Data Points: Preview by Nathan Yau.
As you already know, Nathan is a rich source for interesting graphics and visualizations, some of which I have the good sense to point to.
What you may not know is that Nathan has a new book out: Data Points: Visualizations That Mean Something.
Not a book about coding to visualize data but rather:
Data Points is all about process from a non-programming point of view. Start with the data, really understand it, and then go from there. Data Points is about looking at your data from different perspectives and how it relates to real life. Then design accordingly.
That’s the hard part isn’t it?
Like the ongoing discussion here about modeling for topic maps.
Unless you understand the data, models and visualizations alike are going to be meaningless.
Check out Nathan’s new book to increase your chances of models and visualizations that mean something.