Well, Andy Kirk is a super important figure in the data vis scene and has a great, great blog…and I knew his thoughts would be very valuable.
And yes, this was neat! And totally different than I expected. The focus on everything that has nothing to do with shapes, visual variables, color, etc. was refreshing! For example, the focus on annotations – underrated in general, in my opinion, and seeing Andy giving it the attention it deserves was very pleasing.
Also, Andy has this super interesting way of staying very high-level while also showing great examples.
I do think it wasn’t the easiest read….there were some looong sentences and words in there, and the idea of a handbook, after all, is to be a bit more thourough than I needed it to be. It will be a valuable book on my shelf while creating data vis.
Would I recommend it to data vis beginners? No. For beginners, I normally recommend books that might not be super precise and thorough, but create a huge enthusiasm for the field and inspire lots of motivation to go deeper into it. I would recommend it for rather analytical people who want to think about data viz in a structured way after creating at least two or three on their own (It’s also not the best book to pick up to learn HOW to actually build great data visualizations. It’s more on the philosophical side….which I found super enjoyable.)