Data can sometimes feel cold and impersonal, even when the information being shared is very personal. It can be hard to visualize it in such a way that it tells a compelling story. Below are five data designers that I follow on Instagram because their work is extremely engaging and tells a story.
1. Mona Chabali @monachalabi
Mona’s work has a very artistic feel while also communicating powerful data points such as the rising age of homeownership, how marginal taxes work, and the impact of children separated from their parents. Her work is consistently an engaging conversation starter. The visualization below was the first one by Mona I saw and made me immediately eager to see the rest of her work.
2. Michelle Rial @michellerial
Michelle is an author and illustrator who has a book called Am I Overthinking This? Her work often uses a combination of illustration and real objects to make clever and relatable observations or answer everyday questions such as “Why am I always late?”.
3. Matt Shirley @mattsurelee
Matt visualizes mostly personal, non-numeric data which is sometimes hand-drawn on a whiteboard and sometimes created digitally. He also has a few examples of collecting data himself and turning it into an informative visualization, like the map below. Being from South Dakota I can confirm the South Dakota/North Dakota rivalry.
4. Brendan Leonard @semi_rad
Brendan turns his personal experiences and observations into visualizations that speak to a lot of people and will probably make you chuckle. He also has a book available called Chart Imitates Life, if you enjoy observational humor in the format of charts I recommend you check it out.
