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Jonas Oesch

@jonasoesch.ch

214 followers 144 following 26 posts

Visual journalist at @visuals.nzz.ch Personal: jonasoesch.ch

Posts Replies Media

Jonas Oesch @jonasoesch.ch · 05/03/2026

How to properly AI-generate alt-texts for charts A simple screenshot prompt produces texts that are too long and unstructured. By interviewing blind readers, Alessia Vannini and Julia Locher found a form that works much better. Report and examples: github.com/a-vannini/Al...

A stacked bar chart and the corresponding structured alt-text:

Horizontal bar chart. Title: Career choice follows old role patterns. Subtitle: Shares of women and men in various occupations in 2022, in percent. Horizontal axis: 0 to 100 percent. Vertical axis: Nursing and midwifery (vocational education and training), Electricity and energy (vocational education and training), Social work (students at universities of applied sciences), Engineering and IT (students at universities of applied sciences), Human medicine (students at traditional universities), Mechanical and electrical engineering (students at traditional universities). One bar per occupation, divided into two segments: Women (purple), Men (green).

In most occupational fields, a gender-specific distribution is evident.

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Jonas Oesch @jonasoesch.ch · 03/01/2026

A rough 3D reconstruction of «Le Constellation» in Crans-Montana. Using publicly available photos, videos and plans @simonhuwiler.ch, Forrest Rogers and I reconstructed the bar’s layout and approximate dimensions. www.nzz.ch/visuals/aktu...

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Jonas Oesch @jonasoesch.ch · 03/12/2025

How the Swiss National Council has shifted over time: Analyzing every vote since 2004 shows that party differences have become more distinct, with fewer overlaps than in earlier years. www.nzz.ch/visuals/parl...

A ridgeline or joyplot showing the biggest parties in the Swiss National Council. The y-axis show the years sind 2004. The x-axis shows positioning from right to left. The curves indicate how members of different parties have voted.

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Jonas Oesch @jonasoesch.ch · 28/08/2025

Why Visual Journalism is so slow? I've tracked every hour I worked on an article for two weeks last year. Most of my time did not go into graphics production but in researching and analyzing data. The detailed breakdown and some ideas how to speed up the process: nightingaledvs.com/why-visual-j...

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Jonas Oesch @jonasoesch.ch · 20/06/2025

The balance of power in the Middle East has been shifting for some time. Iran’s allies are eroding, but its former rival Saudi Arabia is warming relations. Explore our updated interactive map: www.nzz.ch/english/inte...

Map of the middle east. Showing the axis of resistance and that the Hamas, Hezbollah, and former Syrian Army have been weakened.

Screenshot of an interactive map of the Middle East.

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Jonas Oesch @jonasoesch.ch · 14/05/2025

Better world maps for mobile! Despite years of mobile-first design, there’s been little experimentation in this area. So we designed our own at NZZ – and validated it in a large user study. Summary of the paper: jonasoesch.ch/articles/the... 1/3

Two smartphones displaying alternative thematic world maps.
The left screen shows a split-continent map with countries grouped and resized by region (e.g., Europe, Africa, Asia) using color to indicate data levels (legend: Hoch, Mittel, Tief, Sehr tief). Smaller countries like Rwanda and Panama are clearly labeled and more visible due to the rearranged layout.
The right screen displays a bubble map, where countries are represented by circles scaled to population size and shaded by data intensity. Larger countries like China and the U.S. have prominent bubbles, while smaller countries remain visible. Labels indicate population figures for Switzerland and China.

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Jonas Oesch @jonasoesch.ch · 21/03/2025

In recent months, Internet cables in the Baltic Sea have been damaged multiple times — Russian sabotage is suspected. But how does that work? Together with @cianjochem.bsky.social & @lukasmaeder.bsky.social , we visualized one case (inspired by Reuters 🤩) www.nzz.ch/ld.1875983

Infographic with a cable ship from above

Map showing the route of a Russian ship through the baltic sea and where it passed subsea cables.

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Jonas Oesch @jonasoesch.ch · 24/02/2025

Swiss supermarket chain Migros promised price cuts—and delivered on many. But at the same time, products like chocolate and coffee became more expensive, reflecting global market trends. For most shoppers, the result is only modest savings. www.nzz.ch/ld.1869677

Beeswarm plot showing the change of product prices. A normal distribution with the center around zero.

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Jonas Oesch @jonasoesch.ch · 03/12/2024

We've created an interactive map of actors in the Middle East. Click on any actor to uncover their allies, enemies, or frenemies 👉 www.nzz.ch/ld.1859853

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Jonas Oesch @jonasoesch.ch · 27/11/2024

I'm a visual journalist at the Swiss newspaper nzz.ch. One of my most impactful international projects has been this scrollytelling piece on Russian war losses: www.nzz.ch/english/russ...

Stacked area chart showing influx and losses of the Russian army

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