Ahoy from Doodling Data
👋 Hey everyone, hope you’re having a blast of a weekend! I’m just writing a quick post to:
Introduce myself a bit better to those of you who are new here
Re-introduce myself for the benefit of those who forgot why they’re here - no blame implied, I do this all the time when I sign-up to newsletter and then forget what it is so I thought a refresher is in order
Explain a few expansions I’m doing on this publication
Who am I and why I’m in your inbox (or Substack reader)
I guess you’re likely here because you like quantitative information and its representation. The About Page summarises it, but in short: I have been working in (industrial) data science for the past 8 years, and before that I’ve studied Physics and done research. I’ve kinda joined the field when it was really new at the time, especially in Europe, and it’s been quite a ride so far. I’m Italian and I live in Scotland, by the way.
I know that Substack has this feature whereby as soon as you subscribe to a newsletter you get a pop-up with a bunch of other recommended ones to subscribe to in one tap. I’m in two minds about this feature as I think it may encourage accidental subscriptions, but at the same time it’s really good to cross-share newsletters. In fact, I am pretty sure a bunch of you arrived from my friends at the OnData newsletter 😃[ITA], to name one.
Doodling Data is my work of love, it is a publication that rotates around the idea of hand-drawing data. It started with my hand-drawn data visualizations and it is now expanding into something a bit larger (see below). I have been doodling data on “cards” (postcard-sized sheets of paper, or pages from a small notebook) for a while before sharing on Substack, and this will still be the core of the newsletter, but I want to share more of the world of data.
If you’re new, to get an idea of what I mean by “doodling a data card” my favourite so far is this one:
For a more lightweight one, you can check this one out:
New sections and new ideas
Recently, I’ve added a few different sections to the publication, and while you’re automatically subscribed to all, you can control this behaviour in your account page, deciding which of the sections to receive notifications for (e.g. if you want to unsubscribe from some of them).
So as of now, the publication will host these sections:
Data Cards - this is where it all started and will keep being the core of the newsletter: it’s the place for the hand-drawn visualisations.
Data Round-ups: a monthly place for me to share links, discoveries and news from the wide world of data with you. It’s opinionated and I will also use it to surface the work of other people.
Data Viz - the journey: the newest addition, this section is devoted to discussing how to best represent data, tips and tricks and also failures. Learn with me here!
I am planning something else too, but it needs a bit more thinking and time, so just keep your eyes peeled for now 👀.
That’s all for now, I hope this was useful, and as always, put a like ❤️, share the newsletter around 🔄, comment for any feedback or just respond to the email 📧. Bis bald!