so [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi hello everyone my name is federica fragapane and i'm an independent information designer i have a course on domestica on designing data visualizations and today we are going to work on data visualization together on more than a data visualization together actually starting from the same data set but first of all i would like to introduce myself and so now i'm sharing my screen just to to show you an introduction of my career path and my works and why i'm doing what i'm doing with data visualization so um i'm an independent information designer i work as a freelancer and i designed it optimizations for agencies magazines and organizations collaborate with the united nations with google uh certificate american bbc with la lectura that is a cultural supplement of the italian newspaper korea de la serra i am italian and i'm based in italy but i collaborate with clients and organizations from all over the world and um a quick introduction about what i studied and why i became an information designer i studied communication design at politecnico in milano and in the last years there in the last year of my master's degree this is there i focused on information design attending the a course called density design that is it's a course with a focus on determinization and information design then my master degree thesis was an information design project i did a visualization project uh on organized crime in northern italy i really like how data visualization can be a tool to communicate complex topics also issues in their complexity and so this is why during university i decided to talk about this topic as my thesis and then in 2012 i started working in a information design studio agency called akward it's based in milan and new york i worked there in milan for a few years and it was definitely a super inspiring and exciting experience and then in 2015 i decided to start working as a freelancer mostly because i was curious to see how my career would have evolved taking this direction and so here here i am and this is what i do i visually translate numbers table data sets uh stories into visual elements into visual representation so this is a short description of what i do of my job and the range of complexity that characterizes my projects can be very broad and this depends on the needs on the usage context and on the readers so there is not only one good way to visualize data and to approach the data visualization field but it really depends on these different uh reasons so for instance i when i work for magazines for electoral for instance that is the cultural supplement of corridor de la sere italian newspaper i work for a weekly cultural supplement that is published during the weekend i know that the readers can read my pieces taking the proper amount of time for doing it so i know that i can work with on projects that need more time to be read and i think that when the usage context allows it this is not a problem plus in general all of my projects are characterized by my deep focus on the connection that a data visualization piece can create with the readers i think i really think that giving a shape to stories numbers and contents has a strong communicative potential is a very powerful way to communicate stories and and contents and i really love to use this potential and many of my projects as the ones that you are seeing here have an experimental approach i really like to experiment with shaped visual representations when i can when the usage context allows me to do it so these are these are some of the projects i i worked on in the past years and also the aesthetic of my pieces for me is really important but it's not just because the aesthetic of my pieces for me as a role in this communication flow that i want to create i i don't draw these hopefully visually appealing pieces just because i like pretty things even if i like pretty things but i think that it's a way to engage the leaders i really want to invite the readers to to be attracted from by my pieces to be invited there to read them to read my to explore my visualizations and therefore to read the stories that i'm telling through them that for me is my main goal and when i work on these visualizations i really used to consider them as the visual equivalent of long articles uh a way to create this interest slow reading connection with the readers when the usage context allows me to have this slow reading connection and i really think that as in writing also the choices of visual words can have a meaningful role for instance as you can see i really love using organic shapes soft shapes especially when i'm dealing with numbers that have people behind them or human lives or stories behind them i think it's a way to to communicate also also the humanity and the stories that stand behind the data that i'm traveling and in the last years i really had the opportunity of working on a very wide wide range of projects you have seen these projects for instance these are details from the projects that i designed for this cultural supplement la littura but i had the chance to work on a children book a few years ago it was a super exciting experience in a children book in which i combined small infographics and illustrations to depict our words and to create this depiction of our world to the children to allow them to explore different environments and different stories with the usage of infographics as a tool i worked with google i mentioned at the beginning and for instance i collaborate with google designing a website google trends actually a couple of years ago they asked me to propose them a topic and to design a website just using google data and i propose them that are free and everybody can can just read online google trends data and so i propose them to explore how people use google to look for the meaning of their dreams and the result is this website that is called the shape of dreams and that is an exploration of how users uh look for the meaning of their dreams on google i i don't code so behind all my static projects there is no code or development but when i work on interactive visualizations i collaborate with developers so for instance this project was the result of a collaboration with paolo corte with a an excellent developer i collaborate with bbc designing this project that for instance is a visual representation of space junk the space stub is categorized according to their distance from earth and the type of objects so not only the range of complexity not only the type of projects but also the topics that i can talk about are so many and i collaborate with the scientific american and i visualize the menstrual cycle for instance for them a few a few years ago visualizing all the variables and their relationships so i really had the opportunity and i'm really having the opportunity to talk about a very wide wide range of subjects and this is one of the aspects i love the most about this job and about this field and this is the design process i usually work on and in the domestic course in my domestic course i will go very deep in that exploring all these spaces that characterize this process and for me the design process is made of these main three phases selection of topics and sources and stories then extraction organization and analysis of data and finally the design of a visualization of a and visual visual model to to represent the data and there are many not so many but there are some clues that i use tools that i use all the times and tools that help me pretty often adobe illustrator is the tool that i use the most for the static visualizations so uh it's definitely the tool that i'm going to use in in my domestic course and is the one that allows me to create the more custom and also experimental visualizations but there are many ways to have accurate representations of data because accuracy for me is essential with adobe illustrator then sometimes i combine adobe illustrator with other tools such as photoshop for instance when i can i like to combine infographics to illustrations as for the children book and sometimes i also combine it with qg's qgis is a free online tool that i use to design maps it's great for cartography i recommend it it's free it's online you just have to download it and so combining tools is something that i do pretty often and then there is a tool that i use um pretty often that it's raw graphs and today we are going i'm going to to show you how i use it from shift to numbers to visual representations and row graphs is a free tool is online it's excellent for shifting from numbers to two visual explorations and video representations and now i'm going to to show you how i use it and now i'm move from a table to something that is visual and it's it's telling a story so i'm okay quitting my presentation now and i'm directly going to my data set so just to explain what i'm going to do now is to take this data data set that i had previously collected from an official and reliable source called our working data and giving it different wizard shapes because as i was mentioning there is not only one way to visualize data to visualize a data set but we have many possibilities depending on on different factors and the stories we want to tell on the usage context and so on so in the domestic course i will talk i talk about how finding reliable sources and what are the good reliable sources that we can use one of these sources is our words in data that is online all the data that i use that i use are online are free and are available it's just a matter of knowing what are the the sources to be used and in this case from the source our wording data i extracted this data and i passed in them on google spreadsheets that it's a tool that i use pretty often to to see data to analyze them and to and then to visualize them so this data set tells what are the annual working hours by country so these are my columns the first column is the country of course and these are data for a set of countries for 50 countries for each country we have the data on the average annual hours worked by persons and then data on the gdp per capita so something that i like to do and i also do it in the course it's showing that the main data that i want to explore the main story that in this case are the average annual annual hours worked but then also provided providing contextual information on the country and providing this information it's not to prove a point it's not to prove i don't know gdp countries with a certain gdp per capita uh work more or less it's just to provide the context to the information to the story that i'm telling and so in this case my contacts is the gdp per capita and the total population by country and i also added another column that is the continent again to provide another contextual information so what i'm going to do is just copy these this data and then using raw graphs so i'm just pressing command a to copy everything command c to copy to to select command a to select everything command c to copy it and then let's go to row graphs so row graph is great because you can simply copy and paste your data here you can also upload them if you have a file and then this is great for exploration you can try their samples it's great because maybe you don't have data right now that you want to explore but you can explore their samples and then you can try them and experiment a little bit but let's reset it because i have my own data in this case okay and so you see that progress recognizes already my columns and my data and once you perceive the data you can choose the chart and as you can see there are many many possible options and in my domestic course i'm also sharing with you some tips and also some resources that can be very helpful there is a data set that it's a catalog of possible graphics possible visual representations and it's a very good way to have an idea of what graphic can be the best solution for the data that you have so right now i want to visualize let's say let's start from a simple graphic so i want to start from a very simple bar chart and let's start just visualizing the anal hours worked by person per capita so you can see as you can see here in the mapping section we have all the titles of your of our columns you see that are the columns that we have here in the google sheet file and as i suggested that i have is always to have very clear title for our columns without any empty spaces we want to have a data that is super clean and super well organized and having clear titles here it's super helpful because raw graphs recognizes them and then you can simply drag the dimensions you want so in this case i want to have the average annual worked by person as the size for my country so you see i dragged country here because i want each bar to be a country and i want the size to represent the average annual hours worth by person and in real time broadcast is showing me it's showing me the data i can also change them so if i just want to visualize that store population i drag the total progression here and the graphic is evolving in real time but let's come back to here okay so each bar is a country and the size is showing the uh the worked hours so so far we can already see that there is an issue here because these are all the countries but of course all the texts are overlappings so in order to solve this issue raw graphs allows you to customize your graphic and to uh to work on it even if a spoiler the best thing the thing i love about raw graph is that you can then export the graphic as an svg file and work on it with illustrator but already raw graph allows you to to work on it so for instance first of all you can change the artwork size as you prefer but let's come back here wait then you can change the background if you want but again this is something that you can also do with illustrator later you can change the margins you can decide if you want the legend or no and the legend is an essential part in the my domestic of course you will see that i i will spend a lot of time on creating a clear legend that explains how to read everything because it's really the key the bridge that allows the readers to explore it to understand our visualizations but then i want to go to chart and i want the bars to be oriented horizontally so now at least it's more readable and it is a first way super simple way to visualize this data i can also add another variable i want the continent to be my color and this is already giving me another information because i can see how the colors are distributing then i'm not a fan of this color palette so you can both change the colors directly here but then you can also work on them on illustrator and decide how you want to change them so this is a first option and then you can export it both as as g png jpeg or raw graphs but i usually uh you can export it as an image if you want to use it in your presentations maybe refine in a little bit margins and other aspects directly on row graphs but as i was mentioning i usually download them as sbg files and and then open them directly with the illustrator as i'm doing now okay but i want to come back to raw graphs because i want to show you another way to show to represent this data so coming back to the to the chart section i want to select this time a bubble chart so bubble chart is a graphic that allows you to compare different variables on the horizontal axis on the vertical axis and then you can plot your countries in our case according to different dimensions so in this case for instance i want the average annual hours worked by persons to be my vertical axis let's say my gdp to be on my horizontal axis and you can see and i want the total population also to be the size of my countries you see now there are some countries that are too small but we are going to to solve this issue as we did together for the bar charts here on my customized section i'm going to chart and i want to change the maximum diameter let's say to 50 and it's already better you see you can already see all the different countries then i want again the continent to be my caller you see and also i want the label so i want to know immediately which country is which which circle and you see this is another way to visualize this data and again we can change the colors but this is again something that we can also do directly with illustrator we can change the margins maybe um you can show the legend here that it describes it gives you two examples of dimensions and this is helpful because at least we have a reference to understand how to read the size of the of the circles and then it explains that the color represents the continents also for the tables for the labels you can decide how you want them if you want in italic if you want them in bold you can show the outline so this helps in case of the overlappings and you can do the same also i think for the dots yes if you show the stroke of the circles it's easier to to see the situations in which there are overlappings of course there are issues here so for instance these two countries are overlappings personally is something that i would solve directly on illustrator but you can do it here too you can change the size of the chart if you want to export it and to use it just as a jpeg file and then you can you can work on it and you can export it but i want to try one last version and then let's try to import this last version on illustrator and to work a little bit on it so i selected a linear dendrogram that is another way to represent information and here you can decide what is a hierarchy and in my case i want to show first the continents that are here then the country you see that it's already divided and then let's say i want my size to be this data the annual hours worth by persons what is the problem here the problem here is that actually the size of the circles it there are difference but are not very understandable you see if i zoom in there are actual differences but sometimes um a graphic cannot be the best way to to show the data in the scatter plot in the other graphic it was easier also in the bar chart it was easier but let's say with this one and so i can change maybe the uh the data on the hours worked by persons can be the color but i have to show something for the size and so let's say maybe the population can be the size why can't it be disorder ah okay let me change it okay and in this case for instance we have this i wanted to to do the colors but apparently okay here we are so now this our this is our representation we have the different continents i want the country to be the label we have the our countries the size of the circle represents the population and the color represents the works per capita the hours worth per capita now the colors as you can see are not super readable if i go here i want to change the color scheme a little bit more because the lighter color is too light so i cannot read it so much but you can change the gradient and maybe to have a clearer gradient the higher data can be a different color and here we already showing something let me change it a little bit because i don't still i still don't love this color palette but as you can see these graphics that i'm doing are less complex and let's say also let's visually appealing of the ones that i used to work on but this is because i usually work on graphics for days weeks but this is already a good starting point and you will see in a domestic course that will really guide you into designing something that's more complex with more levels of information but let's start in from something like like this okay let's see if there is that we can change no let's export it and at this point i want to edit it with illustrator okay there are some things that we can do i'm still not sure about the color palette i'm still not sure about how we can see the color so i want to change it again and i also want to change the size of the the size of the countries the size of the circles i'm still not super sure about them okay so i go to chart maximum diameter too much okay there are some issues here but i'm going to solve them with illustrator there are huge differences in terms of the population of course if we compare if we compare china with malta it's completely normal so maybe let's try with another variable for the size like the gdp for per capita this is already more readable so let's decrease here the maximum diameter okay and let's change the colors again and it's completely normal to change your mind test the data explore them it's definitely something that i do often because of course you cannot have just one solution uh immediately i mean sometimes yes i'm lucky and the solution that i have works perfectly but it's completely normal to change your own idea okay so let's download it and open it with illustrator so i mean there is a question for mahmoud and is asking is it for a beginner like me and how much can one learn in a two half two and a half hour course so he or she can make a career out of it so um it is for beginners even if it's recommended to use to being able to use adobe illustrator because i'm going to to use adobe illustrator a lot but you don't have to have a in specific knowledge on data visualization and data because i'm going to introduce you into this field i'm going to start from the basics uh i'm going to share i'm sharing a lot of additional resources websites books that are can be very very helpful so the only thing that i would recommend is to be able to use adobe illustrator even if you can stop to the raw graph part because i'm going to show a graph and i'm going to talk a lot about that visualization so if you don't know how to use illustrator and you just want to stop at the part uh when i use raw graphs i mean it it can be helpful for you too and it's really a way i mean i really uh suggest a lot of tips a lot of tricks so of course in order to know the very deep field of data visualization i would recommend to to dive into this additional resources that i that i send to to explore them i also show case studies but i also show the links of other case studies of other designers agencies that can be followed because it's very important and i think it's a i mean i really uh try to to compact in two hours and an alpha i would say all the things that for me are essential for starting point for a center point but not only because the project that we are going to work together that i i'm presenting you in the course has a certain level of complexity uh it's it really it's really a way to create it it shows how to create relatively complex visualizations uh for beginners so i would consider it as a i mean i i prepared it i created it and i created it with deep care so i would recommend it as a starting point if this is a field you are interested into definitely so now i'm working on on this graphic with with illustrator and there are some things that we can do to to improve it so first of all i want to change the apple artboard a little bit because i want to have more hair and as you can see it's a normal vectorial file and you can edit all all the text the labels you can edit everything i just want to ungroup with a few times delete the things that i don't need for instance these circles here i don't particularly need them so i can just delete them here i can place the title for instance let's say by putting a background and i create a new layer and here i'm changing the color okay just a neutral gray background okay i blocked the layer so now it doesn't annoy me uh the first thing that i want to do is to work on the typography because there are issues there are overlapping stacks and i want to also change the font i really love serif fonts so i would change it using a serif font let's use this one for instance it is a google font i often use google fonts because they are free and you can filter them by the category that you want so i i use them very often so there are still overlapping so what i want to do is to increase my visualization the size my visualization size okay and decrease the labels so that here we try to solve the overlappings issues okay better now i want them to be aligned so let's align them okay and also i want them to be better aligned to the center with the circles now they aren't so i move them all together okay to me it's already more organized more ordered and clean but i also want to change the font here the typography okay in bold and working on different hierarchies and different font size it's very helpful because it's a way to give a first overview already i'm aligning them okay i'm keeping a eye on the comments so if you have any comments or any questions that you would like to ask on the course in general on my work on the process just feel free to do it because i'm also here to answer them okay now i also want to change the lines i want them to be thicker to be black and to be to change the lines rocks okay and finally i want to add a title that can be my data set title and in this case i'm increasing the the title form title size and okay and this is already something i think that it works better if compared to uh to the ones that we did with that i did withdraw then um it's also important to to show the legend i forgot before to add the legend here but i can't do it it's not a problem okay if i should legend here i re-download it i'm open it again with illustrator and i i don't care about the visualization i just want to take the legend from it and as i was mentioning i'm going to talk a lot about a lot about legends uh in the in the course because it's very essential to have um something that to a belgian that clearly explains how to read how to read our graphics how to read our visualization and i i think that a misconception on this field is thinking that a good visualization doesn't need text to be to be understood but i think that this is not true because we learn how to read text in in schools but we don't learn how to read graphics it's not something that we we know how to do from school it's not there is not this level of it's called data literacy that allows us to immediately understand the graphic and so i think that in this moment in which we are really full of graphics i mean we are surrounded by data we are surrounded by visualizations it's very important to uh accompany visualizations and explanations and texts that explain how to read them so i want to come back to another visualization that i did with raw and to edit that with illustrator tools so let's come back to our bubble chart here so we have let's say the total population here on our horizontal axis and the hours worked you see sometimes the data the graphic is not the better solution solution for our data so i want to change that in this case i want the gdp to be my x-axis better it's already giving me something showing some information i want the epsilon axis at least it's more readable i want the epsilon axis to be the hours worked by a person so my vertical axis and then let's say i want the population to be my size and then we are going to work on it to change the size and i want the continent to be the color and the country to be the label we can also have the continent as connection by no kidding i was kidding you see this word this happens when uh this is not the right variable for the correct dimension you see that next to each variable next to each dimension you have all both the letters or the symbols that means that this is a string of text and it is a number and row graphs recognized it as a number and you can find here if it accepts only numbers or as in this case both numbers dates or strings so i want to change it a little bit more let's change these variables with an 8 i want to change i want to show the legend i want to change the maximum diameter let's say 100 okay and for me the colors i can change them i can change them on illustrator let's see if there is something that i prefer but okay i will then adjust them with illustrator same for the labels okay and i'm going to export it again and here we are so um i'm changing the background again let's give it a color neutral color okay now let's change all the colors and this is a trick from illustrator that i really love so first of all i want to ungroup it okay if you want to change all the colors from an artboard all at the same time this tool here in case you don't know it regular artwork it's really a life saver and time saver because if you click on it you ever recap of all the colors from your artboard and you can change all of them directly from here so it's definitely a tool that i love using so let's look for a palette that i that i like something that i don't i haven't mentioned um until now but that i'm going to talk a lot about in the course is on the visual inspiration so the graphics that i'm showing now are let's say pretty classical graphics i'm not experimenting so far uh because i mean we we don't have time in this life but in the domestic course i i'm showing how to experiment visual experiment a lot and to create something that is more similar to the first projects that i show you in the introduction and for me an important step to visual experiment is the the visual inspiration phase so i spend a lot of time looking for visual inspiration not only when i have to start a new project but i would say basically every day because i like to to fill my my eyes and my mind with elements that i'm personally attracted to and i love to look for visual inspiration from words that are not data visualization related of course i want the updated on what my colleagues are doing because it's interesting and it's important because it's my it's part of my job but at the same time when i have to tackle a new project i i really love to look for inspiration from words that are not data visualization related such as the word of nature of art because these are the words that my eyes are personally attracted to so something that i always suggest and something that i will guide you to in in doing in my course it's really to learn how to find the elements that can help you in designing something that is visually appealing and visually also experimental and starting from your inclinations what your eyes are attracted to and what you love because i think again it's to engage the leaders is to engage the people we are talking to it's just not because uh i like drawing nice things and because i'm graphic designer i really think that this has a strong communicative value so and change the colors a little bit and now what i want to do is to use the multiply option let me see okay because now i can see the ones that were behind i want to change a few colors again and this is something that i mean changing your own mind trying different colors combination it's something that i do pretty often it's completely normal in this field but in the design field in general i think okay i'm not super super sure about all the colors but it's already better i think that i could increase their size the element size a little bit more so a way to do it i mean of course with draw graphs as you have seen it's very easy but there is another way that i in which i do it so let's start from the legend and then i start call from color to color so i start from the africa color and i go to select same fill color then another tool that i love is object transform each transform transform each and it allows me to increase the size in this case of all my elements i want to increase them by 150 you see and i do it color by color so there is the same scale for everyone so i'm doing it for all my or my callers and there is a question from lydia is there such a thing as too much data to visualize yes leader there is um and this is something very important to and again i i'm talking about it in in the course but i it's very important to to mention every time so in the meantime i'm repeating the operation of transforming each one let's say for instance when i work for static projects i have constraints to deal with physical constraints to deal with because sometimes there is not enough space for all the data because maybe in the page if i would have visualized all the data that i have in my page maybe it wouldn't have been readable because there are too many or also an interactive in in an interactive project in an interactive project it's easier to show a bigger amount of data because with the interactivity you can filter information so it's easier but at the same time again there is always a choice behind a graphic behind the visualization but i want what i want always want to stress is that there is also choice behind the data collection process so there is this idea that data are neutral creators complete your black objective creator but it's not true because even in the data behind the data collection process uh behind a data set there is inevitably a human intervention and this doesn't mean that data visualization is not a reliable tool it's a it's a tool it's a tool that i work on on a daily basis so it's a definitely helpful tool because it allows you to to explore topics to communicate them to allow them in comprehending them but it's important to consider that there is always an intervention behind them and so lydia for instance um when i do selections of data let's say i'm visualizing in this case [Music] average annual hours worked by persons i've selected 50 countries here but in the data sets there were this data was available for all the world's countries in this case for instance i selected the top 50 countries according to these annual oars hours worked and this is something that in my visualizations i mean i often do these selections i try to do selections that can be as object and as objective as possible such as the top 50 the top 20 and sometimes when i work for instance let's say for an italian magazine if italy is not in the top 20 but for an italian reader it's interesting to to know how italy displays i read i write the top 20 countries according to this data plus italy because of course it can be interesting but what it's important i think it's declaring our intervention and again this is why i also think it's important to combine text explanations and visual representations i because in the text we can also declare this even intervention the selected countries are the top 50 countries according to this data and it's important because now it's a way to declare that there is a selection behind the data and and it's important to declare that because it's important to be intellectually honest with our readers so yes transfer to the question yes there is such a thing as too much data to visualize it's inevitable to make choices it's not a problem it's a problem when the choices are not declared when it's misleading and where it's not clear that there is a human intervention behind it so now i'm changing again the typography you see these are the labels that explain the different axis so here we have the gdp per capita and here we have the annual hours worth by person i'm changing the size also the font size is an important aspect so for instance for print usually my minimum size is is seven seven pt i i don't go below it okay then i made a mistake while i was talking because i ungrouped it too much so it would be easier to have all these uh now i have to select all the countries to change the font but something that i can do uh to select them quicker is i mean these are just silly silly things silly tricks that i use i select this part i group it i go into my group i click on the on the text that i want and that i go to select same fill color because all my text are in black and now i have selected all of them and i changed my phone and as i was mentioning before this is a google font so it's a free font okay i also want to change the alignment same fill color i'm selecting the fonts again and i want them to be here now there is clearly a problem with this blue so i want to change the blue because it's unreadable better okay i'm still not super super sure about these colors but i mean usually i work a lot on the colors not just a few minutes and also something that i do is to have very light gradients so for instance let's use this pink example i go to window gradient let's change this one select same fill colors and add in small gradients light gradients now i'm going to change it really help me in having something that i was going too fast so now i created the gradient from pink to gray but if i come back to regular artwork i drag my pink here because i want it to be a lighter version of the pink and so i have my my light gradient and then i want to rotate my gradient okay there is already it's already there is already more visual depth to it and i can do it for all my for all my countries so you see again we have the legend that explains everything it explains how to read everything we can then add a title i want to give a gradient tool to these other colors too let me know in the meantime if you have any other questions or things you are also curious about okay so there is a questions on on the ch on the colors uh so mike is asking how do you deal with the colors how do you choose them and i don't know if the question is going on but i can read it i think this is it that's it so i have to say this case that i'm showing here it's it's something rare for me because this is already a really relatively high number of colors this is because i wanted to show you the tools but i usually tend to select a palette with few colors two three four just these colors are too many for me because there are people who [Music] cannot see colors cannot distinguish colors easily so for the choice so let's say that i try to use a relatively low amount of colors because of this reason because color is an important visual variable but sometimes it can be difficult to distinguish be between the different colors for instance this one is green and this light blue are too similar so i work a lot on the palette and i work a lot on the contrast now i'm really brainstorming a little bit and i'm working while i'm talking but it's something working on the colors is essential and also because um the color can be a very strong variable but also a tricky variable for people who cannot distinguish color very well i usually also combine colors with other elements so for instance there are visualizations in which if i have four colors like here for instance okay i say that the color represents the continent but maybe i also add another visual information that gives you the continent such for instance an initial so for instance let's say under malaysia that is in asia i write a small code that that also gives you the information of the continent without being necessarily given by the colors as for the palettes i really in that case i try to work on strong contrast so that it's easy to distinguish them but i in terms of the actual colors i i start from my visual inclination so i use pinterest pinterest a lot let me share it to you now that we are talking and i have a whole board on pinterest that it's all about palette and here i every time i had new new images that i like because of the palette so for the tones for the the the category of palette the kind of palette i start from i'm what i'm personally attracted to but for how to use color yes i tend to not to use too many colors where to say considering that here i'm using a certain amount of colors but actually in my other projects i usually have used two three three colors palettes and again i also give another information add another information that tells you the colors information for people who cannot distinguish them but color is a very important visual variables and i recommend not to overuse it okay in the meantime i'm just checking if there are any other comments so as you've seen i mean these are already different possibilities and and this is another way to use color a gradient and this is another way and here even if cannot be super easy to distinguish exactly the color but it gives you the information so you see that here the number of hours is our is i here for instance and then there are other tricks and other ways in which i visualize data that are directly an illustrator so um raw graphs is a great tool but there are other other tools on illustrator that i'm going to talk about on my domestic course and there are very excellent and reliable so now for instance something else that i would do i don't know if i have the time to conclude it but it's just to show other things i pay attention to uh so far i mean i would definitely change the thickness of these lines because for me the axes are too thick but apart from that it's important also to to add small guides to help the readers in looking at the data so for instance right now i want to connect my countries to the axis so it's a little bit easier to see to read other places and for instance i could do just a horizontal line you know a horizontal line for each one of my countries but and this is why the small choices the details are important i want my line to conclude just at the center of the bible because i don't want to add visual noise i for instance i don't want usually to uh to add decorative elements every visual element shows something or it's a guide to to look at the data but i don't like to use to add graphic decorative elements also because often my visualizations are are pretty rich coming back for instance to the cases that i that i've show you and so i don't want to create something that it's to create visual elements that are not conveying any information and then there is the question okay from from lydia again how do you know when an editorialization is done okay i'm particularly obsessed by details and by refining everything so two important things one feedback so i know that it's ready when i send it to other people to ask for feedback and they understand it especially the legend as i was mentioning the legend is essential and in all these visualizations that you are seeing there is always a legend and important i want to ask feedback for people who are not from my field uh because they represent the majority of my potential leaders so one step is if the legend is clear the visualization is clear and that is already a an excellent point for me and then i mean i would refine them i would i could refine a visualization for four months so at a certain point you just have to stop yourselves and deadlines are very helpful so basically a visualization is done when it's clear when i am satisfied with the result and also when it meets the deadlines that it's definitely something to think about but something that helps me a lot for instance is coming back to my visualization um in progress after like after having done something else it really helps me in in looking at it with a fresh glance and also after i've been asked for feedback it's definitely something for me is super super important i asked i sent to my parents for instance screenshots from from the legend or from details on what's happened i ask them if everything is clear for them if they are understanding it and and so on okay so i think this was our last question and we can conclude the live let me stop sharing my screen okay so thank you thank you very much for your interest and and for your questions um i hope you enjoyed this live as i was mentioning the the the project that i propose in the domestic course it's more complex but of course i wanted to start showing you some things and how the same dataset can be visualized in different ways and and that's it i hope to to see you in the course and be uh i will be also in the front to answer the questions i am a freelancer so uh i have many different projects to work on uh at the same time so but i'll be i'll try to be as present as possible in the forum and i think we can conclude it so thank you so much for for having listened to my to my life and i hope to to meet you and to see you in the course it's a course that i really prepare with a very deep deep care and i really hope that if you will we'll we'll follow it you will enjoy it and thank you i'm going to show you some examples this is what we've got behind me [Music]