Reddit mentions of The Functional Art: An introduction to information graphics and visualization (Voices That Matter)

EDIT: Many have reached out to me in DMs to ask advice. I'll answer the most common question here, which is "How do you learn about data visualization?"

My answer is: To do data viz well, you need both an understanding of design and data. 'Intro to design' and 'intro to data' are good things to google, to start. But the single best resource I've found is IBM's site on the subject. I also love Alberto Cairo's work (he is also active on twitter). I'd recommend his intro book, which is very good. His website is solid too.

This whole process was about 3.5 months and I am just 6 days short of my one year anniversary! I love my current job. As a note though: I applied to a LOT of jobs that weren't just data visualization, but almost all of the jobs involved visualization.

Before it is asked: 'Website Posting' had the highest response rate and also led me to the job I have now.

Explanation: I have seen these sankey flow diagrams on job applications and I always wanted to do my own version, since it is relevant (on the meta) for those interested in breaking into this field. I also saved a record of my application process, so it just took me a few minutes to format the data and put it all together.

Data is here

Tool used is SankeyMATIC

The "bible" is "The Grammar of Graphics" by Leland Wilkinson. (link to amazon). The "gg" of ggplot2 stands for grammar of graphics.

Then we go into other books, resources that help with actually showing visualizations:

• Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten [Few, 2004]
  
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information [Tufte, 2001]
  
• The Functional Art [Cairo, 2012]
  
• Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps [Bertin, 2010]
  
  Then we can look at the "Table of Elements of Data Visualization":
  
  
• A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
  
• The Data Visualisation Catalogue
  
  Then, we can look at some blogs to help you see what works and doesn't work:
  
  
• http://helpmeviz.com/
  
• http://wtfviz.net/
  
• http://thumbsupviz.com/
  
  Finally, some blog posts about other people in data visualization that you can learn from:
  
  
• An Incomplete List of Females in Data Visualization
  
• Data and visualization blogs worth following
  
• Teaching data visualization: Recommended readings and resources
  
• 90 dataviz Tumblr blogs to follow
  
• The 30 data viz blogs you can't miss - in one place

Corporate identities are typically grid based, so if you haven't read it already Timothy Samara's Making and Breaking the Grid may be useful.

It's likely you'll be restricted to an already existing brand, so probably no need to learn more about corporate branding. Your challenges will be staying fresh and inspired within a limited structure, typeface and color palette.

If they require you to work on corporate presentations, Duarte's Slideology is a must-read.

If it involves data visualization for annual reports and such, Alberto Cairo's The Functional Art will be very relevant.

Hope that helps.