As far back as I remember, I was a fan of clear, catchy, and entertaining visual data representations. Like those that often appear in the National Geographic or the Economist – the engaging ways of presenting scientific facts and data.
Its amazing to live in the world where tools for advanced visualizations are becoming available to the mere mortals. Thank goodness that one no longer needs to be a designer to create them! For example, below are sample word clouds of my CV and my research statement. I love them because they convey the long detailed documents’ feel visually and concisely.
A CV word cloud. Publications included in the CV – hence the predominant role of the IEEE and ACM in the visual.
A research statement word cloud.