*aesthetically pleasing*

Check out the software section at Visual Complexity http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/community/tools.cfm

thanks...

When I have to put something together quickly I tend to use the graph tools in illustrator, and then "expand" (illustrator-speak for explode) them so that I can have the graphic flexibility of doing things from scratch in illustrator, but the basic form in place from the tool calculations.

thanks...i was hoping you would reply...lol

One quick and dirty method is to make the charts/graphs in excel from your data set and then take to illustrator. Elements come through as vector into illustrator from excel.

In Tufte's workshops he lists a few software packages for data analysis - maybe try searching his website.

yea coincidentally i was on tuftes site this morning and came across the site "juice analytics" which has some nice addins for excel...although not as good as illustrator, it makes excels graphics somewhat acceptable.

http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/tufte-style-comparison-chart-generator/

i've actually been finding a lot of cool links, and hopefully this thread can turn into a resource of techniques/tutorials for people with similar interests. ill keep posting as i find them.

http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/index.html

Cytoscape looks pretty good and it is free
http://www.cytoscape.org/