Chris Almaguer Data visualization design

Newsroom

Editorial data visualization

Weekly list pages, quarterly market charts and scrolling data features for three California business journals, in print and on the web.

ACBJ

01 - Context

Recurring data pages for three California business journals

Staff design work for American City Business Journals between 2018 and 2022, across the Silicon Valley, Sacramento and San Francisco titles. The output was print and web: the weekly List page, quarterly commercial market wraps, and occasional scrolling features built around a single dataset.

Each piece was built from a published external dataset, credited in the graphic. Cushman & Wakefield for commercial market figures, Yelp Economic Average for business reopenings, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics for wage change.

The weekly page

A page a week, for four years

Data Dive ran weekly: a supplied dataset, a fixed page slot, and a deadline. What holds the run together is not a house chart style but a house discipline. One encoding per measure, the source line set as type, and the headline doing the interpreting so the chart does not have to.

Data Visualization - Editorial

17 pages, 2021
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Local Businesses Slow To Open And Reopen In 2020: two donut charts setting reopenings against openings, above grouped bars of the year-over-year fall by sector in the Sacramento area and California.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Growth In Housing Units Slowed In Recent Years: a full-page chart of five lines tracking housing unit growth rate by county from 2010 to 2020, Placer arcing highest and falling away after 2018.
Silicon Valley Business Journal List page, What (And Who) Do These ZIP Codes Look Like: six ZIP code boundaries drawn as solid blue shapes, the three wealthiest above the three least, each sitting over a table of its demographics.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Home Refinance Market Grows 161% In 2020: line charts of loan volume by purpose spiking sharply at refinance, 2020 in tan against 2019 in black, with a paired bar chart of Sacramento's share of the state between them.
Silicon Valley Business Journal List page, SV Real Estate Took Minor Hits Overall In 2021: six blue charts stacked down the page, quarterly bars of construction, absorption, inventory and vacant space with lines of asking rent falling and vacancy rate rising.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Building Permits Show Home Production Boom: grouped bars of residential units by county for 2018, 2019 and 2020, above four lines of total residential valuation climbing across the same years.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Project Homekey Could Impact Hotel Development: black bars of price per room for six motels with a tan line of room counts crossing them, above paired bars of appraised value against purchase price.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Local Unemployment Still High A Year Into Pandemic: monthly paired bars of the metro rate against California, annual averages beside them, and a four-county grouped bar chart running the width below.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Sacramento Among Least Affordable Cities: ten metro areas ranked by cost-burdened households, a red bar for the lower income band over a black bar for the higher, with homeownership by race charted beneath.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Rocky Recovery For Sac Business Openings: red bars of new openings quarter by quarter from 2019 to 2021, above a chart of year-over-year change by sector split either side of zero.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Local Population Grows Despite Statewide Drop: grouped bars of county population year by year from 2010 to 2021, a second grouped chart of the fastest-growing cities, and a one-year ranking below.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Sac Area Rents Increase 13.6% From Last Year: a red line climbing from $1,500 to $1,704 over twelve months with every point labeled, above ten metro areas ranked by rent increase.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, More Sac Homebuyers Are Paying Over List Price: neighborhoods ranked by dollars paid above list with Elk Grove picked out in black at $44,787, and the same measure as a percentage in columns below.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, More Businesses Are Moving To The Suburbs: a red line of net business change by city dropping to minus 1,031 at Sacramento, above paired bars of businesses moved in against moved out.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Local Businesses Received $28.7M In Covid Relief Grants: tan bars of grants by business type with a black line of percentage share falling across them, above a pie of the Sacramento slice against the state total.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Sacramento's Best Jobs: fifteen jobs ranked down the page, each with four bars comparing the median wage in Sacramento, San Francisco, California and the nation.
Sacramento Business Journal Data Dive page, Housing Trends Show A Surge To The Suburbs: a full-page choropleth of area ZIP codes, blue where residents moved out and red where they moved in, each shape carrying its ZIP.

02 - Process

Working from a supplied dataset to a fixed page slot

Each graphic started from a dataset that arrived from an outside source on the publication's schedule, and had to land in a page slot whose dimensions were set before anyone saw the numbers. The List page carries six separate measures on one sheet. The reopenings feature splits across three scrolling sections. The wage piece is a single comparison with an explanatory note.

03 - Design

One encoding per measure, and the source line set as type

The List page holds six measures on a single scale treatment: one bar to a quarter, a shared baseline per measure, and the quarter labels set beside the bars instead of in a legend. Two of the six switch to a line where the measure is a rate instead of a volume.

The web features invert to a dark ground and carry their series labels as captioned dots beneath each chart. On all three, the source credit is set as part of the graphic instead of added underneath it.

04 - Impact

Impact

The measurable output is the run itself. A data page a week across four years and three mastheads, on deadlines that did not move. The same grid carried routine market wraps and breaking cover stories without changing its rules, which is the test of a system instead of a style.

The discipline built here, one encoding per measure, sources set as type, the headline doing the interpreting, is the same one that now runs under fifty-plus healthcare dashboards. The newsroom is where I learned it at speed.