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p/the-visualization-universeCatalog of all chart types and tools to build them
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Raz Karmi

The Visualization Universe - Catalog of all chart types and tools to build them

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All chart types and tools in a single visualization ranked by popularity and rise in popularity. This catalogue explains the meaning of each chart and the tools that make them. You can use it to look up their meaning when you visualize your data or stories.

Search interest data is updated daily.

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Anna Vital
Maker
Hi Everyone! We created this project to gather all types of visualization in one place together with the tools the make them and the books that describe them. The visualization universe is updated every day reflecting the changes in search interest for the visualization types. We hope you can use this resource when you decide which type of graph is best for your data or story. We will be adding new tools and books and hope you can suggest the important ones we may have missed.
Brett Romero
Very nice, love the design. A couple of things though: 1. You mention it tells you the tools needed to make each chart - I couldn’t see that anywhere. 2. Would also be great to have links to well implemented examples for each chart type.
Anna Vital
Maker
@mrbrettromero Yep, I agree. I gave examples of charts this in another article here https://blog.adioma.com/how-to-t... Right now we just list the tools that make these charts.
Mark Vital
Maker
@mrbrettromero each chart have a link to wikipedia page, where you can see more examples and even tools for some graphs There is another great project, Data Visualization Catalogue, where you will see examples for each chart: https://datavizcatalogue.com, it's not dynamic though (you can't sort by popularity).
Daniel Action

As a product manager, I’m always in need for visualization and story telling. This is a great reference for me to help me evaluate which chart is best for delivering the story of the data.

Pros:

Thorough reference of visualization charts

Cons:

I wish there were more examples of each chart types

Anna Vital
Maker
Hi Daniel, when I think about attaching examples to each chart we'd either have to come up with objective criteria on which charts are the best representatives of each type or subjective criteria on what charts we think are best. And each chart would have at least three dimensions: the accuracy of representing data, the visualness of the design, and the effectiveness of the storytelling. And since these three aspects are the foundation of information design, we could find the best chart for each.
Mark Vital
Maker
We thought about examples, would require some more effort to do it right. For now the best alternative with examples, but without rating is: https://datavizcatalogue.com
Mark Vital
Maker
Hi, It's been our big challenge to fairly assemble a lit of chart types and tools to build them without leaving out important ones, but there still tools out there may deserve to be on this list. Please suggest what ever tool you know, even if you are not sure that it should be on this list by popularity. @razkarmi thank you for hunting us :)
Elena Iakunchykova
The book list seems to be english only this is probably not be design but Germany and Japan in general tends to have strong data viz communities so it seems strange to have no books from there on the list, but maybe that’s because Google’s data was English only
Anna Vital
Maker
@elena_iak Yes, I found that out because I just recently visited Japan and I'm in Germany now. The design community is strong here as far as practitioners but I have not found books that I was not yet aware of. One deference might be that in Germany for example data viz professors are almost exclusively in the computer science department so they tend to be more technical than say in the US where you find professors who have journalism background or design background. But of course not all books are written by professors.
George Revutsky
I like it. Anna's been making some great infographics for the 5 years, and has a deep expertise in information visualization. Seeing it all in one place as I think about how I'll visualize a data set is super-useful and the list of tools has some I've never used. Thanks guys!
Anna Vital
Maker
@george_revutsky1 I wish we also tried all the tools on the list and had screenshots of the interface. I probably tried half of the tools on the list. Some of them are hard to try without knowing a programming language though. But if screenshots and example are helpful, then we might add them.
Mark Vital
Maker
@george_revutsky1 I've tried most of the tools for programmers on this list. So you can ask me if you need a recommendation.
Elena Iakunchykova
It would be useful to connect the charts and the tools parts somehow for example person wants to make a map - what does he use to make it? like a link or something... do you have it there?
Anna Vital
Maker
@elena_iak Not yet, but you are the 4th person to ask, so this is probably a good idea. I'm not sure yet if the charts should link to tools or tools to charts. Probably both ways. I think I can send an email to each these tool companies and get lists of charts they make.
Mark Vital
Maker
@elena_iak good point. This is tricky and political task: some tools gives a lot of freedom, so you can create anything, but it takes a lot of time; some tools are very specialized. Need to think how to do it the best way!
Alex Yunak
The catalog of charts and the catalog of tools were two very different data sets. Charts are a mathematical phenomenon that is not too susceptible to trends, but tools are. So while some tools are wildly popular and others are barely known, chart popularity is more evenly distributed. That’s why the two visualizations look so different as far as search interest data.
Anna Vital
Maker
@yunakalex Yes, we had to change the scale for the tools because products like PowerPoint are much more popular than smaller products.