Creating charts with Datawrapper
Our team uses Datawrapper to create the different types of charts, tables, and maps you see on our website. It’s a versatile cloud-based web application that doesn’t require coding skills to produce rich, interactive, and responsive data visualizations that you can easily embed on your website, print, or send to someone. And as an added bonus, it doesn’t cost anything to get started with Datawrapper and its free version is quite powerful and feature-rich! The only downside is that the free version includes subtle “Created with Datawrapper” branding at the bottom of each of your visualizations. But, it’s fine for us. If that bothers you, there are custom and enterprise subscription plans that remove all Datawrapper branding and allow you to add your company logo, custom fonts, custom colours, and output print-ready files. Major media companies like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and New York Times use the Enterprise version.
What we like about Datawrapper
Like all software, there is a bit of a learning curve, but it won’t take long to get the hang of the tool. The folks at Datawrapper have developed a straightforward workflow that makes it easy for you visualize your data. From importing your data to choosing the different types of charts to visualize your data, adding the appropriate annotations like titles, descriptions, and notes, all the way through to publishing the charts, there are prompts to guide you throughout the entire process.
There are also a ton of resources available including a blog series written by people who work at Datawrapper with information on platform updates, weekly charts, do’s and don’ts of making charts, and best practices for making maps, among other topics. There’s also the Datawrapper Academy, a series of how-to articles that walks you through how to build and customize various visualizations. You can also check out their series of training modules to help you learn how to get the most out of the platform.
What about the charts? Glad you asked! Datawrapper has an extensive library of the type of charts, maps, and tables you can create. There are a total of 19 charts to choose from, three types of maps and tables that can be fully customized to meet your needs. While not every type of chart is available, there is more than enough to meet your needs. Here’s what Datawrapper can help you create:
Charts: Bar, Split Bars, Stacked Bars, Grouped Bars, Bullet Bars, Dot Plot, Range Plot, Arrow Plot, Column Chart, Stacked Column Chart, Grouped Column Chart, Area Chart, Line Chart, Pie Chart, Donut Chart, Multiple Pie Chart, Multiple Donut Chart, Scatter Plot, and Election Donut.
Maps: Choropleth, Symbol, and Locator.
Tables: Fully customizable and responsive tables.
Another advantage of Datawrapper is it’s a no-code cloud-based solution. We’re not coding experts. Datawrapper makes it for us to create engaging visualizations without the need to code anything. So far, we’ve been able to produce graphs that fit our needs.
Datawrapper workflow
Creating and sharing charts and tables is simple. The workflow involves four steps:
Uploading Data: Importing data into Datawrapper is fairly simple and you have many options. You can elect to copy and paste the data, upload a CSV/XLS, connect to Google Sheets, or link a file stored on an external. This last option is great if you want your visualizations to be updated live. Our go-to has been connecting to Google Sheets. We find that it saves us the trouble of having to upload a new CSV/XLS when we update data. Instead, all we have to do is hit refresh and wait for Datawrapper and update the data it’s pulling in its system. You’ll have to republish your visualization if you have made changes to the spreadsheet you’re linking to in Google Sheets.
Check & Describe: This step involves checking the data you’ve imported. Use this step to verify that Datawrapper has interpreted the information you’ve provided accurately. Datawrapper will also let you if there are any issues with your data. Errors will be marked in red. During this stage, you can also elect to hide specific columns from your visualization. You can also choose to define the type of content within specific columns - numbers, data, or text.
Visualization: This is the step where you choose to type of chart you want to create. There are 19 types of charts to choose from and you can preview each of by them clicking on the chart type. Once you’ve selected the type of chart you want, you can customize the vertical and horizontal axes, the colours in the charts, etc. You can add a title, description, and notes within the annotation tab. You can use HTML/CSS to stylize the title and description and turn them into colour keys.
4. Publish and embed: Before you share your visualization, you’ll first have to publish them. Once you are satisfied with the way your graph or table looks, head on over to the Publish and Embed tab. Hit the publish button and your visualization is now ready to be shared. You can download it as a static PNG, share a digital version of the graph that is stored on the Datawrapper server, or embed it on a website using code supplied by Datawrapper.
Key features of Datawrapper
Datawrapper has a clean, intuitive interface that makes it easy to engage with the cloud-based product’s full range of functions, which include:
Copy data from Excel, Sheets, or the web into Datawrapper
Create live-updating charts by uploading CSV/XLS files or linking to a URL
Embed different types of interactive and responsive charts, maps, and tables
Export as PNG, PDF, or SVG
Colorblind check for all images
Live-updating graphics for maps
Stylize titles, descriptions, notes and tooltips with HTML/CSS
Who is Datawrapper for
Datawrapper is a popular data visualization tool trusted by journalists, educational institutions, finance companies, government institutions, and think tanks. It’s a useful application for those seeking to build interactive, responsive charts, tables, and maps, but have limited coding skills or time. So, if you are looking for a quick, simple, and reliable data visualization tool, check out Datawrapper. Have fun!
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