Last Thursday 6th February I had the pleasure of running a short but packed event in London, hosted by the lovely people of Canva at their HQ in Hoxton Square.
The event was titled “Happy Viz’ing” and was held to simultaneously provide an opportunity to formally launch the 3rd edition of my book, ‘Data Visualisation: A Handbook for Data Driven Design‘ (which was published at the end of 2024) and to celebrate the world of data visualisation, mixing all that together with a chance for a nice catch-up with around 40-50 people from the London data viz community.
During the event I gave two talks. The first one was titled ‘HOW I GOT HERE’ which chronicled my book writing journey from starting out as a freelancer in 2010 to the publication of this new edition almost 15 years later, offering remarks about how the opportunities came about and the books themselves came together.
Before the second talk I ran a sketching activity called ‘Visual Depictionary’, a creative drawing game that challenges players/teams to convey concepts, such as common word combos or movies, as clearly as possible using as few distinct visual markings as possible. The winning team was formed of talented Sketchers, Peter and Tiffany, and their companion Guessers, Luisa and Jibril.
The second talk I gave was titled ‘HOW WE GOT HERE’, where I took a look back over roughly the same ~2010 to 2025 period – which might be considered by some to be a contemporary golden era in data vis – and plotted the key works, developments, milestones and contributed to how the field has evolved (*from my perspective, at least*) into what it is and where its heading now.
I was so grateful to Mafe and Georgia at Flourish, for being such wonderful hosts and partners throughout the preparation of the book and the event, and to Obinna for being his usual graceful and motivating partner in delivering this thing. My only regret was not having more time to speak with the brilliant people who came along. We ran well over time and so I was especially grateful to these dedicated folks for sticking with us right to the end!
