Which chart types did our users create in 2022?

Hi, this is Rose. I write for Datawrapper, and this week I’m bringing back an end-of-year blog tradition.

For several years running now, the last Weekly Chart of December has been dedicated to looking back at the visualizations you, Datawrapper users, published in the past twelve months. In particular, it’s become something of a tradition to update one specific chart breaking down the types of visualization that were most popular each year.

Here — unless you all go on New Year’s Eve mapping spree — are the final numbers for 2022.

A few observations stand out to me:

• Area and line charts were the big winners this year. They accounted for more than a quarter of your published visualizations — more than any other single chart or map type, and even more than umbrella groups like all bar chart varieties together.
• That said, horizontal bar charts as a group continue to be more popular than vertical column charts. That’s been true every year since 2016, when split and stacked bars first took off in a big way.

• Locator maps bounced back in the popularity rankings. It’s important to remember that all the numbers in this post are relative measures — in absolute terms, the number of locator maps has grown every year since their introduction.

• You’ve steadily increased your use of tables almost every year since 2013. Tables got several updates in 2022, including sticky columns, better markdown support, and lots of new accessibility features, which may have helped them take second place for the second year in a row.

These official visualization types can barely capture the inventive ways we’ve seen you all use Datawrapper this year. And it was a busy year for us as well: we answered thousands of support messages, published over a hundred blog posts and Academy articles, and released several major new features. Our team grew too, to 22 members! We’re looking forward to more great things from everyone in 2023.

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Thank you all for a wonderful year! We’ll see you next week for the first Weekly Chart of 2023.