Truth & Beauty — always chasing the perfect form for information
There is an incredible hidden infrastructure of ecosystems right beneath our feet: arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. They connect to over 70% of plants, extend root networks up to a 100 times, and reach a length of 1 billion times the distance to the sun. Centered around a globe with ground-breaking new data on the density of these hyphal networks, this data narrative provides a glimpse into this…
Together with [Enrico Bertini](https://enrico.bertini.io), I appeared in a special two-part episode of Andy Kirk's [Explore Explain](https://visualisingdata.com/2026/03/explore-explain-s6e8-moritz-stefaner-enrico-bertini-part-2/) series. We each shared five significant visualization-related works by others that have most influenced our thinking about data visualization, plus a selection from our…
[INGRAPHICS](https://schwochow.shop/products/ingraphics-magazine) is a „magazine for visual thinkers“ — and I was kindly invited to contribute a double spread. I created a visual overview of the long history of Elon Musk‘s not-quite-materialized predictions on autonomous cars. The magazine is full of stunning visuals, and completely self financed. Grab a copy — it’s worth it!
As invited keynote speaker for the [VISCOMM workshop](https://www.viscomm.io/) at [IEEE VIS conference](https://ieeevis.org/), I talked about current trends in data visualization, my design approach, and how our profession is changing in the recent wave of AI tools.
This visual puts 50 years of neuroscience research on the map — by analyzing nearly 350’000 research publications and extracting salient keywords. Based on this, we were able to map the semantic concept space of neuroscience research: how are topic related to each other — and where is the current focus of attention?
At the 11th [Öffentliches Gestalten](https://oeffentlichesgestalten.de/) meetup on "Visualising data", hosted by [CityLAB Berlin](https://www.citylab-berlin.org/en/start/) and [DigitalService des Bundes](https://digitalservice.bund.de/en), I shared more recent work for and with the German Federal government — including the [Climate—Conflict—Vulnerability Index (CCVI)](https://climate-conflict.org)…
There's a method to the madness.
Jon Schwabish and I [chat about my work](https://policyviz.com/podcast/episode-278-exploring-the-evolution-of-data-visualization-with-moritz-stefaner/) and I reflect on my journey in the field — the Data Stories podcast, my shift from bespoke data visualization projects to scalable design systems, and collaborations with organizations like the World Health Organization.
Why 2024 was a dead year for indie dataviz — and how we’ll do much better in 2025
I was invited by [Kiel Life Science](https://www.bosch-lab.de/2025/02/learning-about-data-visualization-from-truth-beauty-operator-moritz-stefaner/) to speak at their New Year's Reception at the Zoological Museum Kiel, where around 75 guests gathered to gain insights into visualizing scientific data.