Category Archives: Text Visualization

Visualizing with LLMs: challenging data visualizations

Posted on March 9, 2026 by richardbrath

LLM’s help me animate the text in ways that it perhaps should not be animated. Why? It’s about understanding breadth of design possibilities. Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, Design Space, Font Visualization, Kinetic Typography, LLM, Text Visualization, Variable Fonts | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Alice text gets wavy

Posted on February 21, 2026 by richardbrath

After failing to create an effective scrolling news ticker, the author explores kinetic typography’s potential for data visualization. “Dreamy Alice,” is an interactive version of Alice in Wonderland where text movement semantically encodes plot emotions, demonstrating how animation can dynamically enhance large-scale reading. Continue reading →

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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

Free movies (and LLM-aided viz design)

Posted on January 3, 2026 by richardbrath

An LLM-driven exploration of visualizing 800 National Film Registry movies. After failed genre and text-embedding approaches, the author uses LLMs to generate nuanced attributes, cluster films, and design an interactive visualization that reveals meaningful similarities without standard categories, reflecting on strengths and limits of “Team LLM” design iteration. Continue reading →

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Can seg∙men∙ting words aid reading?

Posted on December 4, 2025 by richardbrath

A new study finds that visual tweaks meant to make English easier to read actually slow readers down. Yet the challenge remains: can typography guide beginners through English’s messy spelling? This post explores why interventions fail, what might still work, and why thoughtful design—and persistence—are essential to innovation. Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, Legibility, Readability, Text Skimming, Text Visualization | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fitting text into tables: it’s time for AI-gen Tacos

Posted on October 4, 2025 by richardbrath

Trouble fitting text into tables? LLM Taco visualizations can help. Text-Tacos are Textual TAble CartOgrams that bend table gridlines so that cells can show more text. These table cartograms can be generated with AI, although there are challenges describing the layout algorithm to the LLM. Text-Tacos can benefit qualitative data visualization, such as the analysis of customer reviews from surveys. Continue reading →

Posted in Data Visualization, Design Space, LLM, Text Skimming, Text Visualization, Thematic Map | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Revolution revelation: visualizing word similarity

Posted on May 15, 2025 by richardbrath

Dada, post-modernists and stock certificates all overlay text. We can use this in data visualization to overlay similar words, for creative uses such as rhetorical devices, or analytic uses such as entity resolution. Continue reading →

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Introducing WordsPlot

Posted on April 5, 2025 by richardbrath

The article critiques traditional word clouds in data visualization, suggesting AI-generated alternatives like text-centric plots (bar, table, scatter, and beeswarm). It discusses creating these visualizations using Claude.ai with detailed prompts, emphasizing ease and adaptability in crafting visual data representations. The author explores potential improvements and future applications in data storytelling. Continue reading →

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Which are the best cities and why? Tables of text & AI

Posted on March 15, 2025 by richardbrath

Which are the best cities and why? Numeric tables miss where those numbers came from. Tables of text provide rich detail. AI can build these tables. AI’s biases can also be revealed in these tables. Continue reading →

Posted in Alphanumeric Chart, Data Visualization, LLM, Text Visualization | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

AI gets creative generating text visualizations

Posted on December 20, 2024 by richardbrath

AI’s ability to generate diagrams and visualizations significantly improved in 2024. How about text-dense visualizations? It makes some attempts at timelines and concrete poetry. Continue reading →

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