This is probably one of the more fun radial graphs I've ever seen. Although the information doesn't have to be portrayed in this manner and could convey the message just as well in table form, I don't think the radial design detracts from the overall infographic at all. Monday, July 19, 2010
Spectrum of Apple Flavors
This is probably one of the more fun radial graphs I've ever seen. Although the information doesn't have to be portrayed in this manner and could convey the message just as well in table form, I don't think the radial design detracts from the overall infographic at all. 
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Tweet Maps of 4 Cities
Ahh, I do love me some interactive maps. These maps of the distribution of mobile tweets that included location tags in 4 different cities are cool, but I kind of wish I could see the data overlaid on physical maps of the layout of the city, rather than the boroughs merely being indicated by a point. See all four cities here! Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Infographics Make Learning More Interesting
At least that's what Education Web Design thinks, and I totally agree! :) "By definition, an Infographic is 'an Information graphic – a visual representation of data.' When you have complex statistics and data, how else are you going to give it that mass appeal that new media companies are striving for?"While it's rather sparse on text, I do love the cleanliness of the above infographic they featured. Monday, June 28, 2010
Beautiful Infographics
I was Web surfing during a quick work break today and came across these beautiful infographics generated by Well Formed Eigenfactor, which creates interactive visualizations based on Eigenfactor Metrics. Absolutely gorgeous.... Infographic Designer Showcase
Information is Beautiful currently has a nice collection of infographic works from design duo Tyler Lang and Elsa Chaves. Their stuff is clean, visually appealing and most importantly, gets the message across in a clear and concise manner. Check out the full showcase to see more of their creations. Friday, June 25, 2010
The History of Human Communication
Specifically, long-distance communication via technology, and not communication powered by humans and animals trekking long distance to deliver written messages or to speak to your in person. I'm quite surprised the tin can and a string trick wasn't discovered until 1810. Anyways, super fun, super clean. Overall, well done, even if it is a promotional infographic for Google Voice. Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Self-Deprecating Infographic
Another one! I just can't get enough of these, because they're so funny and yet so true! Infographic Showcase has an even larger version so you can see the whole thing in all its snarky glory. iPhone diagram
So beautiful and elegant! If only I could find a bigger version and actually read the text! Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Oh, this brings back memories....via Monday, June 21, 2010
Deciding Whether or Not to Upgrade
With my contract coming to an end soon with my current cellphone carrier, I've begun looking into whether I want to upgrade up to a better phone or go with something else entirely. Luckily Chart Porn posted this infographic today to help me decide. A Visual History of the American Presidency
Jam packed with all sorts of information, this is a go-to source for info about the American Presidency. The creator of the Infographic has quite a resume:"Designed by Nathaniel Pearlman--one of the founders of Time Plots, which creates infographic posters, and also a former student of Edward Tufte--the Visual History provides historical data on population, presidential elections, Congress, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, the U.S. economy, and the federal budget and debt. And that, '...places each president in historical context, visualizing a remarkable range of political, social, and economic measures to succinctly tell the story of the presidency.'"via Fast Company Hotspots for Tourists vs. Locals
Wow if I could make this infographic into a poster I would. At the very least it deserves a new place of honor as my desktop wallpaper. Anyway, Eric Fischer has put together a bunch of maps of major cities based on photos uploaded to Flickr. In addition to mapping where the most photos were being uploaded, he also broke the data down into his guesstimation of which ones were taken by tourists and which ones were locals. Here's how he describes the breakdown: "Blue points on the map are pictures taken by locals (people who have taken pictures in this city dated over a range of a month or more).Red points are pictures taken by tourists (people who seem to be a local of a different city and who took pictures in this city for less than a month). Yellow points are pictures where it can't be determined whether or not the photographer was a tourist (because they haven't taken pictures anywhere for over a month). They are probably tourists but might just not post many pictures at all." Check out the full set of maps on Flickr.
Designing an Infographic
Ever wonder the intricate details in the design and thought process that went into creating a totally awesome infographic? Check out Smashing Magazine's latest article about how they developed their "World of Programming" Infographic. 
Saturday, June 5, 2010
The BP Oil Spill
Since it first erupted on the news, the media has been bombarding the public with all kinds of guesstimates about the scale and scope of the BP oil disaster and has spawned countless infographics trying to convey the size of the oil spill. If It Was My Home has created the simplest and easiest one I've come across, with no numbers or figures or comparisons to previous oil spills. All it is is a picture of the oil spill overlaid on Google Maps. Awesome, frightening, and definitely drives the message home in a clear and concise manner. 
via Flowing Data
via Flowing Data Unemployment by State
http://datadrivenconsulting.com/js/protovis/cartogramemp.htmlHere's a fun interactive infographic that displays two variables over time: absolute number of unemployed people per state and percentage of unemployed people compared to total labor force. It even throws in an extra bonus by displaying each state's bubble in its geographic location with respect to the others.Link to the interactive infographic is here: http://datadrivenconsulting.com/js/protovis/cartogramemp.html via Chart Porn
Internet Addiction
Normally I'm not really a fan of the super tall infographics that have been spreading like wildfire all over the Internet, but this one actually does a really good job in terms of simplicity of design, color scheme and clarity. The only thing that isn't clear to me is its comparison of time spent online per month versus total number of hours available. Where and how are they getting these numbers? Are they taking the total number of Internet users and multiplying that by the average number of hours a person spends on the Internet per month? This one section makes me dubious without some clarity into how they came up with this comparison, but otherwise this graphic is a good example of clean design, if you must insist on the tall-infographic-covered-in-clip-art look. 
via Geekologie
via Geekologie Pie Chart Art
OK this one isn't an infographic per se, but I just loved the artistry and detail that went into this image. 
College Degree Density
Wow these past couple weeks have been busy! Oh well, I'm back for a little bit at least and I've got some graphs saved up to share. This one has been floating around the Internet for the past few days:
The unit of measurement is number of degrees per square mile, which in of itself isn't bad but it doesn't put the figures into perspective. What would be really fascinating is to compare that number with the total number of people living per square mile. For example, the top two cities in the graph are San Francisco and New York. As a Bay Area resident and a frequent visitor to New York, I can tell you that the overall density and number of people in New York City is way, way higher than the overall density of San Francisco. With so many people packed into such a small space, it makes sense that New York has a high number of graduates, but as a percentage this group may be just a tiny fraction of the overall population. Considering San Francisco has a small total population and population density than New York, it's all the more impressive that it ranks on the top of the list. (of course, as a native, I may be a bit biased in my perceptions, hehehe).
The unit of measurement is number of degrees per square mile, which in of itself isn't bad but it doesn't put the figures into perspective. What would be really fascinating is to compare that number with the total number of people living per square mile. For example, the top two cities in the graph are San Francisco and New York. As a Bay Area resident and a frequent visitor to New York, I can tell you that the overall density and number of people in New York City is way, way higher than the overall density of San Francisco. With so many people packed into such a small space, it makes sense that New York has a high number of graduates, but as a percentage this group may be just a tiny fraction of the overall population. Considering San Francisco has a small total population and population density than New York, it's all the more impressive that it ranks on the top of the list. (of course, as a native, I may be a bit biased in my perceptions, hehehe). Friday, May 14, 2010
The Title Says It All
Ouch, that hurts. This gem of a find is only bearable to look at if you follow the title and only go by the numbers. Looks like this one got published half baked. Flowing Data gave them some benefit of the doubt though: "Here's my guess about what happened. A deadline was coming up quick, and a graphics editor put this together to get a feel for what the final design would look like. He then saved it as a different file, and then went to work. Except when it came time to send the file to the printers, the editor sent the wrong file. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often."
(via Flowing Data)
(via Flowing Data) Thursday, May 13, 2010
A Terrible, Terrible Infographic
This infographic makes me a sad panda. Not only is it really hard to draw any patterns or conclusions across any of the data because of the way it's displayed an organized, the little cutesy text bubbles filled with random facts actually cover up some of the numbers! Plus the reason behind the varying widths of the bars still eludes me (anyone know what variable that's supposed to represent?). This information is certainly fascinating, but would have been far more compelling if only they'd broken it up into three different chunks for eating out, groceries and spending or separated it by region or any other number of ways rather than a big messy tornado of fail. 
(via Flowing Data)
(via Flowing Data) Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Pets in the U.S.
Here's a nice clean and simple infographic about pets in the U.S. Looks like I'm in a small minority of households that have a hamster. Don't worry Hammy, you may be one of 1.3 million, but I still love you. 
(via Infographic Showcase)
(via Infographic Showcase) Monday, May 10, 2010
A Showcase of Bad Infographics
Any infographic designer or appreciator worth their salt should head over to Smashing Magazine and check out their in-depth article about the dos and don'ts of infographic design. They've gathered quite a collection of horrifically bad infographics that are either difficult to comprehend, misleading or both.To avoid making your own disaster or being inadvertently misled by poor design and misrepresentation, Smashing suggests asking yourself these important questions about the data:
(via Smashing Magazine)
- How was it collected?
- What are its limitations?
- Which mathematical transformations are appropriate?
- Which methods of display are appropriate?
- Who collected it?
- Why was it collected?
- What is its context in a broader subject?
- What is its context in the field of research that created it?
(via Smashing Magazine) An Infographic for the Geek in Me
How could I resist posting an infographic about Star Trek? Man you have to feel sorry for those red shirts sometimes....
(via Geekologie)
(via Geekologie) Thursday, May 6, 2010
The Rise of the Huge Infographic
Head over to Flowing Data for a fun retrospective on the rise of the Humongous Infographic. You know, those massive infographics the size of a football field that rarely ever seem to fit on your computer screen anymore. Sometimes they're well done, well organized and full of interesting information and sometimes it feels like all that volume is just filled with gigantic fonts, random clip art and gibberish. How did it come to this? Find out here. 
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Color and Gender
xkcd, the go-to place for amusing cartoon infographics, graphs and charts, has published the results of their color survey in their usually humorous and quirky way. One of their most amusing discoveries involved the differences between how different genders name color. You can definitely see the branding and marketing goons' handiwork rather clearly here: 
"Salmon." Heh. Then there's also their amusing breakdown of the top color names by gender. The most popular colors used by women were:
There's a lot more on the xkcd blog. It's definitely an amusing read. :)
"Salmon." Heh. Then there's also their amusing breakdown of the top color names by gender. The most popular colors used by women were: - Dusty Teal
- Blush Pink
- Dusty Lavender
- Butter Yellow
- Dusky Rose
- Penis
- Gay
- WTF
- Dunno
- Baige
There's a lot more on the xkcd blog. It's definitely an amusing read. :) Thursday, April 29, 2010
Volcanic Eruptions in Recent History
Check out this interactive infographic published by the Wall Street Journal. It's well worth it: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703465204575208412972387390.html
Misleading Graphs
Sociological Images has a guest post today about how data presented in graphs can be misleading to the unobservant viewer. Take this graph for example, which supposedly correlates lower GPAs with increased alcohol consumption among undergraduates. 
The trend looks pretty damning indeed until you realize that the y-axis only ranges from 3.0 to 3.5, which means the difference between a student who consumes zero drinks of alcohol per week and those who have 6+ drinks a week is far less than a full letter grade. At that point you kind of have to wonder if you can even really call it a trend anymore. I for one don't really have much faith in GPAs as an indicator of intelligence or performance because of the wide-spread proliferation of grade inflation (or maybe I'm just bitter because most of my engineering classes were curved to a C average, which honestly is as it should be). Anyways, check out more examples in the full post.
The trend looks pretty damning indeed until you realize that the y-axis only ranges from 3.0 to 3.5, which means the difference between a student who consumes zero drinks of alcohol per week and those who have 6+ drinks a week is far less than a full letter grade. At that point you kind of have to wonder if you can even really call it a trend anymore. I for one don't really have much faith in GPAs as an indicator of intelligence or performance because of the wide-spread proliferation of grade inflation (or maybe I'm just bitter because most of my engineering classes were curved to a C average, which honestly is as it should be). Anyways, check out more examples in the full post. Tuesday, April 27, 2010
American Military Strategy and PowerPoint
Oh, PowerPoint, how we love to hate you. So much so that the New York Times wrote an entire article about its shortcomings. The original poster-child for horrible PowerPoint slides used to be the slide that supposedly contributed to the Columbia disaster (you can get a good breakdown of the notorious slide and the weakness of PowerPoint that is demonstrates here), but now the latest piece of evidence stacked against PowerPoint is a diagram illustrating American military strategy in Afghanistan. 
If the intention of the artist was to demonstrate its complexity, then they've definitely succeeded. But if the diagram was actually intended to be a useful tool for discussion and planning then it utterly fails. Ultimately, the article isn't about this diagram at all but how PowerPoint tends to oversimplify complex and difficult concepts into rigid bullet point lists. See the full New York Times article for more details.
If the intention of the artist was to demonstrate its complexity, then they've definitely succeeded. But if the diagram was actually intended to be a useful tool for discussion and planning then it utterly fails. Ultimately, the article isn't about this diagram at all but how PowerPoint tends to oversimplify complex and difficult concepts into rigid bullet point lists. See the full New York Times article for more details. Monday, April 26, 2010
When to Use Small Multiples
Juice Analytics has put up a nice article about how and when to use small multiples, which are ways to use the same chart format to display multi-dimensional data across multiple sample sets. 
Full article here (via Chart Porn)
Full article here (via Chart Porn) Thursday, April 22, 2010
The Trustworthiness of Beards
If only Captain Cook's mustache were included in this chart. He'd definitely qualify as "threatening" at the very least. 
via Geekologie
via Geekologie Venn Diagram of Prime Time TV 2010
This infographic makes me feel better about not having time to watch TV anymore. 
via Fast Company
via Fast Company Photographer's Life in Graph
Hilarious, but I'll have you know that I believe shooting flowers and cats can be acceptably shot at any point in time on that graph. ;)
via Robert Benson's Blog
via Robert Benson's Blog Thursday, April 15, 2010
Food Charts
Today is all about food, mainly because I was hungry while surfing the web today. But anyways, first up today is a nice infographic by NGF about how much salt is contained in various common foods we eat. Love the use of color and the play on salt piles and texture to add some fun depth to it all. And who knew that cutting our salt intake in half could save 150,000 lives a year? 
Full article here (via Chart Porn) Speaking of food intake, the New York times had an article in its business section about how commercialized, processed foods have begun to completely dominant the average American diet. What's interesting about the breakdown of different countries' food intake is how much baked goods Mexico each, how many veggies China eats and how incredibly little India eats in general. 
Full NYTimes article here.
Full article here (via Chart Porn) Speaking of food intake, the New York times had an article in its business section about how commercialized, processed foods have begun to completely dominant the average American diet. What's interesting about the breakdown of different countries' food intake is how much baked goods Mexico each, how many veggies China eats and how incredibly little India eats in general. Full NYTimes article here. Monday, April 12, 2010
Why Use an Infographic?
Infographic Showcase responds with the following: "Because they provide a moment of visual stimulation (even if we are over stimulated), allowing our more creative thoughts to open new pathways of thought and increasing our consciousness and self-awareness. Or, because we are a lazy culture and we like pretty pictures. I’m good either way."I agree wholeheartedly.
via (Infographic Showcase)
via (Infographic Showcase) Friday, April 9, 2010
Infographic on Making Infographics
So true, although I think the percentage dedicated to organizing and legibility should probably be higher. 
via Cool Infographics
via Cool Infographics Average College Student's Budget
Ahh this chart brings me back to the good ol' days of college. Was it really almost 4 years ago? Eek! 
Student Budget
Student Budget Solar System
After a long hiatus I've finally put together another poster, this time of the planets of the solar system (you can imagine the debate I had with people about whether or not to include Pluto, but ultimately it came down to aesthetics because you could barely see it to scale compared to the other planets. Poor Pluto....). The original concept design was supposed to include almost all of the moons next to their respective planets, but since I really wanted everything to be to scale, I decided to take them out since the vast majority of the moons would simply be tiny specs. There were even a few occasions where I mistook a couple for dust on my screen. So I decided to keep it very clean and very simple, with a little color to distinguish the rockier, warmer inner planets and brighten up what is predominantly a gray poster. Hope you guys like it! 
(Full poster via Zazzle)
(Full poster via Zazzle) Thursday, April 8, 2010
Diagram Pillows
Designer Heather Lin has created some nifty pillows based on textbook diagrams. They come in three themes: geology, botany and biology. So cute! :)
Heather Lins Home (via Boing Boing)
Heather Lins Home (via Boing Boing) Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Maps in Modern Web Design
Smashing Magazine has written up an article discussing the fundamentals of online maps and how interactivity allows the designer to forgo traditional map staples such as legends if you do it right. In their own words: "The expansion of Web technology over the past decade has opened a number of doors to presenting data online. One of the most rapidly improving tools for interactive presentation is the map."
http://awesome.good.is/ecosystem/#/home
Check out the full Smashing Magazine article!
"Interactive maps on the Internet present data most effectively when they invite action from the user. Showing relationships between data is easier when the user has the power to change the visuals. These are advantages that traditional print maps do not have. If a print map is not clear initially, a person can do very little to make sense of it. With online interactive maps, the simple action of moving sliders around reveals relationships between data and content."
Here are some of the more nifty examples of different map navigation styles they provide:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/election/uscounties.htmlhttp://awesome.good.is/ecosystem/#/home
Check out the full Smashing Magazine article! Monday, April 5, 2010
Different Depictions of the Same Data
Going through the blogs, I noticed an interesting pattern this morning. Over at Information is Beautiful, there was an infographic comparing the size of different countries' militaries. Specifically, it showed the number of active soldiers per 100,000 people of several respective countries. In this infographic, North Korea is huge, with 4,711 active soldiers per citizen. In this light, the U.S.'s military seems pretty small, in 45th place, and China's is even smaller, at 124th place.
This other infographic, from Chart Porn, declares that North Korea has 1.1 million. Even though that's the smallest nominal-size military on the chart, it's put up in huge red highlights above the other countries listed. Nominally, China is now the biggest military in the world and the U.S. is number 2. http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/the-craziest-country-in-the-world/Both charts try to emphasize North Korea's huge military with respect to its population and GDP, but go about it very differently. Personally, despite the use of area to represent 1-dimensional data, the first chart is much better at showing just how ridiculous North Korea's military is compared to the actual size and resources of the country, whereas in the second chart you have to look all over the place to piece together the full picture, and the nominal rankings of the countries is confusing when looked at separately from the rest of the infographic.
This other infographic, from Chart Porn, declares that North Korea has 1.1 million. Even though that's the smallest nominal-size military on the chart, it's put up in huge red highlights above the other countries listed. Nominally, China is now the biggest military in the world and the U.S. is number 2. http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/the-craziest-country-in-the-world/Both charts try to emphasize North Korea's huge military with respect to its population and GDP, but go about it very differently. Personally, despite the use of area to represent 1-dimensional data, the first chart is much better at showing just how ridiculous North Korea's military is compared to the actual size and resources of the country, whereas in the second chart you have to look all over the place to piece together the full picture, and the nominal rankings of the countries is confusing when looked at separately from the rest of the infographic. Taxi Hot Spots in New York City
The New York Times has put out another awesome infographic, this time tracking the average number of pickups at different times of the day over different days of the week. It creates a very interesting pattern that really shows the rush and flow of the city. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/02/nyregion/taxi-map.html
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
How to Make Stacked Bar Charts Clearer
Jon Peltier has written up a great post on his blog dissecting a stacked bar chart of data originally published by Gartner. The original chart looks like this:
He goes through and makes the chart clearer, step by step, to make trends in the data easier to discern. Eventually he gets to this chart, which looks like a total breath of fresh air when put up next to the original: 
Jon goes through several different ways of displaying the data. It's definitely worth the quick read here.
He goes through and makes the chart clearer, step by step, to make trends in the data easier to discern. Eventually he gets to this chart, which looks like a total breath of fresh air when put up next to the original: 
Jon goes through several different ways of displaying the data. It's definitely worth the quick read here. Monday, March 22, 2010
The Best Cities for Working Mothers
The online financial software service, Mint, has aggregated much of its collected user data to create an interactive infographic about the best cities for working mothers to work, based on pay, unemployment, cost of living, etc. New York, San Francisco, San Jose and Houston show up quite a lot in the breakdown. Check it out here.
(via 
Sunday, March 21, 2010
The Fundamentals of Graphical Perception
The folks over at Flowing Data put together a great post about how people perceive graphics and ranked the best types of graphs based on people's ability to interpret them. Fascinating.http://flowingdata.com/2010/03/20/graphical-perception-learn-the-fundamentals-first/
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Changing Colors of the Seasons
The folks over at Flickr Flow have published a very innovative way of showing how colors vary across the seasons. Below is a color wheel representing an aggregate of all the colors that can be found in different pictures of the Boston Commons during different times of the year. Here's their own description of the piece: "The two of us see the world as a stream of color, and in 2009 we finally had a chance to draw the river in our heads. We began with a collection of photographs of the Boston Common taken from Flickr. Using an algorithm developed for the WIRED Anniversary visualization, our software calculated the relative proportions of different colors seen in photos taken in each month of the year, and plotted them on a wheel. The image below is an early sketch from the piece. Summer is at the top, with time proceeding clockwise."
Read the full post for close-ups of each season and the final infographic.
Read the full post for close-ups of each season and the final infographic. Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Google Public Data Explorer
The big office complex down the road known around these parts as "The Goog" (or for those lucky enough to know people who work there, the place with the delicious free noms) has just announced the new Public Data Explorer for their search engine. I'm guessing it's their response to Wolfram Alpha, but the feature is capable of generating some pretty spiffy looking interactive graphs. For example, check out this interactive graphic showing life expectancy vs. fertility rate over time. You can get the full lowdown about the new feature at the company's official blog.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Comparing space required for transportation
This set of images is so simple, and yet it gets its point across quite vividly. It definitely makes a good case for not driving a car with hardly any words at all. If only I didn't live in a sprawl where public transportation requires driving a car to get to it! 
Friday, March 5, 2010
Fast Food in America
Today while going through my blog feed I noticed two versions of the same map made by Stephen Von Worley. The first emphasizes the dominance of Sonic in Texas:
(via Geekologie)The next is intended to highlight McDonalds:
(via Consumerist)Through a simple change in color scheme, what was glaringly obvious in one version suddenly blends in and is almost unnoticeable in another.
(via Geekologie)The next is intended to highlight McDonalds:
(via Consumerist)Through a simple change in color scheme, what was glaringly obvious in one version suddenly blends in and is almost unnoticeable in another.
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