Cara Thompson, Data Visualisation Consultant

Let your plots do the heavy lifting! 

Buidling Stories with Data Logo

From instantly communicating key insights, to fostering conversations beyond your initial audience — via that “wow” factor and a clear visual identity for your work — beautifully crafted and memorable data visualisations are an undisputed asset in maximising the impact of your expertise.

Here’s how I can help.

Cara Thompson, Data Visualisation Consultant
Lesser spotted birds: Visualising bird species spotted one to five times in the FeederWatch dataset. The visualisation creates the effect of a bar graph by stacking the names of the species in columns (spotted once, spotted twice, etc). An image of a lesser spotted woodpecker is included to emphasise the pun. The subtitle reads: TIL that's not what lesser spotted means! Daylight in Edinburgh: Using dataviz to explore why the shift from winter to summer makes such a difference! The visualisation is designed to look like sun paper art, where the blue background fades to white with sun exposure. The race to the top: A data visualisation which looks like a cake with icing dripping from each tier, exploring how the contestants performed through each episode of a series. Ages through space and time: A data visualisation made to look like a galaxy, showing the ages and gender of the astronauts on different expeditions, with some notable outliers Auld Reekie: A data visualisation of the weather in Edinburgh, where it tends to be dry in April, and rainy just in time for the Fringe. The visualisation is a polar bar chart, with each bar representing a month. The lengths of the bars are made easy to compare by drawing two additional circles which correspond to the amount of rain in the driest month and the wettest month. Perfectly proportional penguins: Visualising how a Decision Tree algorithm can guess the species of penguins based on bill length and flipper length How fast did Bilbo walk? A tongue-in-cheek animated dataviz of how fast Bilbo and Frodo walked compared to my toddler and Victoria Wilkinson, the fastest woman to run up and down Ben Nevis Record: A dataviz celebrating the songs written by John Featherstone in which handwritten song titles go round in a circle to look like a well used CD or vinyl Feral pigs, cats, goats and UFOs of Brisbane: An animated map of where animals were spotted in Brisbane styled like the old X-Files 'I want to believe' poster.There are four species of animals, each represented by emojis which dance around the screen: pigs, cats, goats and aliens (the 'unidentified' animals in the dataset)


Dataviz Design Systems

A dataviz-friendly colour scheme and font combination, and a simple set of rules, for stand-out plots that look on-brand, every time.

Take a look at how you can effortlessly get your plots, tables and dashboards from fine and functional to beautiful and memorable with just two lines of code.

Data-to-Viz Commissions

From intuitive and memorable graphs that tell a clear story to bold data-driven visual statements, let’s get straight from your data to conversation-starting visuals.

I enjoy creating one-off pieces as well as data-to-viz solutions to automate those graphs you make repeatedly!

Training, Consultation and Mentoring

Level up your plots and build confidence in your own dataviz work, within your organisation, one-to-one or as part of a small group of peers.

Explore the training packages I offer, or to discuss how I can support a more specific need for your team.


Sounds like a good fit for your next project?

I’d love to hear from you! The best way to get in touch is via email.


Cara Thompson, Data Visualisation Consultant

What happens next?

Typically, I’ll respond to your email with an invitation to book a call to find out more about what you do and what you have in mind.

I provide a range of solutions to help research teams and data-driven organisations get straight from their data to thoughtfully designed and scientifically grounded visualisations, and would love to hear about how I could contribute to the work you do.

After we’ve gathered enough information and discussed a few potential solutions, I’ll estimate how long the work will take and the cost associated with it, send you a proposal, and make a start on your project once we’re both happy with the plan.

Here’s what a few recent clients had to say about the process of working with me…


Cara was fantastic to work with, came up with novel ideas we had not considered and delivered a professional finished product which exactly met what we had not even known we’d needed.

  • Colin Peckham, MD of Origin Scotland

Cara helped me create a cohesive visual identity for my brand and implement it in an R package. It’s provided immediate value to my work by dramatically reducing the time needed to go from a good idea to a professional-quality data visualization output. Cara has been great to work with.

  • Teal Emery, Founder & Lead Researcher of Teal Insights

What stands out was Cara’s ability to integrate the statistical nature of the data, the technical and administrative context, and the user’s needs, and then to user her mastery of R/ggplot2 to render something both functional and visually engaging.

  • Rob James, Founder of Evidently

Cara is one of the most talented data viz designers in the R community. With a keen eye for aesthetics and serious skill to implement her visions through code, Cara creates high-quality data viz that is lovely to look at and communicates effectively.

  • David Keyes, Founder of R for the Rest of Us


Find out more about how I ended up here, swing by my portfolio, take a look at the services I offer, revisit a recent talk or read about my adventures in the world of datascience and dataviz. However you ended up here, I hope you take away something you can use in your next project. And if you do, I’d love to hear what it was!