Portfolio

Portfolio


Whether you’re looking for crystal clear communication of data insights, an artistic response to the data, or something between the two, I enjoy putting together stand-out visuals which will keep the conversation going. From academic graphs to artistic commemorations, via interactive visualisations, generative art and animations with a sense of humour, my portfolio features a range of different styles, all coded straight from the data.

Click and scroll for full screen view. I have also included here some packages and Shiny Apps I have built. Happy browsing!

Stand-out visualisations

Conversation-starting visuals with memorable stories, created straight from the data.

Slope plot showing the rise of internet access in different European countries between 1990 and 2014 The race to the top: A data visualisation which looks like a cake with icing dripping from each tier, exploring how the contestants performed through each episode of a series. The race to the top: A data visualisation which looks like a cake with icing dripping from each tier, exploring how the contestants performed through each episode of a series. The shadow of the ascent: A visualisation made to look like a mountain range with a starry backdrop, in which the peaks of the mountains represent the number of climbers in each decade, and the stars represent those who lost their life on an expedition in each year. The stars and mountains are coloured pink and orange, representing hiered workers and other climbers. Auld Reekie: A data visualisation of the weather in Edinburgh, where it tends to be dry in April, and rainy just in time for the Fringe. The visualisation is a polar bar chart, with each bar representing a month. The lengths of the bars are made easy to compare by drawing two additional circles which correspond to the amount of rain in the driest month and the wettest month.

Perfectly proportional penguins: Visualising how a Decision Tree algorithm can guess the species of penguins based on bill length and flipper length Record: A dataviz celebrating the songs written by John Featherstone in which handwritten song titles go round in a circle to look like a well used CD or vinyl Driving in to the future: charting the gradual uptake of electric vehicles over time. The graph is made to look like a road, steering up the page as more electric vehicles are sold, on an electric-green background. Lesser spotted birds: Visualising bird species spotted one to five times in the FeederWatch dataset. The visualisation creates the effect of a bar graph by stacking the names of the species in columns (spotted once, spotted twice, etc). An image of a lesser spotted woodpecker is included to emphasise the pun. The subtitle reads: TIL that's not what lesser spotted means!

Data-to-viz solutions

No more copy-pasting! Static or interactive, keep the graph code the same and just change the data.

Four figures which are all variants on each other, containing a lot of information, which were all produced with just one line of code using a bespoke data-to-viz plotting function written in R. Data-to-viz solution created in collaboration with [R for the Rest of Us](https://rfortherestofus.com/) for OHDC; these three figures, with dynamic axis labels and bar chart annotations, were all produced with just one line of code using a bespoke data-to-viz plotting function written in R.

Animated and interactive visualisations

A viz that keeps on giving

This animated data visualisation highlights places in the United States of America which are named after words in the constitution. It deliberately evolves slowly, gradually allowing the reader to understand what the different dots which appear represent, and giving pause for reflection as each key word is reached. Its title reflects the fact that while the other key words in the constitution are all echoed in place names, Posterity is nowhere to be found. This piece is a call to healing, peace and unity around core values. Feral pigs, cats, goats and UFOs of Brisbane: An animated map of where animals were spotted in Brisbane styled like the old X-Files 'I want to believe' poster.There are four species of animals, each represented by emojis which dance around the screen: pigs, cats, goats and aliens (the 'unidentified' animals in the dataset) Flora, Fauna and everything else: An animated graph showing where syllables related to fauna and flora occur in a popular French nursery rhyme; the dots representing the syllables are rearranged in the animation to form bars representing how many syllables relate to fauna and flora across the entire song. Interactive stacked bar graph with dymanically populated mouse-over and aesthetics from the Teal Insights dataviz design system.

Dataviz design systems

Creating visual unity across your visualisations. What is a dataviz design system?

GIF showing the transformation from basic ggplot plots to plots styled with consistent on-brand colours and fonts with the addition of two lines of code. The colours and fonts reflect the 'feminine but not sickly sweet' vibe the researchers were after. IVAC dataviz design system. The colours and fonts reflect the colours and fonts in the IVAC logo and brand guidelines.

Teal Insights dataviz design system. The colours take inspiration from Van Gogh's paintings and tie in with the teal colour from the company logo.

Apps and packages

Things I made because I thought I would find them useful, which it turns out others did too!

Generative art

Turning text into squiggles for therapeutic release and enjoyment