A field guide to data stories · 6 plates
Story Filed Guide
A collection of data visualization projects. Each plate pairs one carefully chosen chart with the short story it tells — about the climate, our cities, the natural world, and how we live.
Seventy-Five Years Above the Line
How far each year’s global surface temperature has strayed from the mid-century norm — and in which direction.
The plates
6 stories
Seventy-Five Years Above the Line
How far each year’s global surface temperature has strayed from the mid-century norm — and in which direction.
The Long Commute
Fifteen years of average one-way travel time in three fictional metros — and the year the rush hour vanished.
Where the Rain Falls
Six cities, twelve months: a calendar of wet and dry seasons from monsoon to desert.
Who Came to the Feeder
One winter of backyard bird counts, ranked by sightings.
Powering the Grid
Thirty-four years of a fictional region’s electricity mix, from coal-heavy to renewables-led.
The Reading Year
A city library system’s loans in one number — and the month-by-month shape behind it.
How the plates are made
Every chart in the guide follows the same small set of rules, so the collection reads as one system.
- Form before color
- The job of the data — change, rank, polarity, a single headline — picks the chart. Sometimes the answer is one big number.
- Colorblind-safe palette
- Series colors come in a fixed, validated order, so neighbouring colors stay distinct under common color-vision deficiencies.
- Nothing by color alone
- Legends, direct labels and a full table view accompany every chart. Light and dark modes are tuned separately.
- One axis, honest scales
- No dual axes, no truncated bars. Where two measures differ in scale, they get two charts.