Hi, welcome to Illustrate This!

I’m Brian, and my aim here is to provide some useful information in the form of simple charts and maps. I’m from a data background and have lots of experience but I’m doing this in my spare time to learn a few new things.

I first thought of ‘Illustrate This’ after being really frustrated every time I’d read a news article with lots of numbers, but not a single chart - infuriating! I mean, it’s so simple to do, but makes such a big difference.

Anyway, I thought I’d start doing a few charts where I felt they’d been missed, and explore a few new techniques while I was at it.

And then… Covid came to Ireland (just a few weeks after I registered the site name) and people had a hunger for information. Almost no one was reporting all-Ireland numbers, and so I thought I’d try to provide a view of how things were changing across the whole island. I ended up spending a fair amount of time over the pandemic trying to compile simple clear numbers, along with maps.

Now that Covid is (hopefully) behind us I’ve lots of new ideas.

I’ve a few projects coming up – trying to make it easy to navigate some complex numbers with a few interactive charts, but more on this later!

I also have a fascination with more abstract visualisations and maps, so expect to see a few of these. Hope you enjoy!