Ilia Blinderman, from the excellent visual journalism publication The Pudding, shares some of what he has learned about how to create well designed, data-driven essays:
We have a curious tendency of assuming that people who can do certain things that we cannot are imbued with superior innate talents… This may be especially common for the sort of code-driven interactive data visualizations which we work on, since they rely on an odd grab-bag of skills —critical thought, design, writing, and programming — that people in many other professions may have neither a full awareness of, nor full expertise in.
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I’m hoping that my putting this guide together will help remove some of the unnecessary mystique surrounding data viz, and demonstrate that the only things that separate a beginner from a speaker on the conference circuit [are] time and practice.
I recently wrote about how I am currently wrapping up a big data visualization project with my students—I wish I had known about this resource earlier!