Reflections on the #DuBoisChallenge2024: from prints to python to prints

I now have 10 weeks of recreating Du Bois data visualisations behind me. And it truly felt like a special experience. Having read about Du Bois’s work early on in 2024, the #DuBoisChallenge2024 felt like the perfect way to get up close and personal with his (and his team’s) work.

Somewhere in week 3, I got the idea to print the 10 visualisations when I would be done. It felt like a fitting thing to do, bringing my recreations in python back to the original format: print.

And the prints just got in ??

I learned a lot by taking part in the challenge. Some highlights for me are:

• Hands-on experiencing implementing Du Bois’s design decisions (e.g. showing data differently than they technically are to emphasize a point or effect).
• Feeling way more comfortable with using custom texts and data labels.
• Creative applications of data visualisation techniques, e.g. line plots as custom grid lines, random data as a ‘ripped paper effect’, and scatter plots to improve readability of data labels.

In the end, I feel more comfortable with python & matplotlib than I did before. And that feels like time well spent ??

Special thanks to...

For now, I’d like to thank the Data Visualisation Society and Anthony Starks for setting up the challenge, providing all the examples, background information, and preparing the data.

Want to know more?

I kept a live blog during the challenge. On it, you can read more about my recreations:

• Why I decided to join the challenge in the first place.
• Reflections on my experience recreating each week's visualisation.
• A link to the python code for each visualisation (including some explanations).

Curious? You can read all that here: https://www.edriessen.com/2024/02/07/developing-du-boiss-data-portraits-with-python-and-matplotlib/

#DuBoisChallenge2024 #dataviz #python