What do you think?
Rate this book
The Art of Insight: How Great Visualization Designers Think
In The Art of Insight: How Great Visualization Designers Think, renowned visualization designer and educator Alberto Cairo, in conversation with several leaders in the field, delivers an inspiring exploration of how they make design choices. The book is a celebration of visualization, and a personal journey that dives into subjects like:
— How the professional background and life experiences of every designer shape their choices of what to visualize and how to visualize it.
— What designers from different countries and cultures, and working in different fields, such as data art, data analytics, or data journalism, have in common, or how they differ from each other.
— How designers reflect on research, ethical reasoning, and also aesthetic judgments, to make decisions such as selecting the most appropriate ways to encode data, or the most appealing visual style.
Perfect for data scientists and data journalists, The Art of Insight will also inspire artists, analysts, statisticians, and any other professional who uses data visualizations.
— How the professional background and life experiences of every designer shape their choices of what to visualize and how to visualize it.
— What designers from different countries and cultures, and working in different fields, such as data art, data analytics, or data journalism, have in common, or how they differ from each other.
— How designers reflect on research, ethical reasoning, and also aesthetic judgments, to make decisions such as selecting the most appropriate ways to encode data, or the most appealing visual style.
Perfect for data scientists and data journalists, The Art of Insight will also inspire artists, analysts, statisticians, and any other professional who uses data visualizations.
320 pages, Paperback
Published November 15, 2023
About the author
Alberto Cairo
13 books128 followersAlberto Cairo is the Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication of the University of Miami. The author of several textbooks, he consults with companies and institutions like Google and the Congressional Budget Office on visualizations. He lives in Miami, Florida.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 6, 2023
Although Cairo has eloquently described and exemplified the functionalist method in his previous books, he has always been careful not to dogmatize it and criminalize other ways of approaching visualization, always appreciating that things like beauty, humor, and experimentation also are valuable – even functional. Despite being influenced by statistics-minded systematizers such as Edward Tufte, he has acknowledged that the Tufte-inspired prescriptivist/idealist discourse focusing on efficiency can lead to a limited, rule-based, exclusivist understanding of visualization. So it comes as no surprise that in The Art of Insight he presents an even more pragmatist and descriptivist/pluralist perspective, exploring the personal stories, goals, and opinions of a diverse selection of visualization creators coming from (or traveling into) different fields such as data art, data science, or data journalism.
I may be one of the representatives of a technical, analytical minimalism in this book but I’m very glad to be among these amazing, passionate people – categorized as Pragmatists, Eccentrics, Ambassadors, and Narrators – with different perspectives and styles. The Art of Insight is not only a showcase for the diversity of what visualization can be and do, but also a joyful demonstration of how much we share in common in our stories, struggles, motivations, hopes, or doubts, even when the purposes and the end-products of our work are different.
I may be one of the representatives of a technical, analytical minimalism in this book but I’m very glad to be among these amazing, passionate people – categorized as Pragmatists, Eccentrics, Ambassadors, and Narrators – with different perspectives and styles. The Art of Insight is not only a showcase for the diversity of what visualization can be and do, but also a joyful demonstration of how much we share in common in our stories, struggles, motivations, hopes, or doubts, even when the purposes and the end-products of our work are different.
February 7, 2024
Well, mixed feelings. I am a fan of Alberto Cairo, and every book he writes, I go and buy it almost immediately. I was waiting for this one. I mean, when I saw it on Goodreads, I was like checking every 2-3 months to see how close its release was and when I could buy it.
Looking at his books, they have a, I would say, downward trend for me, in the sense that the first one had a great impact on me, the second one a little less, the third one even less. That one made sense as it had to do with a very specific issue. Makes sense as it is very specific even from the title: "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information". For the fourth one, which would have been quite personal to his professional tastes, I had somewhat lover expectations, which I would say were confirmed plus even lower.
Why is that? That happens because the author allows his political preferences to “leak”, a lot, to the point that he even puts the reader who generally agrees with him in defence. That is like to think while reading: where does the interview begin, where does the author throw in a political comment, and where do we have an opinion or propaganda? This makes the reading very, very difficult. And I can't hide a disappointment that filled me while I was reading it.
One example, “immigration”. Well, I am a first generation immigrant, married to also a first generation immigrant, I see the positives of immigration... but somehow Alberto Cairo managed to break my b411s. Like, "Alberto immigration is good, we got it, thank you”. Additionally, where are the negative aspects? Why didn't you interview or reach out to someone with the opposite opinion? Where is your impartiality, let me open the window? Ah, there in that bin, just checking.
And that is of the feelings that I had from reading this book. I got all I wanted from it: books to buy recommended here, people to follow. I learned and saw a lot of things, which will certainly help me in the projects I will do. The overall feeling is very positive. But the negative aspect which becomes more and more present in every book he writes, dropping in his political views tires the reader as they need to be on the defence, making him (OK, me) kind of question the ethics of the author. Based on this, I will continue to buy and read his books, but I think our author-reader relationship has corroded.
Looking at his books, they have a, I would say, downward trend for me, in the sense that the first one had a great impact on me, the second one a little less, the third one even less. That one made sense as it had to do with a very specific issue. Makes sense as it is very specific even from the title: "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information". For the fourth one, which would have been quite personal to his professional tastes, I had somewhat lover expectations, which I would say were confirmed plus even lower.
Why is that? That happens because the author allows his political preferences to “leak”, a lot, to the point that he even puts the reader who generally agrees with him in defence. That is like to think while reading: where does the interview begin, where does the author throw in a political comment, and where do we have an opinion or propaganda? This makes the reading very, very difficult. And I can't hide a disappointment that filled me while I was reading it.
One example, “immigration”. Well, I am a first generation immigrant, married to also a first generation immigrant, I see the positives of immigration... but somehow Alberto Cairo managed to break my b411s. Like, "Alberto immigration is good, we got it, thank you”. Additionally, where are the negative aspects? Why didn't you interview or reach out to someone with the opposite opinion? Where is your impartiality, let me open the window? Ah, there in that bin, just checking.
And that is of the feelings that I had from reading this book. I got all I wanted from it: books to buy recommended here, people to follow. I learned and saw a lot of things, which will certainly help me in the projects I will do. The overall feeling is very positive. But the negative aspect which becomes more and more present in every book he writes, dropping in his political views tires the reader as they need to be on the defence, making him (OK, me) kind of question the ethics of the author. Based on this, I will continue to buy and read his books, but I think our author-reader relationship has corroded.
July 8, 2026
The author’s emphasis on data practitioners’ stories is inspiring and emotionally engaging for the most part. The writing itself can be a little intimidating or academic at points. Regardless, I learned how others approach a data visualization challenge, whether it be scientific or artistic.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews