RJ's Vulnerable Voyage

Introducing a limited series.

Welcome to Chartography.net — insights and delights from the world of data storytelling.

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📈 To all executives, managers, and other professionals with high-stakes data communication needs: I am now available full time for the design of powerful graphics in a wide variety of styles. For an extensive assortment of portfolio specimens and past client projects please see https://infowetrust.com/ and reply directly with inquiries.

🍎 We sold out my in-person Persuasive Data Graphics class at San Francisco’s fabulous Letterform Archive. So we expanded seats. Now, there is but one seat remaining (again). Grab it quick, we start in less than 24 hours: https://letterformarchive.org/shop/persuasive-data-graphics/

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A vulnerable voyage

A good design essay shows you a creator’s preliminary sketches. A great design essay explains how they reasoned through complex decisions.

But these essays are usually constructed after completion, postpartum, and usually only when the outcome is a success. There aren’t many postmortem design retrospectives.

What if we took a different approach? What if we share thinking and artifacts along the way, before we know the ending of the story—prenatal. Perhaps the act of documenting and sharing will spur the design to greater heights?

To warrant this kind of semi-transparent creation, the design challenge would need a lot of meat to chew through. It should be complex. It should be lengthy. It should give some promise of completion. It should be worth giving a damn.

I’ve been waiting for a project that would afford this kind of experience. Today, I’m excited to invite you to spectate (and weigh-in, if you like) as I develop a new entrepreneurial imprint called Maps for Kids. To make it real, we will not only touch the design of graphic matters, but the design of business matters too.

It is necessary to conduct this experiment in a semi-private fashion. Only paying subscribers to Chartography will get to peer in. I want you onboard for this little adventure, so I have lowered subscription rates to $5 per month or $50 per year. (These new rates will also transfer to existing subscribers going forward.)

In the part one, coming in a few days, we will consider the vision and branding of Maps for Kids. After that, I expect to share updates weekly.

I understand if a paid subscription isn’t a good fit for you right now. Chartography will be back to fully open at the conclusion of this limited series.

Onward!—RJ

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About

RJ Andrews helps organizations solve high-stakes problems by using visual metaphors and information graphics: charts, diagrams, and maps. His passion is studying the history of information graphics to discover design insights. See more at infoWeTrust.com.

RJ’s next book, Info We Trust, is currently available for pre-order. He published Information Graphic Visionaries, a book series celebrating three spectacular data visualization creators in 2022 with new writing, complete visual catalogs, and discoveries never seen by the public.