Recent Work
This site is undergoing renovations.
In the meantime, you can see some of my recent work here.
The Types of Magic
Here’s a visualization of Magic card types by color, shown over time.
Colors are the standard Magic fare:
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Click here to toggle between absolute and relative color charts.
The colors are sorted by size, showing how each card type has a characteristic color — creatures in , instants in , enchantments in , and sorceries in .
Dips in the chart happen when card types drop to zero, such as in 2003, when the all-creature set Legions was released.
Data notes — All card counts are normalized by set size and adjusted for cards with multiple colors and types. Here’s where I got the mana symbols and source data.
The Artists of Magic
The most prolific Magic artist of all time is Kev Walker, with 429 paintings since 1996.
How does that look over time?
The charts below reveal patterns of artistic contribution for Magic’s top artists. Card sets are ordered horizontally over time, with card volume shown by height. Hover over a chart to compare sets across artists.
Data notes — Card counts include reprints. Sets are only core sets and expansions, not special sets like Portal and Unglued. Here’s the source data.
Drawing Venn Diagrams
Sometimes you want to draw an area proportional venn diagram, where the overlap between two circles accurately represents the overlap between two sets.
To do so, you need to know how far apart the circles should be. It turns out this distance doesn’t have a closed form solution, but you can define a function from distance → overlap and find it via bisection search.
