Beautiful News: Unseen Trends, Uplifting Stats, Creative Solutions by David McCandless

Brad Revell -

My Rating of “Beautiful News: Unseen Trends, Uplifting Stats, Creative Solutions” by David McCandless: 8 / 10

What’s not to like about Beautiful News? This is the third instalment of McCandless’ illustrative work. After reading Information is Beautiful and Knowledge is Beautiful, I became hooked on the way McCandless conveys his facts via extremely catchy and intuitive visuals.

What’s also important is the story he is trying to convey in Beautiful News. This is similar to Hans Rosling’s book Factfulness in that our world isn’t in as bad a place as we tend to think. When you read about the reduction in poverty, increase in renewables and many other facts you come away seeing the world differently.

One of the techniques I’ve been spending a lot of time on is the ability to tell better stories. Whether you want to understand the facts of this book or not, there are many assets in Beautiful News which I have been able to replicate in telling a better version of any story. Combining visuals with metaphor and a good story is a killer combination to connect and engage with your audience! Many reviews of this book note that this particular books visuals lacked the effort and originality of the first two books. I would have to agree.

David McCandless is still on top of his game and producing some amazing work! Whilst it took me a year to get to this book it is still a fantastic read and highly recommended!

Three key takeaways from the book:

  1. It has been a challenging two years with COVID but the world is still getting better. There have been some massive impacts from COVID that will continue to haunt the world beyond 2022.
  2. Learning about the uniqueness of particular countries. For example, here in the UK they have the most offshore wind farms. Each country that was highlighted had something unique to offer the the rest of the world.
  3. I spent night times before bed going through this book. It is one of those books like its predictors where you’ll need to revisit it again and again.