Cédric Scherer
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cedricscherer.com
Cédric Scherer
@cedricscherer.com
5.8K followers 700 following 380 posts
🧙‍♂️✨📊

Independent Data Visualization Designer, Consultant & Instructor | available for projects and workshops

All things data & design with #rstats, #ggplot2, #Figma, #DataWrapper, #Flourish, and more

Co-Founder of the #30DayChartChallenge
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cedricscherer.com
🎄 Hope you’ve got all your presents ready 💝

Google search interest shows a stable pattern:

🎅 “Christmas gift wife” peaks just before Christmas Eve
🎅 “Christmas gift husband” peaks much earlier

#MerryChristmas to all of you! 🎁

📈 Google Trends (Nov 18–Dec 24, 2020–2024)
#dataviz #ggplot2
Line chart of Google search interest for “Christmas gift wife” and “Christmas gift husband” from November 18 to December 24. Bold lines show the average pattern across 2020–2024, while lighter shaded lines represent individual years. Shaded areas highlight which term has higher search interest at each point in time. The chart shows that searches for gifts for wives peak later in December than searches for gifts for husbands.
December 24, 2025 at 10:16 AM
cedricscherer.com
Mesmerizing data patterns.
#dataviz
A ridgeline chart with two groups over a long period (73 years), with one group being quite constant and one meandering from right to left with multiple hills appearing now and then.
December 15, 2025 at 11:36 AM
cedricscherer.com
I ignored the strip.clip argument in #ggplot2 for way too long 😲

Combined with a small negative margin tweak, you can place facet labels inside each panel. A tiny trick that makes small multiples feel so much cleaner.

🔵 no manual coordinates
🔵 inherits theme styling
🔵 scales nicely when resizing
Side-by-side comparison of two multi-panel bubble charts faceted by world region. The left column shows the default facet labels placed above each panel (“Africa”, “Americas”, “Asia”, “Europe”, “Oceania”). The right column shows the same charts, but the facet labels are moved inside each panel at the top-left using a negative margin. In the center, there is a title reading “Want to place your facet labels inside each panel?” with an arrow pointing right, followed by a short ggplot2 theme code snippet demonstrating how to move strip text inside the panel.
December 12, 2025 at 12:51 PM
cedricscherer.com
Designing for a good cause 💝

My daughter’s birthday is this weekend, and she’s setting up “thematic rooms.” Instead of painting and tinkering, she tried her first digital design experience — creating it all in Figma with me 😋😼

#design #birthday #kids
The room sign for "Dunkelparty", a party room with disco light The room sign for "Katzenzoo", a room to groom kittens and play with cats The room sign for "Schminkraum", a room with makeup and face painting The room sign for "Turnzimmer", atraining room for gymnastics (however that looks like, already scared what's gonna happen to our funrnishings...)
December 5, 2025 at 11:22 AM
cedricscherer.com
👾 We've put together a supercut to show exactly what “interactive” means inside #ggplot2 [un]charted 👇

The project became far more ambitious than we first planned, but seeing how rich, detailed, and interactive it has become makes Yan and me genuinely proud of what we’ve built 🚀

#rstats #dataviz
November 27, 2025 at 3:55 PM
cedricscherer.com
Yan and I poured our dataviz, coding, teaching, design experience and passion into this hands-on, interactive journey through everything you need to know about #ggplot2 and #dataviz 📈🧑‍💻🚀

👉 ggplot2-uncharted.com

Until Friday, you can enroll in our course for just $99 🔥
Black Friday promotional graphic with discounted pricing.
November 26, 2025 at 3:37 PM
cedricscherer.com
If motivation levels drop, Waddles comes to the rescue! 🐽
A sticker of Waddles (the 15-pound pig from Gravity Falls) next to my touchpad.
November 20, 2025 at 3:30 PM
cedricscherer.com
Richard takes wonderful photographs!
More here: www.instagram.com/richard.stro...
A screenshot of Richard's gallery on Instagram
October 28, 2025 at 4:44 PM
cedricscherer.com
This and the previous posts showcase this new template — first with the blue corporate palette, then with a few suggested alternatives derived from the brand colors but adjusted for a smooth, linear lightness progression.

#dataviz #colors
The same photo-profile-heatmap setup for three variants of sequential color palettes using the brand colors as a starting point (blue-cyan purple-cyan, and blue-purple-pink gradients with increasing luminance).
October 28, 2025 at 4:42 PM
cedricscherer.com
Today, I extended my framework: the template now also shows the lightness profile and a generic heatmap using the same palette.

The latter is inspired by the Palette Finder from Yan, that is integrated into our latest #ggplot2 [un]charted lesson.
👉 www.ggplot2-uncharted.com/module2/pale...
The same color palette with inconsistent changes and two alternatives with linear scaling using the template: the recolored photo, an area chart showing the lightness profile and a heatmap illustrating the use of the palette for data visualization.
October 28, 2025 at 4:40 PM
cedricscherer.com
It’s simple: applying the palette to the lightness values of a photo makes color gradient issues impossible to ignore.

A corporate palette that looks great in a brand guide can quickly fall apart on an image: abrupt jumps, lost detail, strange banding.
A blue-shaded version of the photo with inconsistent changes in lightness. Two generic heatmaps below compare that palette with a well-designed gradient with linear change in lightness.
October 28, 2025 at 4:35 PM
cedricscherer.com
🦧📉 Why are there colorful apes in my #dataviz workshops?

📸 The photo taken years ago by my friend Richard Strozynski has become a tradition in my client projects and courses.

I like to recolor it with different palettes to show how palette design affects perception.

Thread 👇
A photograph of two apes (mother holds her child) and three recolored versions of the same phtograph using three palettes of different quality.
October 28, 2025 at 4:32 PM
cedricscherer.com
🌏 A compact snapshot on where people live around the globe (2023 data) — over 60% of #humans live in #Asia!

I originally created a more basic version for our new #ggplot2 [un]charted lesson on 🎨 "Color Choice" to discuss color accessibility:
👉 www.ggplot2-uncharted.com/module2/colo...
A treemap showing the world’s population by country, grouped by continent. Each rectangle’s area represents a country’s estimated 2023 population, with labels on the 10% most populous countries. Asia dominates with over 60% of the global population, followed by Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania.
October 22, 2025 at 3:56 PM
cedricscherer.com
📸 Fun photoshoot yesterday!

Finally updating the profile pic and those “hard at work” photos.

Behind-the-scenes outtake: new office, new favorite mug, new kitten… and me, mid-shrug, wondering how people do this gracefully 😄🤷
A photograph from the photo shooting with me sitting on the couch in my office with headphones and one of our cats next to me, shrugging.
October 17, 2025 at 12:43 PM
cedricscherer.com
Chart crimes are everywhere. I ate it.
A screenshot from the outro of a episode of "Welcome to Gravity Falls" with a swine pointing to a (badly designed) pie chart and the meme text "dis pie chart - i ated it"
August 18, 2025 at 8:46 AM
cedricscherer.com
The virtual #user2025 event takes place today — and our talk "Plot Twist: Adding Interactivity to the Elegance of ggplot2 with ggiraph" airs is lined up next! 🎥

#rstats #ggiraph #ggplot2 #dataviz
Title slide for our talk at useR entitled "Plot Tiwst:Adding interactivity to the elegance of ggplot2 with ggiraph"
August 1, 2025 at 3:49 PM
cedricscherer.com
Find the data 🧐🤓
#dataviz #datatoinkratio
One of many line graphs in the NASA Mariner-Venus Report from 1962. Due to the rather black and bold and many grid lines, the straight lines that show the results (which are also black) are almost invisible.
July 25, 2025 at 11:37 AM
cedricscherer.com
The version in our online "ggplot2 [un]charted" workshop to illustrate how to create partial radial plots with #ggplot2 — part of the lesson "Coordinate Systems: Setting the Stage for Your Plot"

www.ggplot2-uncharted.com/module1/coor...
Screenshot of the gauge chart, along with the code in our interactive in-browser sandbox in the coordinate lesson of our course "ggplot2 uncharted".
July 23, 2025 at 3:48 PM
cedricscherer.com
Last week, I crafted my first-ever gauge chart 🏎️ to showcase partial radial plots for our #ggplot2 [un]charted lesson on "coordinate systems"

Thanks to coord_radial(), partial circles like those are super easy now — and of course I couldn’t resist making a polished and animated version 💅📽️ #rstats
July 23, 2025 at 3:43 PM
cedricscherer.com
Two redesigns of the cluttered bar chart on Europe’s largest urban areas 📊

Two reworked variants — same data, different goals:
show the data vs. tell a story.

Decluttering, refocusing, adding context, and using visual emphasis can turn a chart into insight.

#dataviz #ggplot2 #rstats #tidyverse
A collage of a decluttered, colorful bar chart and two reworked version — one with ranked vertical bars, all with the same weight, and a cleaner theme direct labels. and a more descriptive title, and the other with a key message highlighting the 7th ranked urban area Berlin in both the title, and the chart itself.
July 18, 2025 at 2:57 PM
cedricscherer.com
It's always fun to create bad charts for workshops 🤪
#retro #dataviz #workshop #ggplot2 #rstats
A retro-vibe bar chart with many colors and a grey theme with too many labels, grid lines, and font styles, rotated labels, a superfluous legend and more.
July 17, 2025 at 8:55 AM
cedricscherer.com
Why do we 💙 #ggplot2?

Yes, it's for the Grammar!

But also for the passionate and supportive community — and their steady contributions to the ggplot2 universe: all the extension packages 🧩 that take its impressive flexibility even further, making it more powerful and beautiful 🙌
#rstats #tidyverse
A collage of colorful hex logos from popular ggplot2 extension packages. Each hex represents an R package that expands ggplot2’s functionality. The overall layout celebrates the diversity and creativity of the ggplot2 ecosystem — while being able to just show a tiny sample from it.
July 14, 2025 at 4:04 PM
cedricscherer.com
Working on the latest #ggplot2 [un]charted lesson about “Handling Caveats When Mapping Variables,” I let loose a bit

The sections ended up fun — yes, and maybe a bit silly at times 🤡

Highlight:
a new #aesthetics anthem as a memorable mnemonic 🎶

Out now for members!
www.ggplot2-uncharted.com
A screenshot of the anthem (and the introductory text to understand the context): Again, ask yourself: Am I setting or mapping? Now, repeat with me...     🎶 🎶 Columns inside, constants out —   That's what aes() is all about 🎶 🎶   
June 6, 2025 at 3:21 PM
cedricscherer.com
New interactive lesson live! 🎉

🎨 Aesthetics: Mapping Data to Visual Properties is now live for members of our #ggplot2 [un]charted workshop!

🎮 Drag-and-drop aes game
🔍 Aesthetics Explorer
🏆 6 exercises

Learn now 👉 ggplot2-uncharted.com/module1/aest...

#dataviz #datavis #rstats #tidyverse
Screenshot of the header of the third lesson in module 1, "Foundations of ggplot2", of our interactive online course ggplot2 [un]charted. A screenshot of the drag-and-drop game: users can pick columns from the mpg data set and move them to the x or y aesthetic. The code and plot below updates accordingly! One of many interactive code examples that make use of our in-browser sandboxes that allow users to modify and run the code to learn and play! The latest addition to our features: an interactive data viewer that provides the name, source, description, and a sortable table of the data sets we use in the lessons and exercises.
June 4, 2025 at 9:14 AM
cedricscherer.com
New bonus lesson out now! 🎉

"A Quick Introduction to R" is for all course members that are new to #rstats or need a refresher 🧑‍💻

➕ 7 exercises and lots of in-browser code examples

Part of our interactive workshop #ggplot2 [un]charted 💙
Get access 👉 www.ggplot2-uncharted.com

#dataviz #datascience
A screenshot of the bonus lesson "Getting Started: A Quick Introduction to R" with the title, a short intro and the first part on "Executing R Code". Also shows the first code examples which members can execute inside their browser thanks to our sandboxes.
May 23, 2025 at 3:08 PM