Hi all,

Just a quick note in case you didn’t see the announcement that digital news publication Quartz is making their internal chart-making tool Atlas available to the public. I registered and was given access to use this web-based simple chart maker, and here’s what I created:

It only took me about 5 minutes to get the hang of the web-based UI and create this bar chart. I tried a couple more complicated data sets first, but ran up against a 12 column limit. I didn’t see how to sort the bars, so I went back to the Excel document, sorted the data table in the spreadsheet, and then re-copied and pasted it into the window so the bars were sorted how I wanted them – by decreasing french fry score.

You can also export to SVG, the code is open source, and the chart looks great on a mobile device without any programming or configuration on my part. It just works. No filtering, interactivity or advanced analytics, very limited formatting and customization options, and no dashboards. Single charts are what this tool allows you to build, and what it does, it does well. I can see lots of people who want to make simple charts and graphs using this tool to crank out publication and mobile-ready views.

Anyone else play with it? What do you think?

Thanks,
Ben