It’s fair to say that I won’t make a fortune selling prints. However, I promise I’ll buy myself a damn fine cup of coffee and a new book after each order. And if I don’t sell anything ever, I still learned a lot during this process.
Live-blogging a new project
There’s a first for everything, so I’m live-blogging my new project from the data collection to the finished viz. I’ll make a diary of my progress and document all the pitfalls, doubts, lousy sketches, ideas that never made it… so tune in for updates. I haven’t been this excited for months!
Grandma’s song
I never had a taste for classical music, but my grandma had a Bösendorfer since she was a child. This meant that someone from the grandchildren had to play the piano, and I won the family lottery. I had no talents, hated going to music school, but I loved hanging with her and practicing her favorite pieces. I pretended to like playing, and she pretended not to hear how bad I was.
Digging into tooltips with David Lynch
The tooltips might not be what they seem, but they deserve to be beautiful too! Transcend with David Lynch and me into formatting tooltips to set them on fire. I’m not saying it’s not 568% extra work to make them more visually appealing, but I think it worth the effort.
Why it’s okay not asking for feedback
This is a story that was heavily inspired by David Lynch, so hear it from him. “…If they give you the right to make the film, they owe you the right to make it the way you think it should be. The filmmaker should decide on every single element, every single word, every single sound, every single thing going down that highway through time. Otherwise it won’t hold together. The film may suck, but at least you made it suck on your own.”
Worst practice 3D bar chart
It was a long time since I enjoyed creating something this much. I’m not encouraging anyone to follow suit on this absolutely worst practice 3D bar chart thingy, but here’s a tutorial just in case.
My favorite graphic artists
Sharing is caring, so here come my top 10 favorite graphic artists. I just ordered a couple of signed prints to freshen up my office wall and because it’s important to support arts if we have the means.
Happy Women’s Day!
I’m lucky enough that never in my life I felt less than a man and experienced no discrimination in any areas of life. I know it’s not the case for all women. Focusing on the negative aspects is always more shocking, but I’m so in for good data vibes.
Going from zero to Zen Master in a year
Wanna know how to become a Tableau Zen Master in less than a year? Yeah, me too. I remember running on the treadmill on March 1, and I was like “what the hell, I’m going to Twitter”. Ever since then, I’m just rolling my head around and keep asking myself if it’s really happening to me.
Using photos: a love & hate relationship
Have you heard about the “picture superiority effect”? Concepts presented with visuals or pictures are better learned and more easily recalled than those without. Dare to use images, but use them right, and don’t overuse!
The history of photography
My adventures in fontland continue. This time I used Kodak and Helvetica Neue Thin to make my viz pop. Helvetica Neue Thin is such an elegant font, that even Kodak would dress up as Helvetica Neue Thin for the font Golden Globes.
Mind-blowing fonts in movies
The people close to me know that I have a soft spot for movies. And fonts. And a bunch of other things, but let’s narrow the scope down to the first two.
Girls can be anything
There are only a few more inspirational toys (if any) for little girls than Barbie. Look at all the jobs she had in the past 50 years. I hope the Data Visualization Designer Barbie is already on its way!
Welcome to my hood
It’s no secret that I’m a walking love letter to Budapest, but I just can’t stop being obsessed with it. Discover all my favorite spots in the hood and see how you can create round-shaped maps in Tableau & Mapbox.
Fire walk with me: All the things I watched in 2020
In 2020 I watched 645 hours of movies and series. Yes, that equals 27 days and it’s almost as long as February. 73% of this time I spent watching series – 660 episodes of 62 different ones. My main platform was Netflix (270 hours), closely followed by HBO GO (250 hours), while I only went to the movies 3 times this year due to the lockdown.
How I got landed a dataviz job at almost 30?
I’m not an easy person. I’m fast, loud, rarely satisfied, I have a can-do attitude, but I get bored easily. I’m a whirlwind, and sometimes people feel intimidated by me. I don’t think that someone is right just because he’s above me in the hierarchy, and it’s hard to shut my mouth when I feel suppressed. I had my problems with that attitude, and I felt that this is all my fault, while it was just not the right workplace for me.
I dared to make a map
Steven Shoemaker dared me to make a map-centered viz. It was like he’s reading into me. I haven’t created a map so far because every time I tried, I realized how much I suck at it. I put a solid 24 hours into this project, and this did not come easy.
How to start building a new dashboard for clients?
I collected all the questions that in a dream world I’d like to get answers to before start building a dashboard. I divided them into four sections (technical setup, purpose, audience, and development) and included a one-pager of the blog post. Without knowing these, for me, it’s just pure luck if I can calculate the effort right.
The Ozone hole
I proudly present my slowest ever dashboard made with minimum ozone damage and maximum love – out of 4 rows and 3 columns of data.
The Man from New York
An unpopular opinion, but I was raised never to feel ashamed of the things I love. So here it is: I love Woody Allen. For me, he’s one of the most talented, intelligent, and funniest people of our century.
Make chemistry fun again!
Getting back to school is not always fun, but we can make it so. I made a periodic table and added some interesting facts to all the elements to make learning chemistry even sexier than it is!
Cool kids from the Eastern Bloc
This was one of those many design-driven visualizations of mine when I knew how the end-result should look like. I just needed to find the data that fits my story. I grew up in one of these panel houses in Hungary, and wouldn’t trade those years for anything.
Making your own toggle buttons
I love fussing with UI design elements and have a restless curiosity about how I can use them in Tableau. Toggle buttons are my recent crush, read on to see how to make your own.
Using layers in Tableau
This is my favorite dataviz topic ever: using layers in Tableau. Check out this tutorial to see how you can make a bar chart work using “only” 4 layers of floating elements, a little Photoshop, and Illustrator.
Infinite Jest: My biggest book challenge
Somewhere around March at the beginning of quarantine in Hungary, a friend and I started to read Infinite Jest. The book is the thickest and most complicated reads of my life so far, it’s 1100 pages long in a very big format (not only good for reading but weight lifting excercises too) written in 8pt font size. But hey, I like literary challenges!
Budapest, you have my heart
I was pretty active on Pinterest recently, looking for new inspiration. A couple of weeks ago I came across a series called City Facts. I tried to recreate something similar using Tableau and Illustrator about Budapest.
Spicing up dashboard titles
I tried to come up with some dashboard title variations, to emphasize that titles can be more than big ass letters. There are so many creative ways to make them beautiful, we just have to look at some good UI implementations.
Dark: The End is the Beginning
I watched the first episode of Dark last summer, but after being utterly terrified for an hour I decided this is not for the faint-hearted like me. How wrong I was. Some weeks ago I gave it another try, instantly I got hooked on binge-watching and started sketching the network on paper.
MythBusters: I can’t draw
Last week I was searching for a photo of Barbie pony and at the back, I saw a terrible drawing hanging on the wall over the bed of my little brother. I wonder how he could fall asleep looking at that every night. Turns out, I had that Addams Family vibe from pretty early on. I told my mom, that it’s okay if she wants to have this tattooed on her arm!
Radio Ga-Ga
I made a Lady Gaga viz by accident. I’m not a fan of pop music, but she’s just one of the most talented women of our time. I loved her Five Foot Two documentary, she’s just so ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. Her performance in A Star is Born is giving me the goosebumps by even thinking about it.
FGM in Tanzania
Nationally approximately 10% of women aged 15 to 49 report having undergone female genital mutilation (FGM) in Tanzania, but prevalence is much higher in the Mara region at 32%.
Black Lives Matter
I just leave this here without any comment. The viz is also available on Tableau Public.
Fleabag
Ken Flerlage made an awesome tutorial on how to create LEGO art in Tableau and I tried it out. One thing I might like better than building LEGOs is binge-watching series, so I combined the two.
Vinyl it is!
I decided to take part in this week’s MakeoverMonday challenge, as the topic was really close to my heart: how has the music industry changed in the past 40 years. The original viz was so great, that I decided to go nuts for donuts with this submission.
And Then Were None
Sziget is one of the biggest music festivals in Europe, but this year they will have the lowest number of visitors: none. Due to the coronavirus, all major events have been canceled in Hungary, so no concerts in 2020.
How to use fonts in Tableau?
I had my hardships using fonts in Tableau and I’m far from being a typography expert, but here are some suggestions on how to use fonts to avoid the common pitfalls.
My Tableau Cookbook
During this lockdown, I realized a lot of things. One of them is that I can cook. However, the recipes I try are located on different websites and 2 weeks later I don’t even remember where I saved them. That’s when the idea came to make my cookbook, and if I do it, why not make it in Tableau? Why? Just because it can be done.
Westworld S03
I watched the season finale of Westworld yesterday evening and was quite nervous the whole day, as this came out as one of the lowest-rated episodes of the series (correction from this morning: it is the lowest-rated episode of all time).
Where did my money didn’t go?
This is the third (and final?) quarantine life viz after Couchella and My Fallen Kindom, using the same style as these two before. This time I downloaded my bank account info and had a look at how my spending structure has changed in the past months.
My Fallen Kingdom
I was riding my bike yesterday to the pharmacy to save my head from being exploded when the idea popped into my mind. I’m gonna draw the layout of my flat and make a heatmap of what I’m doing where for how long in the apartment!
Tiger King
I might be as obsessed with this show as Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin with tigers, so I downloaded some search statistics of the main keywords from Google Trends and made a visualization of it.
Farewell to Modern Family
I can’t believe Modern Family has come to an end after 11 years. I was growing up with this show, and even though the episodes started to get weaker at the end, I still enjoyed every minute of it. Even though I’m a mixture of Claire and Alex, my favorite characters were Phil and Luke… maybe Lily, as she turned out to be quite a savage teenager.
Taking your design skills to the next level in Tableau
I keep a close watch on what’s happening in UI / UX and graphic design, because the trends in these areas are the trends that can make your dashboards sexy.
From Me to You
Since it’s not safe going out to the post office, here’s my heartfelt message on a Tableau postcard, to all the people in the world!
Wake-up call!
I’m not okay with this! The weekly Makeover Monday challenge looks at the unpaid working hours by gender and it’s a wake-up call for the society we’re living in. Women are superheroes, it’s a fact!
Couchella
COUCHELLA 2020 is here! I’m not proud of myself for watching 45 hours of content in 3 weeks, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I even saw a film called “What Men Want” and I still don’t have a clue.
Pizza pizza pie
This is my Makeover Monday submission for week 13, inspired by the colors of my favorite tracksuit I wore somewhere in the early 90s. Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I can’t get enough of gradients… And the most shocking discovery: where are artichokes?
The Culture of How We Behave
Do we need to bother about culture? We are a group of animals. We use language and empathy, and practice collaboration and inter-group competition. The unwritten rules of how we do these things differ from one human group to another. “Culture” is how we call these unwritten rules about how to be a good member of the group.
Berkeley Courses
This week’s MakeoverMonday challenge wasn’t the easiest one. There was a lot of data, but I don’t think anything else could be made of it than a line or area chart. I didn’t even want to make it, but then the idea popped into my mind, to play with fonts here a little and make the push minimal design to the maximum.
It All Ends With Us
When the Game of Thrones series came to an end (which I haven’t seen one episode of, as I didn’t find the first book that interesting… sorry, not sorry) I had the idea to create a dataviz from the most popular series that has already ended. On this viz I compared the IMDB scores of the first and last episodes of the Top 15 series according to their number of ratings.
Does money make us happy?
This is my weekly Makeover Monday submission, I really liked the topic. Also, this means that that’s my 3rd in a row, so wooohooo! It’s striking, that poor, but happy and rich, but sad are basically non-existent categories.
