Ah, springtime. Flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, and a feeling of renewal fills the air. It’s a hopeful time of year, when nature rebounds from its winter hibernation, and we watch everything around us grow and come back to life.

Often in springtime, we also take stock of our own growth. We engage in “spring cleaning” tasks, editing out the things in our homes that we once thought were indispensable, but now seem like clutter. We look back on the winter, or the school year, and think about how much taller/older/wiser we’ve all become. Sometimes, it’s astonishing to consider how much we’ve learned, or how our perspectives have changed, in such a short period of time.

The challenge

This month, we invite you to take stock of your own growth, and share a bit of it with us and your fellow data visualization enthusiasts. Find a visual that you created at some point in the past, but now would consider a prime candidate for a little “spring cleaning.” With the knowledge you’ve gained along your data visualization journey, create a new-and-improved version of your original visual.

Submit the “before” and the “now” versions of your visual to the storytelling with data community by 5pm PT on May 31, 2021.

Related resources

There’s a good chance that this month, given the specific topic of the challenge, you all would know better than we would what resources would be applicable for your re-imagination project. What we can do is point you towards a few of our own makeovers, and give you some insight into the approach we take when we are providing someone else—or ourselves, from the past—thoughtful feedback and critique.

We’re looking forward to seeing everyone’s progress this month!