Category Archives: Annotation

Text slopes and rings

Posted on January 18, 2026 by richardbrath

A Washington Post analysis of earnings calls visualizes rising CEO concerns by sloping keyword changes in context. For another “text on paths” approach, I explore placing quotations on circular rings, enabled by rapid LLM-assisted visualization design. Continue reading →

Posted in Annotation, Data Visualization, Design Space, LLM, Microtext, Readability, Text Visualization | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Brutalism can teach us about Software Design

Posted on February 2, 2025 by richardbrath

A new show about Paul Rudolph at the Met shows how brutalist architecture can be both pretty and pretty frustrating. So can software. I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of brutalism and how we see those in software and AI as well. Continue reading →

Posted in 3D visualization, Annotation, Critique, Data Visualization, LLM | Tagged | Leave a comment

Using infographics to aid learning (Molière)

Posted on November 29, 2023 by richardbrath

I recently received a copy of L’Atlas Molière, by Clara Dealberto, Jules Grandin and Christophe Schuwey. It is a book about the life, work and era of Molière, a French playwright in the mid 1600’s, and one of the great … Continue reading →

Posted in Annotation, Data Visualization, Text Visualization | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Story(line) Visualizations

Posted on October 4, 2023 by richardbrath

I’ve noticed there are many research papers regarding storyline visualizations. Storyline visualizations all stem from this sketch of Randall Munroe’s movie narrative charts: Various researchers have incrementally pushed this idea forwards, algorithmically generating the chart, optimizing the layout of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Annotation, Data Visualization, Line Chart, Timeseries | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Vis2022 and the under explored realms of text + vis

Posted on October 22, 2022 by richardbrath

Vis 2022 was thematically tied together by both a keynote and capstone discussing the use of text and visualizations. This is wonderful as it helps draw attention to under-researched text and visualization. The two presentations dealt with very different use … Continue reading →

Posted in Annotation, Data Visualization, Design Space, Text Visualization | Leave a comment

Showing risks, rights & freedoms in visualizations

Posted on March 15, 2022 by richardbrath

The tragic events in Ukraine have left me wondering how quantitative visualizations miss showing complex issues such as human rights. One aspect of this conflict mentioned by various media outlets as well as elected officials is the flow of funds … Continue reading →

Posted in Alphanumeric Chart, Annotation, Data Visualization, Treemap | 1 Comment

Generating stories about data with visualization

Posted on February 28, 2019 by richardbrath

Early in my career, I’d create data visualizations and without fail, my manager would ask: “So, what’s the story here?” In data visualization the objective isn’t the visualization – it’s the insight gained from the visualization. Visualizations don’t announce their … Continue reading →

Posted in Annotation, Data Visualization | Tagged | 1 Comment