What's been more interesting to me lately than using software to design data visualizations is learning to draw data by hand. It's a time consuming process but incredibly rewarding. The feeling of erasing graphite to reveal clean, crisp lines is something that software cannot recreate.
What do you use to erase pencil? The words "Using an eraser and a light touch" suggest a gum or a vynil eraser. I make a ball with the kneaded eraser and roll it with the palm against the paper.
Kerning is staggeringly difficult to do manually with stencils, and at the same time the imperfections show "touch" which is part of what makes TFA's work so appealing.
They look really good. I really enjoy looking at midcentury engineering charts/diagrams and stuff like jeppesen charts. NASA has a lot of good ones. The way the text looks, the line economy, the general aesthetic. Well worth the effort imo!
This should be a competitive sport, like gymnastics. He's attempting the bevel! With extra-wide lines! Very ambitious, but unfortunately he often fails to stick the corner alignments, the bevel distances are poorly controlled, and the data is unsuitably spiky for that choice of line joint. 7/10.
In the mid-2010s, I was interning at the German federal statistical office. Some of the team assistants were there since the 1980s/90s and had still learnt to use those tools as part of their vocational training.
They also showed me the tools and the instructions for drawing exactly aligned tables by hand and the resulting bound sets of tables with hundreds of pages. Completely mind-boggling how much time they must have spent on a single project, now all automated away.
That seems like a valuable internship. I think the documentation in books about hand drafting techniques only contains so much information. How much knowledge was passed from professionals to apprentices alone? And does this knowledge disappear when they leave us?
Unfortunately I do not see specific discussion of how to make the lines a consistent thickness. It does have notes on how to sharpen your pencil and how to use a carpenters spline to draw smooth curves though.
You can see the full work in his other blog post[0]. There you can clearly see that red circles coincide with vertical blue lines on the graph. And the very fine print in the bottom left corner explains that "Displayed years indicate when Coffee Maker computers were built". Overlapping the red points with title text is probably just a stylistic choice.
I teach digital art and am also a painter. When I was a student I loved filling sketchbooks with drawings - like a collection of ideas. To a large degree my web bookmarks and screen grab library have taken over this function. That being said, if I want to quickly communicate visual ideas to students or craftsmen I much prefer a paper and pencil. It feels so much more nuanced, comfortable and expressive.
Amazing process (such patience in this day and age!), and special thanks for sharing links to the data viz books! Tufte was my gateway too but I didn’t think to look into books on technical sketching, engineering drawing, and draftsmanship.
Love hand-drawn viz, recently I’ve been looking at the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) and they have a great collection of all their reports, from pre-1900s to now. I especially appreciate this beautiful one about people with mental illness in the Seine department… from 1889. The typography is chef’s kisshttps://www.bnsp.insee.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52510983q/f49.item...
(After years of reading Hacker News this post motivated me to finally make an account and upvote. Data viz is so fun)
This is exactly what I hoped for when writing this article. The "Atlas de statistique graphique de la ville de Paris" from 1889 has stunning hand drafted data visuals I may have never seen unless you shared. Thank you for making an account and adding to this catalog of resources about data viz. I plan to add this to the list in my next update.
You're very welcome! So happy to discuss and share all this together, such an underrated topic in my opinion... Looking forward to your next update.
This whole thing has got me going down the rabbit hole of looking at different countries' archives, here are some from the United States (also in 1889 for the fun of comparison):
I tried looking at the British and Irish national archives but couldn't find online images/PDFs of maps and charts, seems like they're for in-person consultation only.
And one more French one from 1906 for kicks because it's so ambitious. Years + bars per year, mapped onto Paris, per company, then split into 2 views (total passengers vs. average passengers per kilometre). Wow. Mouvement de la circulation à l'intérieur de Paris、1860-1900 (map from 1906): https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bd6t5253796z/f81
I build furniture and while I do my design work digitally for remote clients, I do my shop drawings by hand.
One super helpful tip I got from an actual trained draftsman is to use harder pencil lead for your layout and construction lines. Like 6H to 9H. You'll get a much lighter line to erase later. It'll also hold a finer point for longer.
I prefer lead holders to wooden pencils. They take 2mm lead, and you sharpen them with a lead pointer. K&E pointers are readily available on eBay, as are the abrasive cups that do the actual sharpening. The plastic trash can ones will get the job done, but are unsatisfying from a tactile standpoint.
A decent lead holder is a trick to find. The Alvin one I bought is too loose and the lead slips up into it. The Staedtler one doesn't close tightly at the tip and support the lead well enough to prevent breaking. The Prismacolor one is satisfactory, and I inherited a vintage one that I love from the aforementioned draftsman.
I recommend an erasing shield to make revising your pencil work without erasing too much. Another person I know with an art background tipped me off to putting tracing paper over your main drawing to iterate on details before committing them to paper to reduce erasing.
Drafting vellum is pretty forgiving of erasing, but it has a toothier surface that can get a little dingy if you're working on a drawing for a while. I've never tried Bristol board; I don't need immaculate drawings for reproduction, just good enough ones to build from.
Happy drawing. It's an immensely satisfying process for me. If you're detail oriented, you'll likely find it enjoyable too.
> Like 6H to 9H. You'll get a much lighter line to erase later. It'll also hold a finer point for longer.
With 6H you get lighter line, but only in colour. It can be actually harder to erase, because you naturally tend to push the pencil harder to see it, thus denting the paper and leaving the graphite at the bottom of a groove where the eraser cannot lift it. Those harder leads have great amounts of clay that very easily scratch the paper.
I go on the opposite direction, being my favorite lead a 4B: you need very low pressure to leave visible marks, that you can erase very easily with a kneaded eraser.
You are right that a 6H will hold the tip for way longer. Only if I don't need to remove the marks I would use the harder leads.
This takes me back, as well as some of the replies to your post. I still have most of my drafting tools from high school, including eraser shields, etc. one thing I didn't see you mention, and would help with dingy vellum, is a pouch with eraser granules you squeeze to put a thin layer of dust on your drawing. This will pick up excess graphite as you slide your t-square or parallel over the drawing.
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[ 8.1 ms ] story [ 71.0 ms ] threadI am willing to suck it but the kerning is still killing me. (I love everything about this btw)
Love the article, this is why I browse HN.
In the mid-2010s, I was interning at the German federal statistical office. Some of the team assistants were there since the 1980s/90s and had still learnt to use those tools as part of their vocational training. They also showed me the tools and the instructions for drawing exactly aligned tables by hand and the resulting bound sets of tables with hundreds of pages. Completely mind-boggling how much time they must have spent on a single project, now all automated away.
Unfortunately I do not see specific discussion of how to make the lines a consistent thickness. It does have notes on how to sharpen your pencil and how to use a carpenters spline to draw smooth curves though.
It's ok, I can wait...
[0] https://www.dougmacdowell.com/hand-drawn-data-visualizations...
Love hand-drawn viz, recently I’ve been looking at the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) and they have a great collection of all their reports, from pre-1900s to now. I especially appreciate this beautiful one about people with mental illness in the Seine department… from 1889. The typography is chef’s kiss https://www.bnsp.insee.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52510983q/f49.item...
(After years of reading Hacker News this post motivated me to finally make an account and upvote. Data viz is so fun)
This whole thing has got me going down the rabbit hole of looking at different countries' archives, here are some from the United States (also in 1889 for the fun of comparison):
- Progress Map for 1889, Cape Fear River Below Wilmington, North Carolina: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/518257160?objectPage=2 - Statistics relating to the Canal around "The Cascades," Columbia River Falls https://catalog.archives.gov/id/501103295?objectPage=2
I tried looking at the British and Irish national archives but couldn't find online images/PDFs of maps and charts, seems like they're for in-person consultation only.
And one more French one from 1906 for kicks because it's so ambitious. Years + bars per year, mapped onto Paris, per company, then split into 2 views (total passengers vs. average passengers per kilometre). Wow. Mouvement de la circulation à l'intérieur de Paris、1860-1900 (map from 1906): https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bd6t5253796z/f81
50 hours to draw a line graph vs. a few minutes trying various styles in PowerPoint.
Stop letting machines make graphs, pay a draftsman like we used to do!
(I'm fairly dense though, so I probably completely missed that the author was instead simply espousing the joys of learning a new handicraft.)
One super helpful tip I got from an actual trained draftsman is to use harder pencil lead for your layout and construction lines. Like 6H to 9H. You'll get a much lighter line to erase later. It'll also hold a finer point for longer.
I prefer lead holders to wooden pencils. They take 2mm lead, and you sharpen them with a lead pointer. K&E pointers are readily available on eBay, as are the abrasive cups that do the actual sharpening. The plastic trash can ones will get the job done, but are unsatisfying from a tactile standpoint.
A decent lead holder is a trick to find. The Alvin one I bought is too loose and the lead slips up into it. The Staedtler one doesn't close tightly at the tip and support the lead well enough to prevent breaking. The Prismacolor one is satisfactory, and I inherited a vintage one that I love from the aforementioned draftsman.
I recommend an erasing shield to make revising your pencil work without erasing too much. Another person I know with an art background tipped me off to putting tracing paper over your main drawing to iterate on details before committing them to paper to reduce erasing.
Drafting vellum is pretty forgiving of erasing, but it has a toothier surface that can get a little dingy if you're working on a drawing for a while. I've never tried Bristol board; I don't need immaculate drawings for reproduction, just good enough ones to build from.
Happy drawing. It's an immensely satisfying process for me. If you're detail oriented, you'll likely find it enjoyable too.
I should try that. I got the exact opposite advice in university, and I have terrible line thicknesses.
With 6H you get lighter line, but only in colour. It can be actually harder to erase, because you naturally tend to push the pencil harder to see it, thus denting the paper and leaving the graphite at the bottom of a groove where the eraser cannot lift it. Those harder leads have great amounts of clay that very easily scratch the paper.
I go on the opposite direction, being my favorite lead a 4B: you need very low pressure to leave visible marks, that you can erase very easily with a kneaded eraser.
You are right that a 6H will hold the tip for way longer. Only if I don't need to remove the marks I would use the harder leads.
(But the temperatures should have been recorded on the Réaumur scale.)