Blog.

Lately I've been very interested in generative graphics: creating logos or designs based on code visualizations. This is one of my attempts to create an "R" using OpenFrameworks and the Box2D physics library.

See Animation Video Download Source Code

I've found that good data visualizations are hard to find. Even the best sites have post after post showing ugly bubble diagrams with Twitter connections. So here's my list of some of the best sources for great data visualizations I've stumbled upon in 2009:

http://infosthetics.com/
Great site if you know where to look. Go back in the archives to find beautiful work.

http://flowingdata.com
Not as good as infosthetics and also a much smaller site.

http://www.nytimes.com/
Sounds weird, but their graphic department leaded by Steve Duenes come up with great, refined visuals.

http://www.earlboykins.blogspot.com/
Minimalist graphs visualizing performances or everyday experiences.

http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/
Not my favourite. Look for great data mashups, not great graphics.

http://www.datamasher.org/
Same with this one.

And some greats books:

Maeda @ Media
Not the best book about creative coding, but a nice look into the earlier works of John Maeda.

Creative Code
The better one by John Maeda.

Graphic Data Revealed
A really good book. Short and precise.

Data Flow
A truly beautiful book about modern data visualization. 50 percent of the content is great, which is much, much higher than all other stuff around.

Lately I've been doing a lot of Processing and it's pretty clear the the Processing IDE doesn't compare to powerful applications like Eclipse. There's an excellent tutorial on processing.org on how to import the core.jar Processing library into your Eclipse Java project. I tried the tutorial, but couldn't figure out how to import the core.jar - because when trying to import the filesystem, I couldn't expand the Processing applications folder. Because OSX treats applications like an encapsulated file, it's not possible to browse into the Processing folder and select the library. In Finder it's possible to right-click and select "Show Package Contents", but you cannot do this from inside the Eclipse dialog. This is how you solve the problem:

1. Select your Applications folder and press "OK"

2. Manually add "/Processing" in the textfield.

3. Click "Browse". Now you will see the package contents of the Processing applications folder

4. Navigate to the core.jar file and import it.