iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 6h

The trend for alternating genders continues, with Anne Carson being awarded the 2026 #NobelPrize in Literature!

Infographic titled "Women of the Nobel Prize" showing the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1901 to 2026. Each prize share is drawn as a thin vertical bar: tan for men (104) and pink for women (19, or 15.4%). Pink bars are scattered through the first half of the timeline and become much more frequent from the 1990s onward, with a woman honored in roughly every second or third year in the most recent decades. Two women are labeled with portraits: Selma Lagerlöf in 1909 (prize share 1/1), the first woman in this category, and Anne Carson in 2026 (prize share 1/1), the most recent. Gaps in the bars mark years when no prize was awarded.

Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

The 2026 #NobelPrize in Chemistry is awarded to Henri Kagan and Kensō Soai for the discovery of non-linear effects and autocatalysis in asymmetric organic synthesis. Congratulations! Time to update our #WomenoftheNobelPrize #infographic! #dataviz

Infographic titled "Women of the Nobel Prize" showing the Nobel Prize in Chemistry from 1901 to 2026. Each prize share is drawn as a thin vertical bar: tan for men (193) and pink for women (8, or 4.0%). Pink bars are sparse: a few in the first half of the timeline, one around the 1960s, and a cluster in the most recent decade or so. Two women are labeled with portraits: Marie Skłodowska-Curie in 1911 (prize share 1/1, the full prize), the first woman in this category, and Carolyn Bertozzi in 2022 (prize share 1/3), the most recent. Gaps in the bars mark years when no prize was awarded.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Additional fun fact: both Georges Charpak and Francis Halzen won the #NobelPrize for their work on the detection of subatomic particles!

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This is very unique! Not only do we have a Belgian laureate for the #NobelPrize in Physics (proud!), but it has been over 30 years since the committee decided to award the prize to a single individual! 1/4 #dataviz #infographic

Infographic titled "Team effort" about the Nobel Prize in Physics. A bar chart shows the number of laureates per year from 1901 to 2026, on a scale from 1 to 3. In the early decades most years have one laureate, with occasional years of two or three. From around the 1950s onward, years with two and three laureates become increasingly common, and a note says the prize has been awarded more and more often to groups of researchers rather than individuals. Two single-laureate years are highlighted in dark brown and labeled with portraits: Georges Charpak in 1992 and Francis Halzen in 2026. The text explains that Halzen's 2026 prize to a single person is unusual, as the last time this happened was 34 years earlier.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Now that we know the 2026 Nobel Prize laureates for Medicine, it's time to start my yearly infographic update! Since its inception in 1901, the Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to 14 women - Mary Brunkow was the most recent one, in 2025. #dataviz #infographic #NobelPrize

nfographic titled "Women of the Nobel Prize" showing the Nobel Prize in Medicine from 1901 to 2026. Each prize share is drawn as a thin vertical bar: tan for men (221) and pink for women (14, or 6.0%). Pink bars are rare in the first half of the timeline and appear more often from the 1980s onward. Two women are labeled with portraits: Gerty Cori in 1947 (prize share 1/4), the first woman in this category, and Mary E. Brunkow in 2025 (prize share 1/3), the most recent. Gaps in the bars mark years when no prize was awarded.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Qualitative data visuals are data visuals, too! So, reddit decided this visual does not qualify as a data visual. Because it has no numbers. I'm curious, #dataviz community: what do we think?

Family tree of French sauces. A diagram in which lines run from basic ingredients on the left, through intermediate preparations like roux and mirepoix, to the five mother sauces in a central column (hollandaise, béchamel, velouté, espagnole and tomato sauce) and then on to their derivative sauces on the right. Design: Koen Van den Eeckhout.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

At a certain point, you are so deep into your own visual that it becomes hard to spot remaining flaws, to see which parts works and which don't. Posting it on Reddit is a fool proof way to solve that.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It's finally happened: my visual, painstakingly made over several days, has been accused of being AI!

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I've been wanting to make this for ages... finally got around to finishing it. Here's my family tree of French sauces! Are you hungry yet? #infographic #dataviz #cooking #sauces #foodinfographic

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Accessibility is one of the toughest remaining challenges in data visualization. (Someone should write a book about that!) Writing a good alt text is one of those issues. How do you keep it to the point, without completely losing the enormous information density a chart can visually convey? 1/3

Template for writing chart alt text: alt=[Chart type] of [type of data] where [reason for including chart]. The text includes a note to add a link to the data source somewhere in the surrounding text. The four key phrases are color-coded — yellow for chart type, cyan for data type, green for the reason, and orange for the data source link.

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Voilà: Francis Gagnon @chezvoila.com · 10/09/2026

I've just done the largest update to the #dataviz starter pack, with 30 accounts (20%) replaced. It means it will generate more content now. Might be worth re-clicking. Sadly, gender imbalance got worse. I saved 5 spots for women-run accounts. Send suggestions, including yourself! Replies or DMs.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Avoiding abbreviations is one of the easiest ways to remove noise from a data visual. Do you know what "EL" stands for? Or "HR"? If you didn't immediately think "Greece" or "Croatia," you're not alone. 1/3

Bar chart titled 'Number of inhabitants per paid political mandate,' ranking EU27 countries from lowest to highest ratio, labeled with ISO alpha-2 country codes (e.g., FR for France, DK for Denmark). France has the lowest ratio at 134 inhabitants per mandate; Latvia (LV) has the highest at 2,570. The EU27 average of 385, shown in dark blue, falls between Portugal (304) and Romania (415). Source: European Committee of the Regions and VRT NWS.

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Accessibility Awareness @a11yawareness.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Many struggle with writing alt text for charts and other other data visualizations. Amy Cesal's "Writing Alt Text for Data Visualization" hammers home the importance of explaining the chart type, the type of data, and the reason for the chart. medium.com/nightingale/...

medium.com

Writing Alt Text for Data Visualization

How do you write text that conveys the whole meaning of a visualization? You probably can’t. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Yes, you can use AI to create scientific visuals. But don't let it touch your data graphs. Not even to "polish them up." A recent Nature piece on AI and scientific illustration suggested a reasonable-sounding workflow: plot your data yourself, then let AI make the figure more polished. 1/5

Nature magazine cover for 23 July 2026, featuring a detailed pencil-and-ink illustration of a rhinoceros beetle alongside drafting tools. The cover shows 'Creative differences' as the main title, and 'The human art of scientific illustration in the age of AI' as subtitle.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

A dairy cow is one of the most measured animals on the planet: milk recordings, sensors, health logs. Yet most of that data ends up in dashboards that farmers barely glance at. That gap is what Kristine Piccart (Cow Coach) and I want to discuss in a short, free webinar on 10 September. 1/3

A person in a blue farm work jacket, with an embroidered name tag reading "PICCART Kristine," points at a tablet displaying a data dashboard of bar charts and key figures with up-and-down trend indicators.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Key takeaways from last week's &MOVE conference on #dataviz: ✅ tons of fresh inspiration gained (important in a creative job!) ✅ new typography knowledge unlocked (thank you Eleni Beveratou!) ✅ dozens of passionate people met (thank you Goof van de Winkel!)

A collage of three photographs from the &MOVE conference by Graphic Hunters.
Top left: Wide-angle view of the conference venue's grand interior atrium, featuring a barrel-vaulted glass roof, exposed red brick arches, and a geometric black-and-white tiled floor. Attendees mill about on the ground floor and an upper gallery level.
Top right: Close-up of a series of paper birds in white, red, pink, orange, and purple, each carrying handwritten notes from participants. Legible texts include "Hearing new perspectives, being inspired, meeting & making friends", "Unlock knowledge that would otherwise be lost", and "Creativity, financial stability, connexion".
Bottom right: A packed lecture hall during a talk. A speaker stands at a podium to the right, presenting to a full audience seated in tiered rows.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

🚂 Travelling to Utrecht for one of this year's highlights: &MOVE, a 2-day event by Graphic Hunters exploring the intersection between #dataviz and storytelling. Also looking forward to the #typography workshop by Eleni Beveratou! Who will also be there? I'd love to say hi! 🙋‍♂️

Event poster for &MOVE, an event organised by Graphic Hunters taking place on June 11 & 12. The poster has a warm cream background overlaid with a fine orange grid pattern, evoking graph paper. The title "&MOVE" is set in large bold type — the ampersand in orange, "MOVE" in dark blue — with a fluid, ribbon-like lavender shape flowing behind and through the letterforms, suggesting motion. A smaller orange ampersand is layered within the larger one, adding depth.
Below the title, the date and organiser are listed in orange, followed by the names of fourteen speakers or participants in red-orange type, arranged in pairs across seven lines:
Shirley Wu · Eleni Beveratou · Cedric Kiefer · Fe Simeoni · Liuhuaying Yang · Lina Moreno · Marta Handenawer · Self Andrea · Obinna Iwuji · Muskeen Liddar · Robin Coenen · Peiying Loh · Arianna Meroni · Cláudia Oliveira.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Less is more! That was the brief. So we designed a new map and homepage for Patentales that embodies this philosophy: only the information you need, when you need it. Check patentales.com if you're interested > and to protect your hardware or software technology.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

It is today exactly 11 years ago that Hans Van de Water and Toon Verlinden offered me the chance to participate in the first ever 'Battle of the Scientists'. Presenting my glow-in-the-dark research to a school of excited 6-to-12-year-olds was an extremely fun challenge. 1/2

Koen presenting at the Battle of the Scientists, standing in front of a white display board. He is wearing a navy blue shirt and grey trousers, holding a glow-in-the-dark rubber duck in one hand and a clicker in the other.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

Ever heard of Anton Leo Hickmann? If you're into the history of data visualization or infographics, you probably should have. 1/5 #DataVisualization #Infographics #dataviz

A collage of five images showcasing the data visualization work of Anton Leo Hickmann (Austria-Hungary, 1834–1906). Top left: a genealogical tree diagram of Habsburg monarchs with branching lines and portrait medallions. Top right: a dense multi-panel chart tracking direct and indirect tax revenues in Austria-Hungary between 1868 and 1900, using stacked area charts and labeled bands. Middle left: two semicircular pie charts comparing the religious and military composition of the population in 1860 and 1900. Bottom left: a treemap-style proportional rectangle chart comparing total government budgets across European nations, including Germany, France, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Bottom right: a double bar chart illustrating the volume and value of Austria-Hungary's most important export goods in 1878, rendered as stacked horizontal bars of varying height and color. All visualizations are printed in the style of late 19th-century lithography, with German-language labels throughout.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Just taking a moment to appreciate some of the beautiful visuals in the architectural history course I'm following. This one is by Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand's "Recueil et parallèle des édifices de tout genre", published in 1800. Can you recognize all the different city halls? #infographic

A densely composed architectural plate titled "Maisons de Ville, Palais de Justice &c." (Town Halls, Courts of Justice, etc.), rendered in fine engraved line drawing. The plate presents a comparative survey of civic buildings from multiple European cities, arranged in a grid of elevations, façades, and floor plans.
Identifiable buildings include the Maison de Ville de Bruxelles (Brussels Town Hall), shown in a large detailed Gothic façade with its characteristic central tower; the Maison de Ville d'Amsterdam, depicted as a wide classical palazzo with a prominent dome; and several other town halls and palaces of justice from cities including Valenciennes, Palermo, and others, with French captions throughout. A Capitole — attributed to Michelangelo and noted as built under Paul III — appears in plan and elevation at the centre of the plate. Additional drawings include neoclassical civic buildings of simpler massing at the bottom rows, some attributed to French architects.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

⚠️ Be careful when using area charts! ➡️ A short but helpful thread with multiple examples: (1/13) #dataviz #informationdesign #datavisualization

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

After 12 years of building a career in #dataviz and #informationdesign, here are the 4 key lessons I learned - and I can't stop preaching about them: 1/6 📸 Photo credits: Nora Dekoning

Koen Van den Eeckhout addresses an audience at a small conference. He stands in front of a large screen displaying various data visualizations — including charts, maps, and a network diagram — holding a microphone and gesturing with one hand. Several attendees are visible from behind in the foreground, seated and facing the presenter. A laptop and podium are visible to his left.
Overlaid on the right side of the image are four key lessons in rounded dashed boxes, with blue headings:

Data visualization is a business — Someone needs to pay you. Why will they do that? What's the value for them?
Build MVPs, not personal projects — Personal projects take time, MVPs bring immediate value.
Data visualization combines perspectives — Analytical skills + Communication skills + Design skills.
Data visualization works best under constraints — The real world gives you the most interesting challenges to solve.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

🎖️ Proud member of the Jean-luc Doumont mafia! Always great to see these faces again: 💬 Abigail Swillens: Expert in identifying and presenting a clear story 🎥 Marc Vandenbrande: Empowers scientific people by bringing them in front of the camera 1/2

Abigail Swillens, Koen Van den Eeckhout, Marc Vandenbrande and Jean-luc Doumont posing in front of a blackboard after a presentation by Dr. Doumont on effective scientific communication.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

This #infographic by Stephanie Phung is always a favorite example during my workshops. ✅ What WORKS in this infographic? • Consistency: colors, fonts, font sizes and illustration style are the same throughout the entire visual. Everything in the visual belongs together. 1/7

Infographic titled "Ocean Pollution" from worldoceannetwork.org, presenting key statistics about marine pollution across three visual layers representing the ocean surface, water column, and seabed.

Surface level highlights four facts: poisonous algal species have increased threefold; 1 in 20 adults will become ill after a single exposure to contaminated water; cigarettes are the most collected item during beach clean-ups; and 15% of our annual food intake consists of microplastics.

Mid-water level shows three statistics illustrated with silhouettes of marine animals: 267 marine species are prone to ingesting plastic debris (illustrated with a sea turtle); 55% of the fish we eat have ingested plastic (illustrated with fish among plastic bags); and 100,000 marine creatures die per year from plastic entanglement (illustrated with a seal tangled in debris). Two additional facts are noted: 70% of litter sinks to the seabed, and the average lifespan of a plastic bag is just 12 minutes.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Flow is one of the most important design principles to master. In a visual with a strong flow, we know where we have to start looking, then where to look next, and next, and next, until we have reached the end of the visual. 1/6

Abstract representation of 'flow' as a design principle, showing six green squares connected by a dark blue arrow.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 13/03/2026

Complex chart? Color can save it! If you ever find yourself stuck with a complex chart - maybe the data is hard to wrap your head around, or the chart type is quite uncommon - color can help you out. 1/6

Infographic titled “The digital divide,” showing that in most countries men have better access to the internet than women. Each country is represented by a vertical bar arranged from left to right by the size of the gender gap. The bar height shows the gap between male and female internet access, calculated as (% male access – % female access) divided by % male access. Positive values mean men have higher access; negative values mean women have higher access.

Bar width represents the country’s population, and color indicates overall internet penetration in households (from low to high). Most countries appear above zero, indicating higher male access. Pakistan shows the largest gender gap, followed by India and Bangladesh. A note highlights that in Nigeria, only about 7.5% of households have internet access. A small group of countries on the right side have negative values, meaning women have slightly better access; China and the Philippines are highlighted examples.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Looking to start in the world of science communication, but need some info and inspiration to get you started? Or maybe you just want to expand your network within the #scicomm community? 1/3

Blue text on a yellow background, reading 'Want to expand your scicomm network?'

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

I'm not the world's biggest fan of tutorials or online courses. Usually, I prefer to figure things out as I need them during actual projects. However, some courses were truly formative for building my #dataviz skillset. So maybe you'll like them as well? 1/6

Two-axis diagram mapping data visualization tools by purpose and complexity. The horizontal axis runs from “easy to use” on the left to “complex to use” on the right. The vertical axis runs from “creating charts” at the bottom to “designing charts” at the top.

Top left (easy + designing): Canva; Infogram, Piktochart, Visme.
Upper middle-left: PowerPoint and Keynote, with Think-cell slightly to the right.
Center upper area: Datawrapper, LocalFocus, Flourish.
Upper right: Power BI, Tableau, QlikView, Looker; further right JavaScript; far upper right D3 with Illustrator, Inkscape, and Affinity Designer.

Bottom left (easy + creating): Excel and Numbers.
Lower center-left: RAWGraphs.
Lower right: Stata, GraphPad, JMP, MATLAB; further right Python; far lower right R.

The layout suggests increasing technical complexity from left to right and a shift from straightforward chart creation to more advanced chart design from bottom to top.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

🤔 Who created 'the first #infographic ever'? ☀️ In 1625, Christoph Scheiner studied the sun's rotation by observing how sunspots appeared to move from day to day. Rather than writing everything down in text, he presented his findings in a stunning and insightful visual way...

Black-and-white historical scientific illustration of the Sun drawn as a large circle, filled with detailed sunspots tracked across its surface. A horizontal line marks the solar equator, with labeled positions of sunspots moving from left (Oriens/east) to right (Occidens/west). Latin text at the top reads “Anno Iubileo MDCXXV” and describes observations made in May. Below the Sun, a table lists dates and measurements for each day. The image documents the path of sunspots observed from May 11 to May 23, 1625, as published in Rosa Ursina.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

This is the registration form for a tool that claims it will help me with UX and UI design. I'm sure it will do a really great job 👍

Screenshot of a form field titled 'Full Name'. The name 'Koen Van den Eeckhout' is filled out, but below the field is a red warning sign: 'Invalid name. Example: John Doe'

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Julien Gaffuri @jgaffuri.eurosky.social · 29/01/2026

This #map title could be "Retirement with a sea view in Belgium". See online version on Eurostat website: tinyurl.com/2ps59n6a

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Awesome job opportunity from my network! Imec, the world’s leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies, is looking for a ✨ Presentation and Visual Storytelling Specialist ✨ 1/3

Five smiling people sitting on wooden benches in a modern office building. They're holding cups of coffee and laptops, and are clearly really happy to work at imec.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

I recently finished Info We Trust (the remastered version) by @infowetrust.com and wrote a review. The book is beautifully designed with a limited color palette, hand-drawn visuals, and a strong visual voice throughout. It’s also packed with references and marginal notes... 1/3

Cover of the book 'Info we trust' by RJ Andrews. The cover shows a black silhouette of a tree, enclosed in the white outline of a cylinder, on a dark blue background with stars.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Next week will be fun! The wonderful team at 💻 Panasonic Toughbook invited me to give a keynote on the history and importance of data visualization at their latest Innovation Forum. I'm looking forward to sharing the stage with some amazing speakers,...

Promotional poster for the Toughbook Innovation Forum. On the left, large text announces the event name, date (29 January 2026), and location (Louwman’s Toyota World, Netherlands), set against a gold-toned background with a photo of the Toyota World building featuring a distinctive domed roof. On the right, the heading “With keynotes from” appears above circular headshots of speakers with names and roles: Steven Vindevogel (Head of Europe, Toughbook), Masaki Takeda (Director of Europe, Toughbook), Jonathan Lucker (GM Solutions Engineering, Toughbook), Deborah Nas (Professor of Technological Innovation, TU Delft), a representative of the Dutch Ministry of Defence (shown with the ministry’s crest instead of a portrait), and Koen Van den Eeckhout (Information Designer, Baryon). The overall design uses a gold and dark green color palette with subtle geometric patterns.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

The most important article in issue 5 of the Big Bang Magazine on science communication in Belgium is by @vinoy.bsky.social: The Linguistic Wall. The readability of scientific articles is dropping at an alarming rate. Convoluted sentences, excessive density and impenetrable jargon...

Scatter plot showing the decline in readability of academic papers over time. The x-axis shows years from about 1880 to 2015, and the y-axis shows the Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) score. Each dot represents the average readability of papers published in a given year, based on roughly 700,000 papers. Scores are high and variable in the late 19th and early 20th century (around 25–40), then steadily decrease throughout the 20th century, reaching much lower values (around 10–15) by the 2000s, indicating that papers have become progressively harder to read.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

🪫➡️🔋 Recharging... Greetings from my favorite spot: like every year, I'm recharging somewhere in a cabin in the most beautiful part of the Netherlands. Nothing on my to do list but walking, reading, and thinking. See you next week! PS: no worries, this is an automated post. I'm fully offline!

A bench overlooking the beautiful winter heathland in the Hoge Veluwe, in the Netherlands.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

📚 In 2025, I read 37 books. Here are my favorites! 1/🧵

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

These were the best blog articles, LinkedIn posts and stories I wrote in 2025: 🎙️ Data visualization podcasts 2025: baryon.be/data-visuali... 📘 Report visuals don't have to suck: baryon.be/report-visua... 1/3

Screenshot of the Baryon website showing the four blog posts mentioned in the post, together with their respective thumbnails.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

2025 was a busy workshop year, time to wrap things up! 69 sessions, 24 organizations, 1200+ participants — and a lot of time spent teaching, learning, and refining how we can make the most powerful data visuals and infographics. 1/12

Graphic announcing the end of the 2025 workshop season, with a large “2025” and a small gift icon.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Heatmap tables are the best of both worlds: the colors let you see the big pattern at a glance (trends, outliers, clusters), while still preserving the exact numbers that matter for analysis and decision-making. 1/3 #dataviz

Heatmap table titled “Unemployment in G7 countries, January–December 2020 (OECD).” Rows list Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States; columns show monthly unemployment rates from January to December. Colors range from light yellow (low unemployment) to dark blue (high). The United States and Canada show sharp spikes in April–May 2020 (US peak 14.7% in April; Canada around 13–13.4%), then gradual declines. Germany and Japan remain consistently low (roughly 3–4% and 2.4–3.1%). France and Italy stay higher and more stable (about 7–10%). The UK rises gradually from about 4% to just over 5% by late 2020.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Arrows are tricky. For us, as the designer of the visual, it will be super clear what it means. But for someone looking at our visual for the first time, it can be highly ambiguous. Depending on the reader, the same arrow can mean sequence, zoom, range, label, movement,... 1/2

A three-column infographic showing that simple arrows are ambiguous because people interpret them in many different ways. The left column displays nine identical right-pointing arrows. The middle column lists possible interpretations: “First this, then that,” “Zooming in,” “Zooming out,” “This is the range,” “This element’s name is,” “The trajectory,” “All of this,” “Things come together,” and “Things split apart.” The right column offers visual alternatives for each meaning: numbered steps for sequence, magnification insets for zooming, a 0–100% bar for range, a label pointing to an element for naming, a dotted path for trajectory, a bracket for grouping “all of this,” a merging fork for things coming together, and a branching fork for things splitting apart.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Clients and workshop participants often ask me: "We want to be neutral. Can you make this chart more objective?" My answer: No. And neither can you. 1/3

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

I love vector images. But not for the obvious reasons. The obvious benefits are well known: ✅ they're infinitely scalable without worries about the resolution ✅ they're easy and fast to edit 1/4 #informationdesign

Illustration of man with blue hoodie drawing illustrations on a computer tablet. In the background, several shapes, nodes, handles and pen tools are visible on a light pink background.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

🎨 Not sure how your color combination will look like in real life? I love how Coolors' "Palette Visualizer" helps you with exactly that in a fast and simple way: pick any color combination and see it applied in illustrations, typography, and even a dashboard. 1/3

A collection of different visuals shown in the Coolors Visualizer tool, where you can see the same color palette being used in different illustrations, typography, and a dashboard.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

It's fine to have an unusual chart type. But you might consider giving your audience some help interpreting it. A connected scatter plot, for example, is not the most common type of chart. And when one dimension is the derivative of the other it gets even more complicated. 1/5

A cliquet diagram: a connected scatter plot showing 'new hospitalizations' on the horizontal axis, and 'daily growth of hospitalizations' on the vertical axis. Shades of blue in the background indicate the different intensity levels of the pandemic, and the data for one of the pandemic peaks is show. First, an acceleration phase, with the line moving from the bottom left to the top right as the growth is speeding up. Then, a deceleration phase, with the line moving back to the bottom left as the growth is slowing down, and then decreasing.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

#Dataviz newsletters! Here are the ones you shouldn't miss: 📩 Data Vis Dispatch, by Datawrapper - this is the one I never miss - my Nobel Prize visual was featured in a recent edition, I'm always super proud when that happens! www.datawrapper.de/blog/newslet... 1/5

Colorful paper envelopes—pink, blue, beige, green, and cream—are neatly arranged in diagonal rows on a beige wall, creating a decorative geometric pattern.

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Not sure at all how I feel about this. Completely free? What if the 'AI as an upsell' route doesn't work out?

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Koen Van den Eeckhout @vandeneeckhoutkoen.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Qualitative information design: don't underestimate how much you can design with only text! 1/8

A “Before and After” comparison of a research structure diagram.
Before: A dense yellow-orange block diagram with boxes and sub-boxes showing sections such as “Introduction and Motivation,” “The Concept of Uncertainty,” “Uncertainty Representation Approaches,” “Recent Advances in UnViz,” “Evaluation of UnViz Techniques,” and “Future Research Directions.” Subtopics like “Data Sampling Uncertainty,” “Decision Uncertainty,” “Machine Learning,” “Big Data,” and “User Studies” are clustered, making the layout busy and visually cluttered.
After: A clean, vertical flow diagram resembling a timeline or hierarchy, numbered 1–5. Each main section—like “The concept of uncertainty,” “Uncertainty representation approaches,” “Evaluation of uncertainty visualization techniques,” “Recent advances in uncertainty visualization,” and “Future research directions”—branches into smaller indented topics with light connecting lines. A gray line runs through the sequence toward “Conclusion.” New elements are marked with an exclamation symbol. The redesign replaces the crowded box layout with an elegant, linear structure that clarifies relationships and sequence.

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