Just a reminder of my newsletter, available in English and Spanish. Let's continue the conversation there ..read more

I've just launched a newsletter in both English and Spanish. I'll keep posting on this blog, but if you want to get regular updates, follow me there. Here's the first installment: Maturity and Enthusiasm (An introduction to this newsletter about information design, visualization, data reasoning, and many other related topics.) In What is Philosophy?, Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze wrote that old age gives us “not an eternal youth, but a sovereign freedom, a pure necessity in which one enjoys a moment of grace between life and death, and in which all the pieces of the machine fit together t ..read more

Eldiario.es, an independent online newspaper based in Madrid, has just published a remarkable data-driven story about how inequality perpetuates itself (perhaps we should say that it's inflicted upon people) in Spain. Notice the combination of different types of charts —dot maps, scatter plots, stacked bar graphs,— the effective annotations and highlights that emphasize the main points of the narrative, the use of color, and the addition of individual stories to exemplify the patterns displayed in the visualizations. It's pretty good ..read more

I've recently appeared in a few podcasts to talk about The Art of Insight, Alli Torban's Dataviz Today, Zach Bowder's Data+Love, and Cole Nussbaumer's Storytelling With Data —hosted this time by Mike Cisneros. I very much enjoyed these conversations —I think that you'll notice that. In all of them I went way beyond the book itself. This is useful, as talking to people gives me new ideas of what to think about (and, eventually, write about) in the future ..read more

I've been so busy this year with The Art of Insight that I hadn't heard that Mona Chalabi had won a Pulitzer Prize for illustrated reporting. Well deserved. Here's a recent interview with her that I strongly recommend; this quote is key, I believe: “When I first started doing this, everyone was just like: what a load of bullshit. [...] Everyone else was building these really complicated data interactives and that was seen as the cutting edge and the fact that I was drawing it was seen as feminine. It was seen as innocuous.” In the Epilogue of The Art of Insight I included a similar ..read more

Some lines that I've just sent to a reporter: The Art of Insight is my most personal book to date, a tribute to the people who design infographics and data visualizations to make the world a more knowledgeable and beautiful place. After writing books about visualization from a more technical perspective (The Truthful Art) or to inform the general public about how we often misinterpret charts (How Charts Lie) I felt that I needed to do a book for myself that would rekindle my passion for the craft that I've dedicated my life to. Writing The Art of Insight has been therapeutic and healing. I wis ..read more

Nick Desbarats is a visualization educator and consultant who has a new book coming out on November 15, Practical Charts. This is the exact same official publication date for The Art of Insight (I wrote “official” because it's already available for purchase and delivery on Amazon.) Nick and I decided to interview each other. The conversation was a lot of fun, and Nick's book is fantastic, so I suggest you don't miss it ..read more

I've just received my advance copies of The Art of Insight and I'm happy to report that it looks quite nice thanks to the good folks at Wiley. (Publication date is November 15th; if you pre-ordered it, you might need to wait a bit longer to get it.) Never in my career I've missed so many deadlines. This book sees the light of day more than two years late thanks to the endless patience of my agent and editors. Touching and browsing through The Art of Insight feels like the end of a journey. While writing it I thought that this would be my last word about visualization and infograph ..read more

Quick news: The Art of Insight will be released on November 15, but you can preorder it now, and you can also get a nice preview of dozens of pages through Google Books. I'll be ramping up promotional efforts soon; among them, I'm working on a redesign of my website, albertocairo.com. More updates coming soon ..read more

I've just written the last line of The Art of Insight. Now begins the long process of copy-editing and production that will finish on November 15, 2023, its publication date. The Art of Insight is two years late. Never in my life I've missed so many deadlines (this book exists thanks to the generosity and patience of the good folks at Wiley,) and never before I've faced a task that looked so insurmountable so often. But I'm reasonably happy with the results and, ultimately, that's all that matters. I hope you'll like it ..read more