Introducing: The ’Gale. Our newsletter is your new, best way to…
By: Isaac Levy-Rubinett
Tags: Data Journalism, Visual Design, Data Visualization, Design

Introducing: The ’Gale

Nightingale’s newsletter is your new best way to stay up to date with the journal of the Data Visualization Society Isaac Levy-Rubinett Follow Aug 28, 2020 · 5 min read

It’s not a tropical storm, it’s not a bird, it’s not your mom’s friend (unless your mom is friends with Florence Nightingale, in which case it kind of is). No, The ’Gale is the new newsletter for Nightingale, the journal of the Data Visualization Society, and we are excited to present our first issue. In this installment, we’ll tell you a bit more about our plans for The ’Gale and update you on some recent stories and any news you may have missed.

Florence Nightingale, our publication’s namesake

Who are we?

Chances are, if you’re getting this email you are already familiar with Nightingale. But in case you aren’t, we are the publication of the Data Visualization Society. We aim to bring you high-quality writing about data visualization, including articles on important topics in the field, best practices, and applications across history, sports, science, entertainment, and more.

What can you expect?

The ’Gale will arrive in your inbox in regular installments, though it won’t always look the same. We’ll feature interviews with writers and visualization practitioners, exciting or unique datasets and visualization challenges, feature some of our favorite work, and fill you in on any of our articles that you may have missed. If we have site news or upcoming events (like “Nightingale and Chill” Week 👀 ), we’ll be sure to let you know about them.

In case you missed it

“The thing is, scrollytelling isn’t about the scrolling anyway. It’s just a very realistic content consumption experience that stems directly from how we interact with computers. We can only consume one thing at a time. As we consume chunks of content, we want relevant supporting information in context. Scrolling is the way we place this content in front of ourselves for consumption.”

Scrollytelling is almost ubiquitous now, but it wasn’t always. Read more from Bill Shander about the origins of the form and what that can tell us about its future.

Promoting your own work is tricky business — in the third and final installment of Will Chase’s series on fashioning a career in data viz, he wrote about how to build a portfolio, share your work, and build a supportive community. Will’s boiled down his biggest advice into four important steps:

Show your work

Make a name for yourself

Maintain your sanity and be patient

Cultivate a community

Read more on how to turn your practice into a career.

Featured viz

This map is based on data from the Chronicle of Higher Education: red circles represent in-person teaching, blue circles are online-only, and purple circles are for hybrid

“The difficulties we faced with our initial decisions led us to a binary choice: Were institutions going to hold classes in-person or would they be online-only?

This simple data point did two things: It threw our current higher-education landscape into sharp relief, and it pointed to the richness of human experience that lies behind the dots and circles on a map. Most schools in most states are incorporating at least some in-person classes, and are thus putting the most vulnerable members of their communities at risk.”

Read more from @akhenrichs and the Visionary Futures Collective about their initiative to map institutional COVID-19 responses throughout higher education and envision a build a remade academy. Click the image below to read more:

More from Nightingale

What else?

Nightingale has merch! You can finally broadcast your Nightingale fandom to the world with a T-shirt (men’s, women’s, different colors and styles), or just enjoy a data-viz-inspired cup of coffee.

In addition, we’ve got face masks, hoodies, socks, stickers, and more. Check out our online store.

Look out for:

Next week is “Nightingale and Chill” Week on Nightingale. We’ll be exploring the intersections between entertainment (books, TV shows, movies, etc.) and data visualization, and how visualizing elements of our favorite pieces of art can help us understand them more fully, and have fun doing it.

Thank you!

Thanks for subscribing to The ’Gale! Feel free to share it with friends, family, coworkers, and more. We are thrilled to be part of such a wonderful community around data viz and can’t wait for what’s to come.