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Happy Sunday, everyone! I always seem to get the opportunity to write the beginning of the month posts too, so happy May, everyone as well!
May is probably my favourite month. The evenings are getting lighter, meaning more opportunities for twilight tennis or golf. It's both my son's birthdays and the football season reaches its climax.
The Premier League season still has many unknowns. We still don't know who will be champions, although with the form of both teams it is quite possible Manchester City and Liverpool will all their remaining games crowning the former as champions. We still don't know who will finish in 4th place and take the last remaining champions league place. Although Arsenal, Spurs and Manchester United are all doing their best to let it slip through their respective grasps. And, we still don't know who is going to be relegated. Norwich and Watford looked doomed, but could Everton, yes Everton, really go down to the Championship?
On to the round-up and across the Atlantic there has been lots of interest surrounding the 2022 NFL draft. I'm not familiar with the intricacies of the draft but it does fascinate me how the worst team from the previous year gets the first pick in the draft. It brings back memories of the playground at school, standing against the wall waiting to be picked for the lunchtime kick-about.
We have some great quality NFL draft vizzes on show this week from some of our regular friends of the community. Starting with Jeff Plattner with two separate designs. First, he has updated his draft trends viz which is packed full of great detail on the draft so far.
Not to stop there, Jeff has also taken a closer look at the Top 10 wide receivers in NFL history. An outstanding design with great use of images but no lack of detail to evidence to support the cases for these top 10. Great work, Jeff!
Brian Moore takes chord diagrams to a new level when he looks at player movement during the draft. Stunning design, Brian and what I love most about this tweet is that you have shown the original you created as well. Something about seeing 'before and afters' or progressions and re-makes really helps to inspire and motivate everyone to keep going on their respective journeys. Thanks for sharing, Brian!
Finally, to complete our NHL Draft content this week, we have Bo McCready. Bo looks back at previous drafts to explore which classes produced the best careers. A really interesting piece of work and I love the font choices and layout which immediately took me back a few years and provided a nostalgic feel.
Switching sports now, we turn our attention to Football and Mo ('he's one of our own') Wotten celebrates the recent championship for non-league Walthamstow FC by refreshing his viz. I suspect a great many of us have used Tableau to viz or capture details of things that are personal to us and that passion clearly comes through in Mo's design. Great job Mo and congratulations to 'The Stags". Wish them all the best for their next campaign, hopefully in the Ryman League.
Switching from grassroots to the rarefied air of the Premier League, I love this viz from Colin Angus. Colin has captured the design elements of the FT Newspaper really well with this showing the goalscoring exploits of Manchester City and Liverpool. It's interesting to see Manchester City spreading the goals out more whereas Liverpool tend to rely on the stellar efforts of Salah and Mane.
I don't think I've seen a view like the one Wee Rogue has created showing the predicted positions for the Premier League. Easy to read and very insightful too. As I mentioned at the start of the round-up the excitement of the climax to the season is evidenced nicely here with only Chelsea looking to have their respective position established, well 99% established!
Kirk Munroe visualises nicely the evolution of golf driving distances with this viz. It's amazing to think that not so long ago, 300 yards was seen as a huge distance and now it's considered average. Kirk brings this to life and also offers a huge degree of interactivity as well to select your favourite players. Check it out!
To finish off this week, we turn to our monthly challenge, the Indy 500. Whilst April has ended don't let that put you off, the data is still available and we welcome your take on it at any time. Perhaps when the 2022 instalment has taken place?!
We have two entries this week. First up is a collaboration between Jessica Moon and Titus Merriam. It looks as though Jessica provided the idea and Titus the calcs behind the design. It's a fantastic approach to plot all of the winners against each other on the same track and see where they would be at a certain time during the race. It's a great one to have a play with!
Last up, I to decided to give the challenge a go and looked at the speeds of the race and two of the largest speed differentials between years. Nothing too technical here and my focus was just on simple design basics but I'm pleased with how it turned out.
As we are into May, no doubt you are wondering "where is the May monthly challenge?". Don't worry sports fans, it's coming. Look out for the release on Tuesday!
Have a great week, everyone and thanks for all the content this week. It's always a pleasure to go through.
Simon