Anyone who has learned Tableau online (via Udemy or any other similar platform) did the Hans Rosling chart as an exercise. So did I, and I felt it was time to do justice to that old visualization. Bare with my story on how I designed this dashboard and you can see that early viz of mine at the end of the post.
Despite all the bad news, we’re facing every day due to the broad media coverage of our modern times, the world is getting better in so many ways. This visualization shows how life expectancy is rising all over the globe in the past 5 decades, while the fertility rate is going down. The causes of these trends root in several factors, but one thing is for sure: we’re living longer than any generations before us. Click here for the interactive version.
Final dashboard design in Tableau
I might not be the best Tableau technical specialist in the world, but my main drive is conveying straightforward messages in a clear and minimalistic way. When I’m doing visualizations for fun, design is my №1 principle to follow. I usually combine Tableau with Adobe Illustrator to predesign the background and add it back to the software as an image. This way I have better control over the look and feel of the dashboard and don’t have to load all the texts and images one by one. The other thing is, that at the end of last year I listened to a TED talk about the rise of the Futura typeface after being used on the Apollo 11 mission. I fell so much in love with it, that if I have to choose only one font to use till the end of my life, I’d say Futura in a blink of an eye. Too bad Tableau only supports just a couple of web safe options, so one more reason to stick with Illustrator.
Breaking up the steps of creating this visual
When I need inspiration or just have a couple of minutes to feed my eyes with quality content, I always end up on Pinterest. A couple of days ago I saw Nadine Fauzia’s portfolio and in 5 seconds I knew that this would be the basis of my Rosling viz.
Nadine Fauzia’s portfolio
The next step was to draw my wireframe, which I always do on paper. I know it looks trashy, but literally takes 2 minutes and you have your skeleton for the whole project to start building the design.
Hand-drawn wireframe
Then the only thing before jumping into Tableau was to put together the high fidelity background in Illustrator.
Background made in Illustrator
Since I promised to show the original version I made in 2017, here it is… but don’t forget to check out my Tableau Public profile to see the upgraded version in its full interactivity!
Made by me in 2017
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