Design on Visual Cinnamon

Visualizing the Top Contributor Network of Any GitHub Repo

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this blog I want to show you the design process that went into creating the “Top Contributor Network” visual. Showing the ecosystem and synergy of the other repositories the top contributors of any GitHub repository have worked on.

How it started from a simple network, and became it’s own thing. How it involved endless tweaking, and how it then all broke, before growing into its final form.

You can find the interactive visual here (ps: it’s not really meant for mobile screens) and you can find all of the code and documentation for the visual here.

Data art posters about music (streaming) data for Sony Music

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In April, Sony Music Entertainment reached out to me with a really interesting project idea. When a single or album sells more than a certain amount of units they become a gold or platinum record. The artist generally receives a framed vinyl or CD. But in these days of data being tracked everywhere and listening to music online, could I develop a more data art inspired version of a gold record using data from the actual streams, charts and the song itself. Well, that sounded like an amazingly fun project to sink my teeth into so I enthusiastically agreed!

A sky map of the Hubble Space Telescope's observations

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 10:00:00 +0000

In celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope’s 30-year anniversary in April 2020 I created an extensive visualization, more of fully-fledged poster really, for Physics Today. Let me show you how the static visuals that I made still became one of the biggest projects I’ve ever worked on in terms of hours invested. I could’ve called this blog post “the impact of small design choices” because the main issue wasn’t necessarily what type of chart form to use. It was really how to display the datapoints (Hubble’s observations) in the chosen chart form (a map of the sky) to reveal both details and the bigger picture.

Visualizing the different astronomy targets that Hubble has observed

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 09:00:00 +0000

Besides a visualization that plotted Hubble’s observation on a map in the sky, I created another dataviz for Physics Today to celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope’s 30 year anniversary in April 2020. Revealing the types of astronomy targets that Hubble has been looking at. In this design blog I’ll take you through the design process that led to the final visual.

The Design Process of “Why Do Cats & Dogs ...?”

Thu, 11 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

On April 11th 2019, the US National Pet day I released a dataviz driven exploration in collaboration with Google Trends. It went into the questions that people ask on Google to understand their cats and dogs better. In this blog I’ll be taking you through the long and windy design and creation process of the months before the release.

Creating the Scientific American “Baby Spike” visual

Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

On the Graphic Science page of the July edition of Scientific American you could find three large circular charts about when babies are born. In this blog, let me take you along on the data & designs process that me, Zan Armstrong & Jen Christiansen went through to create this piece.

A different look for the d3.js radar chart

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A bit more than 2 years ago I wrote a small blog about making the d3.js radar chart look a little better. I know that opinions are diverse about the usefulness of these types of charts. But I can’t deny that I personally have a love for circular charts. I even keep a Pinterest board specifically for circular data visualizations.

Since that chart in the blog from over 2 years ago I haven’t created another radar chart, until a small project came by right before the start of the summer. And apparently, it was about time for another redesign.