For just over ten years, every month I used to publish round-ups of the best data visualisation content I had encountered in the previous month.

Where once the task of finding all this latest data visualisation material could primarily be sourced via a relatively concentrated list of website RSS feeds, to begin with, and then over later years using Twitter. Since 2022 the social media landscape has since become disrupted and this has somewhat fragmented the community. Discovering new work, new articles, and new practitioners has become that little bit harder.

I perhaps under-appreciated the perceived value of my monthly roundups for others, and also for myself, as it always gave me a feeling of having a good handle on what’s going on. That’s why I launched the newsletter.

Firstly, I felt motivated to resurrect the notion of sharing a monthly round-up chronicling the latest notable work in this field. It can be hard to stay current in data viz, with so much excellent work being published in so many different places. Through this newsletter I’ll share the results of my constant monitoring of the best new stuff from across the field. Secondly, through the mechanics of an emailed newsletter, I am looking to publish these round-ups directly to readers, rather than have readers foraging around different platforms to find them.

In each monthly issue I curate collections of excellent dataviz content and send it straight to your inbox. This includes links to some of the best, most interesting, most zeitgeist-y, or thought-provoking data visualisation-related content I’ve encountered during the previous month, including the following:

VISUALS – The freshest data visualisation (or related) design pieces and collections.

LEARNING – Relevant articles, interviews, or videos to help further your development in data viz.

NEWS – Latest developments or announcements affecting the data viz world.

SUNDRIES – Additional references to pieces covering broader data, tech, or design matters.

The newsletter will also include the occasional item of news or announcements from me and about my work, such as new training courses, new podcast episodes, latest or upcoming appearances. I’ll also maybe throw in some of the #LittleVis that I come across.

To minimise the weight of my task in producing each issue and your task, as reader, in browsing them, I’ve imposed an arbitrary limit of 50 items, which will help act as quality filter. To minimise the weight of the emails themselves, I’m not including imagery against all items listed, which will be mainly presented as text descriptions with links. I will image-preview 10 pieces: four featured items chosen under Designs, three under Learning, two under News, and one under Sundries.

Each link in the collection will be presented with the piece’s title, the platform or publisher, and then a description, often taken from the introduction text published by each author. The links are accessible via the ‘Go’ buttons. Note that some links will point towards sites behind paywalls for which some readers may not have direct access. Here are some key points:

New ≠ brand new – New content doesn’t always mean brand new content. I’ve been gathering resources and posting for nearly 15 years. Some things are of timeless value, but there’s often a sense that you can only share it when its brand new. With so many new people now interested in this subject I will also occasionally open the vault, dig out then dust off useful references from down the years.

Timing – The first issue was published in February 2024 covering new content I saw published in January 2024 as well as a few older things I might have come across that month too. Each monthly issue will be published on the Tuesday of the third full week each month. That will be enough time to gather and reflect on what’s worth sharing from the previous month and then time to curate and publish it. I won’t commit to a fixed date each month because that is a promise my work schedule won’t allow me to keep.

Newsletter provider – I’ve chosen to use ConvertKit for my newsletter platform, which manages subscriptions and the design of all forms and postings.

Data protection – In choosing to sign-up for a monthly newsletter subscription you are signing up for a monthly newsletter subscription. That’s all. Your email and name details will be used only for this purpose, only for this frequency of messaging, and nothing else, as outlined in my privacy policy.

Contributions – I always appreciated the desire behind people sharing their own work for possible inclusion in the ‘best ofs’ but I always wanted to treat those curating exercises as being purely shaped by the best, most interesting, most thought-provoking I encountered. That approach and intention will continue with this newsletter.

I hope you will find it to be a useful monthly resource and I thank everyone for your interest and support in subscribing and/or reading. There are a lot of newsletters these days competing for your attention, I really appreciate you choosing to give this yours.