9/1/23, 17:55

Jaime Moncada <jaime.moncada@cetys.mx>

Make quick charts and maps 📈

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Jeremy Caplan <wondertools@substack.com> 9 de junio de 2022, 4:03

Responder a: Jeremy Caplan
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Para: jaime.moncada@cetys.mx

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Make quick charts and maps

📈
Datawrapper is easy, free and fast 💯
Jeremy Caplan
Jun 9

Welcome back to Wonder Tools! Last week I highlighted the best resources
for listening to podcasts and spotlighted a few extraordinary episodes.
Other recent posts highlighted a neat app (Listy) for making lists and for
organizing your personal contacts (Clay). This week’s post focuses on a
simple, free way to make pretty graphics without any prior design or data
experience.

Subscribe now
Datawrapper makes it easy to create your own data visualizations. It’s free
and easy to use for non-designers. If you just want to make a nice chart or
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map, try diving in with any data you have at hand. Below are 3 steps to
creating a quick visualization.

If you’d like to go slow, here’s step-by-step help.

If you want some sample data to use, try Google’s Dataset Search,
Kaggle, Data.gov, Data Hub, or one of these fun datasets.

Step 1. Figure out what you want to show

A list of places 🗺 This could be where customers, employees or
applicants are from, a list of target markets, or a list of significant
locations within a particular city, region or country. 
A list of numbers 🔢 This could be sales totals, or a comparative
number of subscribers, followers or downloads. 
A table of information ⌗ in two or more columns. That’s handy if you
want to emphasize individuals and their titles, products and their
significance, or social platforms and their relevance for your
audience. Datawrapper lets you make shareable, embeddable, visual
tables.

Step 2. Bring your data into Datawrapper 

Datawrapper lets you import info in several simple ways. 

1. Paste it in. Just copy and paste it from a spreadsheet, an online

source, or wherever else it already exists. 
2. Import an Excel file or a csv file — the two most common formats for
data. 

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3. Paste a link to an existing Google Spreadsheet. Make sure you set

the spreadsheet to public first so Datawrapper can access it. 
4. Link to a data file on find on the Web. If you see a data file online in
csv format (comma separated values), you can link directly to it,
without having to download it first.  

Step 3. Choose a visual representation 

Once you’ve brought in your data, decide how you want your chart, map or
table to look. For charts you can choose from 20 visualization types including
bar, area, line and pie charts. For maps, you can choose between three
types.

Chloropleth maps let you color code a map based on how common
something is in a particular place. This works for showing things like regional
incidence of a disease, geographic breakdown of voting, or income by
location. Or for business data like purchases or engagement, broken down by
location. 

Symbol maps are useful for showing hotspots. I used this map type to show
application origins for a 2020 cohort of our Journalism Creators Program. 

Locator maps let you drop pins on a map to spotlight particular locations.
This works well to show a few specific spots impacted by something. Or your
favorite local dessert spots. Or the places most impacted by a new policy. 

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Great Alternative Tools for Data Visualization 

Flourish is a terrific tool for making data visualizations. It has far more options
than Datawrapper in terms of the kind of visuals you can create. It’s also a bit
more complex, given the flexibility you have to design dozens of different data
visualizations. 

Mapbox Studio is excellent for creating professional-looking maps

customized to look exactly the way you want, but it takes time to figure out
the various menu options and to learn your way around it.

Google My Maps is simple for creating shareable maps showing places of

interest. You just search for something then click “add to map.” You can
annotate spots, or just use default info from Google Maps.

Additional Resources
Datawrapper Academy 100+ short pieces that explain how to use
Datawrapper
Slides for a detailed Datawrapper workshop with lots of good
examples
Matching Chart to Purpose — A 1-page visual guide by Dr. Andrew
Abela
Flowingdata: Chart Rules to Follow 
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Selecting the Right Chart, via FusionCharts

Picking the Right Chart Type by Jānis Gulbis

What to Avoid
Ugly visualizations
wtf graphics that don’t make sense  
Junk charts
27 visuals that didn’t quite work
Misleading visualizations

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