Civic and Community Engagement

• Piktochart
  Web-based tool that has some free themes (and a whole bunch more for the paid version) for creating simple visualizations.

• Canva

• Easel.ly Web-based tool for creating conceptual visualization and storytelling.

• infogr.am Web-based tool for creating digital infographics that can be embeded on a website and/or published and linked to the infogra.am site. Create charts using real data with 31 chart options.

• AMCharts - A set of JavaScript (HTML5) and flash charts for websites and Web-based products. An ideal tool to generate charts for your interactive infographics.

• Hohli charts - An online charts builder based on the Google Chart API to create line and bar graphs, pie charts, Venn diagrams, radar charts and scatter plots.

• Icon Archive - Search and browse nearly 500,000 free icons by category, artist, format and date. 

• Pixlr - Free online photo editor.

• Tagxedo - Tagxedo turns words - famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters - into a visually stunning word cloud. Use shape templates to make the cloud form an image.

• Wordle - Generate “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source

CSUN Mapping Tool

Free Tools for Data Visualization and Analysis

• ANTz - A free open source 3D data visualization software application.

• datavisualization.ch - Provides a collection of tools for creating more complex and interactive visualizations using your own data sets and development environments.

• Google Chart Tools - Provides several tools for making data more comprehensible. Google Chart Tools is the search giant’s bundling of the Google Chart API and Google Visualization API.

• PolicyMap - Web-based Geographic Information System covering the United States used to understand communities. With easy-to-use menus, PolicyMap is a “GIS tool for non-GIS experts” for those who need to visualize large amounts of data quickly and easily, often down to the census tract or block group level.

• Stat Silk - Create interactive maps using the award-winning free StatPlanet software. Explore thousands of world stats through interactive maps and data visualizations.

• tableau - Downloadable software where you can upload a spreadsheet or CSV and create a variety of interactive data visualizations (Windows only).

• TimelineJS - Uses a Google spreadsheet with links to YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Sound Cloud and other media sources to create timelines.

• Data Visualisation Catalogue   A tool to help you select the type of visualisation to help display your data.

• NY Times Mapping America: Every City, Every Block Map of the distribution of racial and ethnic groups. Searchable by zip code.

• US Census Data Visualization Gallery Data visualizations based on historical population data. The Census Bureau hopes to expand this collection by adding visualizations that include the full breadth of Census Bureau data sets and subject areas.

• visual.ly Integrates with social networks to analyze Twitter and Facebook data. Offers a marketplace to connect you with visual designers and motion graphics artists who specialize in infographics. Has a ton of infographics to use as inspiration.