The first draft of the articles discussing the different elements of plots is done! Next, I need to go back though and refine it and the articles on general design. The next goal is to refine them, and to create links between them.

After that, the next step is to start making pages for individual kinds of plots.

While it is still a fairly rough draft, the first round of getting the general design ideas down into the wiki is done! I will be working on the different parts of data visualizations next. Then, I will go back through and refine the writing and hopefully get much of the crosslinking in.

Most of the data visualizations I make in my line of work, and for this site, were done in Python, using the Plotly library. This year, the US Python conference, PyconUS, was held just down the road from State College, in Pittsburgh. So, I headed on over to check out the conference. Lots of interesting things, but there were a few talks that were relevant to data visualizations (typography, color, accessibility, and so on), but also I got to meet a few people from the Plotly team as well as the Marimo team! Good times all around.

I am currently at the 2025 Data Visualization in Science and Education Gordon Research Conference. This conference brings together a group of people who think deeply about how to design, create, and share data visualization, as well as how to evaluate the effectiveness of those visualizations. There are people building new tools—both traditional plotting software and software that visualizes data in virtual reality—as well as artists talking about basic design rules. It is a great conference.