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DATA BY DESIGN

An Interactive History
of Data Visualization
1786-1900

CHAPTERS

IN PROGRESS
Every Datapoint a Person
Diagram of a Slave Ship
Before there are data, there are people. People who offer up their lives as data — or whose lives become data without consent.
What Visualization Reveals
William Playfair's Time-Series Charts
Data visualization has never been neutral or objective. There is a meaning — and an argument — conveyed through each design.
COMING SOON
Narratives of Possession
Shanawdithit's Narrative Maps
Maps can create nations and contest them.
How have maps been used to document multiple pasts?
The Work of Knowledge
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's Chronological Grids
We have come to believe that data visualizations should be clear and efficient. Is there value in designs that make us pause and reflect?
Between Data and Truth
W. E. B. Du Bois's “Data Portraits”
How can data visualization bear witness to oppression? How can it hold space for what cannot be conveyed through data alone?
COMING SOON
The Process is the Product
The Making of Data by Design
Any digital project is the work of many hands. How can this labor be visualized? What labor remains out of sight?