I spent 14 hours creating a custom data visualisation (a recreation of a template that took 15 minutes to customise). Why? We’ll get to that later.
But for now, it means you can get a behind-the-scenes peek of how your favourite data visuals get built.
I might not have created your favourite ever data story. Whether it’s the BBC’s “Find out about hospital waiting times in your area this winter”, or the areas of deprivation data story (FT paywall, but first to publish, BBC, later, but accessible to all), or my still all-time personal favourite, (okay my second favourite) The Pudding’s Women’s Pockets are Inferior 1My all-time favourite is Vox’s “Every time Ford and Kavanaugh dodged a question, in one chart” which elegantly captures in one visual how many times Brett Kavanaugh dodged the question in his controversial Senate testimony. However, it’s disappeared on Vox’s website (which is now paywalled), and web archive links don’t capture the interactive visual. Alas, the ephemeral nature of the web. I thought things were supposed to live forever on the internet?
But I do know what goes into making them. And I’ve been reverse-engineering a chart of mine built with an off-the-shelf tool (Flourish) and replicating it in D3.JS
I grabbed “snapshots”2Git commits, really. as through this journey. You can view its progress from raw and ugly to its first presentable form…and it isn’t even finished (it’s static instead of interactive).
(These work-in-progress charts were optimised for the web, not mobile. So if you’re viewing this on your phone, some of the charts might look compressed. My later charts are responsive, but that’s for another post).
So why bother spending 14 hours coding a custom data visualisation that I could build in 15 minutes with an off-the-shelf tool?
Forgetting the fact that you need to go slow to go fast, to get a fingertip feel, to be able to build your intuition – why is this of benefit if you want deliverables?
Because tools like Flourish, Tableau, or Power BI are rented land. What you gain in speed, you lose in control. If you want a chart that perfectly matches a brand’s font, snaps exactly the way you want on a mobile screen, or tells a story exactly how you envision it – that will move people the way you desire, not the way a template constrains you – you have to build it yourself.
And use those lessons in delivering what will do the job.
I’m doing a bigger write-up on what I learned from this project. About the relationship between art, struggle, and deliberate practice…all via data visualisation.
Sign up below to get first access when it’s out (you’ll also instantly get my three-part data-essay: London’s Affordability Crisis).
Understand Why Sometimes You Need to Go Slow to Go Fast.
This project taught me a lot about the relationship between struggle, mastery, and art. More relevant than ever in our age of AI slop. I’m doing a bigger data essay on it.
Sign up to get first access to it. You’ll also instantly get my three-part data essay on London’s Affordability Crisis.
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