We all love Edward Tufte (perhaps too much), but if you want a more consistent and articulate data visualization theory you must read the French cartographer Jacques Bertin.
And did you know that one of the best (and remarkably unknown) data visualization experts is Rolf Hichert, from Germany? Unfortunately he isn’t eager to share his ideas in English (and if you try to translate his site, Google completely messes up the site layout).
If you know French you can read Bernard Lebelle’s Impact Visuel about charts and dashboards (“tableaux de bord“) in Excel. Bernard is a regular commentator here and a while back he was kind enough to send me a copy of one of his books, Convaincre avec des graphiques efficaces. I definitively recommend it.
I am sure there are great non-English blogs and sites out there, and I’d like to know them. Can you help me? I’m interested specifically in data visualization for business, not the entire data visualization field. Please leave a link in the comments and if possible a short description including country and language. Please don’t submit echo chamber and Excel tips & tricks blogs. The plan is to create a directory of non-English data visualization blogs and sites.
Thanks. Gracias. Merci. Obrigado. Dank. Grazie. Arigato. Dankon.
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http://sparklines-excel.blogspot.com/
Written in english but born and raised in France…
http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/
In english but from Munich, Germany
Moritz Stefaner is based in Germany. I wish he would blog more often, but you might find some interesting posts in what he has already written.
http://well-formed-data.net/
Thanks for bringing up the need for a more international, online community in visualization. I’ve been reading through a lot of technical papers on software visualization and there truly seems to be some disconnect. It makes me wonder how people on different continents come to our great subject and learn the fundamentals.
Try these. (Thanks to my friend Sandra Crucianelli in Argentina)
http://www.visualcv.com/sandracrucianelli/
http://www.sololocal.info
http://www.catedradatos.com.ar/2009/11/02/553/
http://kikealonso.com/
http://www.thegraphiks.com/blog/
http://excellentias.com/
http://www.cssblog.es/15-originales-ejemplos-de-visualizacion-de-datos/
http://www.tecnomaps.com/
http://datos.fundacionctic.org/
Hichert – at least there is a 16MB(!) English brochure available
http://www.hichert.com/downloads/media/broschueren/brochure_2008_en.pdf
a english and chinese blog about R, Data Visualization from china
http://yihui.name/
http://yihui.name/cn/
infographics news would be one
http://infographicsnews.blogspot.com/
althoug it’s not really business-oriented.
I wish there were a forum where all people interested in business data visualization and visual analysis could exchange.
Thanks for all of these suggestions. I have recently started my own business focusing on helping nonprofits use data visualization to support their messages. I am always looking for more resources for inspiration and to share with my clients. When I find interesting pieces I like to share them on my blog as well. http://www.myvisualvoice.com/blog. I’m out of Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Jorge,
about Rolf Hichert….
Beside his brochure also exists a poster with the HI-SUCCESS-Rules totally in english and worth a look.
http://www.hichert.com/de/shop/poster/203
Jorge –
thanks for your compliments… As a matter of fact we will share our ideas in English: Soon the website will be in English, too.
As Uli (above) suggests you should have a look at my new poster – I have sent it directly to you via Amazon. It summarizes the “rules” I suggest to follow and I hope that you agree to most of the 119(!) rules…. Comments are welcome!
Rolf: I did receive it. Thanks, it’s a great poster. I’ll have to look at the details, though. Nice to know that your site will be available in English. Your work deserves to be better known and a wider audience, specially among our american friends.
a german site again… I’love the ideas:
http://blog.bissantz.com/