our site gets a new look

I’m excited today to unveil something new; I invite you to check out the freshly redesigned storytellingwithdata.com.

Yes, this is a departure from how things have been. Our landing page is no longer the blog. As a bit of history, I started the SWD blog nearly 10 years ago. The impetus was to share knowledge—I had learned and was learning things about communicating with data that I wanted others to be able to benefit from, too. I was encountering examples at Google, and increasingly from other organizations, that could be turned into teaching scenarios and thought there would be value in making generalized versions broadly accessible.

A lot has changed since then, but this fundamental desire to help others communicate effectively with data remains at the core of everything we do at storytelling with data. To that end, we will continue to share tips and makeovers through the blog, as we always have—it simply takes one more click to get to (though the Read section of the site nav bar or footer). As added benefit, the new landing page and navigational structure will hopefully make it clearer to visitors how everything fits together and help people find what they need, be it examples, insight, or inspiration.

Change is good, but it can feel uncomfortable. Think of the last time you tried to use a new tool or encountered a graph type you hadn’t seen before. The knee-jerk reaction can be to turn back to the familiar, but pushing through and embracing the discomfort that sometimes accompanies change can have great benefits. Our eyes are opened to new things. Our skills and abilities grow.

Speaking of enhancing abilities, as you browse the new site, you’ll also find some placeholders for exciting new resources that are coming soon. This will include robust search functionality to help find what you need across all of our assets: blog posts, podcasts, the books, SWDchallenges, and more. We’re also currently beta testing the SWD community, which I very much hope will soon be a space where people all over the world can hone their data storytelling skills through practice, giving and receiving feedback, and discovering great work. Stay tuned for more on that.

Thanks for following and I hope you like the refreshed storytellingwithdata.com!