisingdata.com to make the necessary arrangements for your registration (ie. this may entail being issued with a discount code to apply to a standard registration procedure).

Cancellations and changes policy

Full refunds (less the non-refundable Eventbrite processing fees ~8%) are offered for any delegate cancellations made up to 7 days before the course start date. Please email andy@visualisingdata.com if this situation arises.

Cancellations made during the 7 days prior to the course starting will be offered a 50% refund (less processing fees), as it becomes much harder to fill a space vacated with such short notice.

Registrations can be switched to a different attendee. Please email andy@visualisingdata.com if this situation arises.

In the rare event the course itself has to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances all attendees will be offered a choice of a full refund (excluding processing fees) OR the opportunity to attend an alternative training course in the future. Refunds will be limited to registration costs alone, Visualising Data Ltd is not liable for any other costs incurred.

The post New Course: ‘Masterclass in Data Visualisation’ (London, Feb 2027) appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.

The August 2026 newsletter is now open to all

Andy Kirk — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 14:19:41 +0000

My August newsletter, issue number 26, that was sent out to subscribers a couple of weeks ago, is now open for all to read.

You can also access this issue, as well as visit the full catalogue of previous issues, via the Newsletter page.

If you’re not already a subscriber, its time to change that! To receive this free monthly newsletter straight into your inbox you can sign up here or visit the Newsletter page to get a bit more background information and instructions.

Thank you as always to everyone who subscribes, reads, shares, visits and responds to this newsletter. But above all thank you to all the people doing ace work that I’m able to curate and share through these issues.

The post The August 2026 newsletter is now open to all appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.

The July 2026 newsletter is now open to all

Andy Kirk — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:16:20 +0000

My July newsletter, issue number 25, that was sent out to subscribers a couple of weeks ago, is now open for all to read.

You can also access this issue, as well as visit the full catalogue of previous issues, via the Newsletter page.

The post The July 2026 newsletter is now open to all appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.

My summer side quest

Andy Kirk — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 12:08:32 +0000

Earlier this summer I embarked on an outside-of-work project to bring a bit of colour to a blank garden wall. Other than brightening up a part of the garden that spends most of the day in shade, it was also a nice opportunity for some analogue creativity and to briefly, if not entirely, get away from tech.

Here’s the wall in question in its original state.

Since we moved into our new house in December I’d been thinking about what to do with this wall.

It was such a tempting blank canvas, rich in potential to have something creative done to it. I knew it was unlikely to be a place where we grew stuff up it (there’s an opposite white wall in full sun where that can happen) but I knew just whitewashing it wouldn’t be enough.

That said, whitewashing was the first stage, along with some filling and removing of some wall fixtures. Here’s the before-and-after shot…

…but I know you probably want the timelapse of the whitewashing. Of course you do, its always very satisfying. This was done on Bank Holiday Monday, May 4th.

The canvas was prepared, but what to do with it?

In my previous apartment in Dublin city centre I lived near an amazing stretch of street art on South Dock Road, along the River Dodder. I’ve always fancied having a go at spray painting and seeing the artists down there doing what they do was simultaneously inspiring but also cautioning. As much as I’d like to give it a go, without the talent and experience I knew it would be the wrong thing to try for this project. Another time maybe.

Beyond the choice of material, in terms of the creative ‘subject’ I also knew that to attempt something figurative would be high-risk: unless it was perfectly executed it would look rubbish and would be misaligned stylistically with the garden setting. Sure, I could always CTRL-Z by whitewashing but I didn’t want to waste my time.

Although I flirted with the idea, I quickly rejected any pursuit of a data-driven creation. I wanted to be a bit freer than that would afford and I also sought some clear water with the day job.

I settled on pursuing something that would be abstract and geometric in nature. I let my brain relax into waiting for something compelling to come to mind and one night I had a vision of a rectangular grid of squares overlaid with concentric rings. I don’t know why, it just popped up in my mind. I wrote down my idea on my phone’s Notes app then drew it out in Illustrator in the morning. I immediately had that inner feeling that here was something I could work with.

The dimensions of the wall space were approx 6 metres in length and 2 metres in height, which was a neat aspect to work within. I adjusted the initial outline sketch to match those dimensions making the overall pattern more rectangular. I also adjusted the layout to find the right harmony for the numbers of rings, the most elegant positioning of each circle’s origin, and the ideal grid-cell dimensions.

But what would I do with this outline pattern? How would I fill it? With what colours would I paint it?

I initially considered a blend of filling isolated cells and then combining others into continuous shapes. I wanted to use a range of colours but I needed some theme to work towards and maybe some rules to work within.

To help experiment with different options I exported from Illustrator an SVG of my final pattern and then used Claude AI to build a little tool to isolate all the pattern’s individual cell regions and fill them with different colours, drawing from a set of predefined palettes as well as the flexibility to customise my own.

Pattern Flood Fill Colourer

Pattern Colourer

Your colours

Pre-loaded palettes

Stroke width

White stroke

Labels

Minimise adjacent clashes

I was getting closer to finding the answer. I extended the tool to allow modifications to the pattern’s stroke colour and width and, above all, introduced an optimised layout rule whereby no cell would be filled in the same colour as a directly adjacent cell. This would help me determine the required number of distinct colours. I added a feature to save generated custom palettes and to export the resulting patterns as png/svg images. With that I also included the option to add a numeric colour label so that I would be able to follow a ‘paint by numbers’ approach when executing it on the wall.

Although I had liked the burst of bright rich colours offered by some of the palettes, the choice of these colours was arbitrary. I wanted something a bit more meaningful, or at least a bit more deliberate.

As I was thinking more about the pattern, I started seeing it as being an abstract depiction of ripples in water. Maybe the movement of water when you are in a swimming pool looking down at its tiled floor. This ‘water’ theme was also relevant given about 600m (as the crow flies) beyond the wall I was painting on are the waters of Dublin bay.

I liked this idea, focusing on different variations of one primary hue (blue) with a single accent colour (gold). I was still unsure whether to actively paint the outline strokes of each region but I was clear that, though the tool was generating patterns based on a full rectangle, I was going to ignore the corners and have rounded edges.

Having worked out the design wireframe and paint-filling approach, I had to choose my paint material. I did some research into the most robust exterior paint types (the wall is exposed to Ireland’s climate, after all) as well as considered which range would offer me the widest variety of colour options AND be available in the right volume quantities. I didn’t want to invest in huge 2L/5L tubs of different paint colours if I was only going to need to use small amounts of each.

The best option came with B&Q’s ‘Valspar’ paints, specifically their exterior masonry range. Not only could I pick from a huge range of colours I could also get 236ml tester pots of my chosen colours for €7. Having established I would need six different colour paints, I calculated how much surface area each colour was expected to cover. I ordered two tester pots for each (the ‘gold’ colour was sourced from another paint specialist), giving me just enough to do one coat with a bit of spare paint leftover for future touch-ups.

It was time to start. With my pattern guide printed I plotted out the design’s real-world dimensions and got to work on drawing it up on to the wall.

With the wall’s surface being far more lumpy-and-bumpy than I’d realised I decided to use a dry-wipe marker pen to draw out the pattern (this was a mistake as it turns out dry-wipe pen plus rain equals goodbye drawing. Who knew?). With a metre rule, set square, and spirit level I created the outline grid.

To form the circles I used a simple method of string attached to the circle origin at one end and to the pen at the other and drew out the arcs, extending the string length by a grid’s-width each time.

I then marked out all the cells that would be taking the first of my blue colours, using my paint-by-numbers guide to put little blobs of colour in each relevant region.

The most challenging aspect of doing the painting was coping with the wall’s uneven nature. Not only was the wall not uniformly flat or straight throughout, the surface would be best described as being akin to painting on a giant poppadom. Because of this it took far longer and far more effort to complete each cell as accurately as I could manage without losing my marbles. This was made harder by the deteriorating outlines of the pattern during what was becoming quite a wet month of May.

Despite that, progress continued…

By the end of May I had managed to get through filling in all the regions for all four of the blues.

Next up, the hugely satisfying addition of the gold paint. The final colour to add.

Until finally, belatedly after a few weeks break due to bad weather and holidays, by mid-June I applied the final touches using a gold-ink pen for the tiny little regions that were too fiddly for the paint brush.

And there we have it. Took a few weeks in the end because it was only possible to make occasional progress. I reckon if I’d been working on it continuously and without weather interruptions it would have taken a full working week. I’m not sure I would have had the patience though to do it so relentlessly like that.

The post My summer side quest appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.

Data in the wild #18: The Hidden Data Behind Football

Obinna Iwuji — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 15:41:46 +0000

The World Cup is over!! And wow…

I know people have had mixed feelings about the tournament, but one thing no one can deny is that it has been full of memorable moments. From Cabo Verde coming out of nowhere and stealing everyone’s hearts, to England and France battling it out for bronze, and of course, the final itself. It’s been one incredible tournament.

But while the players have been putting their hearts on the line, another battle has been taking place in the background: the battle between football fans and technology.

I don’t know how many people I’ve heard say that the thing they dislike most about the modern game is VAR and all the technology now involved in football. I mean, in one match, there were even arguments about whether the ball had hit a drone before coming back down! Whether you love it or hate it, technology is now deeply woven into the game.

And where there are drones, AI and controversy… There must be data.

Data In The Wild

Welcome back to another edition of Data in the Wild, the series where we investigate how data is formed, collected and used to influence the world around us. Today, we’re going to explore three ways data and technology are shaping modern football: the ball, the game and the culture.

Let’s do it.

Data & Technology in Football Isn’t New

This may seem obvious to some, but it doesn’t hurt to be reminded. As much as it feels like technology in football is a recent phenomenon, it’s actually been evolving for decades.

For most of football’s history, the game relied almost entirely on human judgment. Referees made decisions based on what they saw, coaches relied on memory and handwritten notes, and fans debated controversial moments for years because there simply wasn’t a way to know for certain what had happened.

Technology slowly began changing that.

During the 1980s, video analysis gave coaches the ability to replay matches repeatedly, transforming how teams prepared, learned and developed tactics. Then, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, sports science became increasingly important. Heart rate monitors, GPS trackers and performance data helped clubs understand how hard players were working, reduce injuries and tailor training to individual athletes.

But the biggest shift came during the last decade.

Rather than simply helping players perform better, technology began helping officials make decisions. Goal-line technology, introduced at the highest level in 2012, could instantly determine whether the whole ball had crossed the line. A few years later came Video Assistant Referees (VAR), giving officials access to multiple camera angles to review game-changing incidents.

As much as people claim technology is taking the thrill out of football, I have to admit that if a “Hand of God” moment happened in today’s game and nobody could prove what really happened, the corruption allegations would probably be on another level.

So, let’s get into the tech.

The Ball: The Smartest Thing on the Pitch

Let’s start with something I genuinely didn’t know until a few weeks ago.

Believe it or not, one of the smartest things on the pitch isn’t actually one of the twenty-two players or even the coaches standing on the sidelines.

It’s the football.

Inside the official match ball is something called an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), and it’s actually something you’ve encountered before.

In fact, if you’re reading this on your phone, you’re probably holding one right now.

Think about what your phone can do. It knows when you rotate it, which is why the screen flips between portrait and landscape. It knows when you’ve dropped it (hopefully not too many times), and it can even count your steps while you’re walking around.

The football works using a very similar idea.

Instead of measuring your movement, however, it spends the entire match measuring its own.

Inside the ball are tiny motion sensors that monitor changes in movement around 500 times every second. Every kick, every header, every deflection and every tiny touch changes the way the ball moves. Those changes are detected almost instantly, allowing the system to identify the exact moment the ball has been played.

At first, I didn’t think that sounded particularly impressive.

I mean… surely we can already see when someone kicks a football?

Well… yes and no.

Imagine trying to work out the exact moment someone kicks the ball using only television footage. Most broadcast cameras record around 50 images every second, which sounds like a lot until you compare it to the sensor inside the football. While the camera captures around 50 snapshots during a second of play, the ball is quietly collecting around 500 measurements over that same period.

That means the sensor can provide a much more precise timestamp for when the ball was actually touched. We’re talking about differences measured in milliseconds, but in football, a few milliseconds can be the difference between a player being onside or offside.

Of course, the football can only tell us when it was touched.

It can’t tell us who touched it.

For that, the stadium needs another pair of eyes entirely.

The Game: The Stadium Has Eyes

So, if the football can tell us when it was touched, how does the system know who touched it?

That’s where the stadium comes in.

Hidden high above the pitch is a network of dedicated tracking cameras whose only job is to watch the game. They’re not there to create the television broadcast or capture dramatic slow-motion replays. They’re there to measure movement.

Imagine watching a football match through sixteen pairs of eyes that never blink, never get distracted and can remember exactly where every player has been for the last ninety minutes.

That’s essentially what these cameras do.

They continuously track the players and the ball, collecting positional information around fifty times every second. Rather than simply recognising that “there’s a footballer over there”, the system tracks different parts of each player’s body using computer vision, creating a constantly updating digital representation of the match.

And this is what powers semi-automated offside.

If you’ve ever watched a VAR offside check, you’ve probably seen those 3D animations with players frozen in place and coloured lines appearing across the pitch. For the longest time, I assumed the computer was simply drawing lines on top of the television footage.

It turns out it’s much cleverer than that.

To decide whether a player is offside, the system needs to answer two questions:

Where was everybody?

And…

Exactly when was the ball played?

The cameras answer the first question by tracking the positions of the players.

The sensor inside the ball answers the second by detecting the exact moment the pass was made.

Artificial intelligence then combines those two streams of information, creating an automated offside alert for the video officials. They review the recommendation before passing the final decision back to the referee on the pitch.

That’s why FIFA calls it semi-automated offside rather than fully automated. The technology speeds up the process, but a human is still responsible for making the final decision.

Whether you love VAR or absolutely cannot stand it, I have to admit… that’s a pretty incredible piece of engineering.

The Culture: Commentary and Stats Merchants

Of course, what we’ve talked about today is only a small part of the story.

Once I understood how the technology worked, I suddenly looked at football statistics very differently. It made me realise that all the numbers commentators casually throw around during a match aren’t just random facts they’re built on carefully collected measurements, sound methodologies and statistical analysis.

The statistics we see on television are really just the final product.

Passing maps are built from tracking where the ball has travelled around the pitch. Shot maps reveal where players tend to shoot from and which areas are most dangerous. Heat maps show where players spend most of their time during a match. Possession statistics, sprint speeds and distance covered all begin with thousands of tiny measurements collected throughout the game.

Behind the scenes, clubs take this even further. Coaches, analysts and sports scientists use performance data to monitor player workload, fatigue, recovery and overall well-being, helping players stay fit and perform at their best throughout a long season.

Perhaps what fascinated me most, though, wasn’t the technology itself.

It was how quickly football culture has embraced data.

During the World Cup final, my WhatsApp chats were full of screenshots of passing networks, expected goals charts, shot maps and player comparisons. It honestly threw me off.

People often say data is difficult to understand, but I think context makes all the difference. Put a chart in a report and some people switch off. Put that same chart next to a football match and suddenly millions of people are analysing it, debating it and sharing it with their friends.

Maybe data isn’t as inaccessible as we sometimes think.

Maybe people just need a story they already care about.

Looking at Football Differently

Similar to many other industries and sectors, we need to be honest: technology, AI and all of the innovations we’ve talked about today aren’t going to decrease. They’re only going to become even more integrated into our lives and, undoubtedly, into football.

Learning about the current uses of these technologies alone has blown my mind, so I can’t wait to see what new innovations emerge over the next few years.

One of my favourite things about writing this series is that it completely changes how I look at everyday things.

I can’t turn on my phone’s GPS without thinking about satellites.

I can’t walk through London without wondering how much location data is quietly being created around me.

And now…

I don’t think I’ll ever watch football in quite the same way again.

The next time I hear a commentator mention a player’s sprint speed or see an offside graphic appear on my screen, I’ll know there’s an invisible network of cameras, sensors and algorithms working behind the scenes to make that information possible.

So, if you’re interested in learning more about how technology is being used to shape the way we experience the world around us, I look forward to seeing you next time as we uncover more data…

…in the wild.

Data In The Wild

Data in the wild #18: The Hidden Data Behind Football

Football is no longer just a game played on the pitch; it’s also a game of data. From sensors hidden inside the ball to AI-powered offside decisions and the statistics we see every match day, discover the invisible technology transforming how football is played, analysed and experienced around the world.

July 20, 2026

Data In The Wild

Data in the wild #17: Smart motorways

Smart motorways are quietly shaping how we drive. That sudden drop from 70 to 50? It’s not random. Sensors and systems are predicting traffic before it happens, slowing everyone down to prevent jams. It’s data controlling the road in real time… the question is, do we actually trust it?

April 9, 2026

Data In The Wild

Data in the wild #16: Can You Share Your Location

In this edition of Data in the Wild, I explore what it really means to “share your location.” From GPS and Wi-Fi to ship tracking and TfL demand modelling, this piece unpacks how geolocation works, where it shows up in everyday life, and what we can build when movement becomes data.

February 24, 2026

The post Data in the wild #18: The Hidden Data Behind Football appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.

Explore Explain S6E9 – The Final Episode!

Andy Kirk — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:53:18 +0000

Welcome to episode 9 of season 6 of Explore Explain, a long-form video and podcast series all about data visualisation design. Or, at least, it was…

This isn’t just the final episode of the season, it is the final episode of the show! I will post more about my reasons for this in due course, but let me thank right here every guest, listener and/or viewer for engaging with the 54 episodes we’ve pulled together, featuring 80 guests across six seasons and over the past six years.

And so, for this grand finale, I indulge in a bit of self-promotion by spending time exploring and explaining the creative process behind my new project: ‘The Seinfeld Chronicle: Digital Edition’, a rebooted and reimagined version of this long-term analytical investigation I’ve been doing about the popular US sitcom. To serve as a quick intro, you can read a bit more about the project by visiting the launch post.

The conversation was recorded as a live webinar episode featuring myself, as host and as a guest, alongside my multi-talented collaborators including data visualization designer and developer, Anne-Marie Dufour, as well as sonification superstars Miriam Quick and Duncan Geere (Loud Numbers). (Sadly, due to laryngitis, you won’t be able to hear Miriam, but you’ll certainly hear about her contributions to this project!).

As well as listening to this show, you can watch the video of this conversation. Head over to Youtube and visit the Explore Explain channel.

Video Conversation

You can watch this episode using the embedded player below or over on the dedicated Explore Explain Youtube channel, where you’ll find all the other video-based episodes and curated playlists.

Audio Conversation

To listen directly, visit this link or use the embedded podcast player below. The audio podcast is published across all common platforms (such as Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music etc.), so you will find this series listed in their respective directories by searching for ‘Explore Explain’ or by manually entering – or copying/pasting – this url to your subscriptions – https://feed.pod.co/exploreexplain.

The post Explore Explain S6E9 – The Final Episode! appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.

New Project: ‘The Seinfeld Chronicles: Digital Edition’

Andy Kirk — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 08:17:30 +0000

I’m delighted to finally launch my latest and largest project to date. ‘The Seinfeld Chronicles: Digital Edition‘ is a rebooted digital version of my long-term visual investigation of the patterns of laughter, the interactions of characters, and the use of locations across every episode of ‘Seinfeld’.

This passion project/side quest originated in late 2016 with a curiosity about the possibilities of analysing the qualitative and subjective nature of situation comedy. Roll forward four years, in 2020 I produced a limited-edition self-printed book compiling all my analysis, with 176 copies (matching the number of written episodes of the show) made available on a pay-what-you-can-afford basis. These copies were snapped up within 2 weeks, far quicker than I could have ever imagined, and with such generosity: After covering the shipping costs, the net proceeds were donated to two charities, with Samaritans and Rainforest Trust each receiving £2500+.

With the work winning a coveted Malofiej-silver-medal, and with no desire to compromise the exclusivity of the product people had paid to obtain through a further print run, the project felt like it was done…

…except, I always had a nagging sense that it hadn’t quite fulfilled its ‘format’ potential having not been developed as a digital product for the web and therefore making it more widely accessible to different audiences.

That’s where my approaching of the mega-talented data visualization designer and developer, Anne-Marie Dufour -and subsequent calling on the help of sonification superstars, Miriam Quick and Duncan Geere (from Loud Numbers) – has now led to a fresh, more ambitious digital reboot for this highly unnecessary data exploration.

Visit 'The Seinfeld Chronicles: Digital Edition'

The work is the consequence of a long term fascination with the creative process behind sitcoms and specifically Seinfeld. It was the ‘musicality’ of the show that I found particularly intriguing, orchestrated by the comedic talents of co-creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David.

Like music, situation comedy has rhythm and it has texture: rhythm is shaped by a show’s timing, its scene-structures, and its pacing; textures are created by the ‘instruments’ of characters and their locations, which amalgamate to create the situations from which the comedy manifests.

In this digital version we fully explore every possible avenue and level of visual analysis, from the macro trends of character, location and laughter patterns, right down to specific moments in each episode.

PROLOGUE
The project opens with my personal history with the show and the timeline of it being broadcast in different places on TV. We introduce the show, explaining its unique qualities, and also visually establishing the symbolic mapping system of characters and locations. We then move on to explain the motivating curiosity for this work – as well its print-version predecessor.

THE SHOW
After the title page we introduce the shape, size and dimensions of the show with a timeline plotting ‘the when’ of the 180 broadcast episodes across 9 seasons. This sets the context for the scale of the data gathering that took place, the methodology behind which – especially in relation to the subjectivity of laughter – is then explained and illustrated with a worked-up scene.

EPISODE CATALOGUE
Having unveiled the components of the episode compositions, the centre-piece of the work, visitors can at this point explore a browsable gallery of all episode compositions with each offering a sonified representation of every scene, using instruments and sounds synonymous with the show to form unique jazz vignettes.

LEAD CHARACTERS
Focusing on the four main characters, we visually explore their patterns of screen time and laughter-causing across all episodes and seasons, with summary trends and observations of their potential peak performances.

SUPPORTING CHARACTERS
Switching to all the other non-lead character groups, we again visually explore their patterns of screen time and laughter-causing across all episodes and seasons, with summary trends in the context of the leads.

LOCATIONS
After characters, its the locations we examine to see their trends and patterns of usage as the setting of scenes through all the episodes.

COMBINATIONS AND FINDINGS
Bringing it all together, here you’ll find an interactive tool to find out how often and when were different combinations of lead characters, supporting characters, and locations used across every episode. Supplementing this are some final written summary reflections offering general insights or notable factoids.

CREDITS & METHODOLOGY
Wrapping up the work is an appendix with remaining expanded details about aspects of the data gathering methodology, including established counting rules, assumptions made, and acknowledgements of accuracy. There are also final details of the sources of any video, audio, or image files used.

Live webinar: The final ever 'Explore Explain' episode

Want to know more about the behind-the-scenes development and creative process?

To coincide with the launch of this project, on Monday 29th June at 1pm UTC, I will host the final ever episode of my ‘Explore Explain‘ video and podcast series.

This will take the form of a live webinar, open to anyone to register to attend, and will be a detailed conversation between me and the team behind the work as we talk through and show our creative journey behind this long-term development.

Due to attendee limits I’ve set up a simple pre-registration using the following Eventbrite page where you can sign up for free. Once you do register you will be sent a confirmation by Eventbrite including a link to view tickets. 30 minutes before the event starts the webinar link will be revealed to enable you to join the session which will open at 1pm (UTC) and commence around 5 mins later. The conversation will last around 1 hour, with scope for audience Q&A.

I hope some of you can join us for this live session and participate in this final episode!

The post New Project: ‘The Seinfeld Chronicles: Digital Edition’ appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.

The May 2026 newsletter is now open to all

Andy Kirk — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:32:44 +0000

My May newsletter, issue number 24 that was sent out to subscribers a couple of weeks ago, is now open for all to read.

You can also access this issue, as well as visit the full catalogue of previous issues, via the Newsletter page.

The post The May 2026 newsletter is now open to all appeared first on Data Viz Excellence, Everywhere.