This comes out of several conversations I’ve had recently about data visualisation. Specifically the way that visualisations can end up more beautiful than useful. I thought it would be fun to try and create a data viz piece that was deliberately skewed towards the aesthetic and away from the useful.

So I threw this together, it illustrates two days of Twitter messages from the people I follow as a flock of pigeons. Next up is a giant, live updated, animated version. Just as soon as I find some time and a few nice plasma screens.