July 16, 2010
We came across some in-depth statistics about the Millenial generation and created this infographic for Flowtown. Not surprisingly, we found that Millienials love technology.
Published in Flowtown, Infographics
July 15, 2010
This infographic, created for Mint.com shows a detailed breakdown of the countries and entities that own the United State’s nearly $13 trillion in debt.
Published in Infographics, Mint
July 7, 2010
The following infographic, our first for Gigya.com, is a look at what online IDs people use most to log in to sites across the web. Not surprisingly, Facebook seems to be leading the pack across the board.
Published in Gigya, Infographics
July 5, 2010
Gamespy provided us with the data to create this infographic which shows the statistics achieved within the first two weeks of Red Dead Redemption’s release. In an incredible first two weeks, a staggering 14 million hours were spent playing the game.
Published in Gamespy, Infographics
July 5, 2010
It’s no secret that the United States Government places a hefty “vice” tax on various items we American’s love to enjoy on a regular basis. This infographic for Turbo Tax looks specifically at alcohol and it provides a comprehensive look at the money our Government makes from the beloved liquid.
Published in Infographics, Turbo Tax
July 1, 2010
We created this humorous infographic for AskMen.com. Take a look to determine what kind of man your drink says you are.
Published in AskMen, Infographics
June 22, 2010
We created this infographic for our friends at GigaOm that looks at the steady growth of cloud computing and the potential storage issues the cloud faces in the near future.
Published in GigaOM, Infographics
June 4, 2010
It’s no secret that coffee is one of the largest industries in the U.S. and even the world. For this Mint.com infographic we broke the numbers down to tell the story of the coffee industry’s sweet success.
Published in Infographics, Mint
June 3, 2010
This infographic, created for GigaOM, takes a look at the rise of geographic and location-based technology. But who will use this technology most efficiently? Will it be one of the underdogs or, will it be Facebook? Only time will tell.
Published in GigaOM, Infographics
June 1, 2010
For this infographic, we decided to do a little research to see which countries produce and consume the most beer:
Published in Infographics, Lunch
May 20, 2010
This infographic was created for Esquire. It’s a thorough look at what the U.S. Government actually owns – none of which came as a surprise to us.
Published in Esquire, Infographics
May 19, 2010
We created this infographic for the first of the Smash Summit Series meetings, held in San Francisco on May 12. It deals with the science of word of mouth marketing:
Published in Infographics, Smash Summit
May 19, 2010
For our most recent infographic for Milo, we took a look at which of America’s largest retailers were closing up shop(s). This graphic illustrated the fifty retailers that were closing the most store locations.
Published in Infographics, Milo
May 17, 2010
Published in Flowtown, Infographics
May 4, 2010
This is a graphic we created for Mint.com to be published on Huffington Post. It looks at Mint’s user data and determines that American’s are finally cutting back their personal debt and beginning to save more money.
Published in Clients, Infographics, Mint
April 28, 2010
Here is a new infographic for Fast Company that was a lot of fun, and helps you determine which Apple product to pull from your arsenal and when.
Published in Fast Company, Infographics
April 27, 2010
Published in Infographics, Shutterfly
April 24, 2010
Published in Infographics, Turbo Tax
April 15, 2010
Published in Clients, Daily Burn, Infographics
March 18, 2010
In our second infographic for GOOD Magazine’s Transparency section, we took a look at weapon sales around the globe. If you haven’t already, you can check out the first one of our infographics for GOOD. As you can see below, it is interesting to note the large spike in sales by the US in 2008.
Published in Clients, GOOD Magazine, Infographics
March 12, 2010
Published in Infographics, Milo
March 9, 2010
Published in Clients, Flowtown, Infographics
March 8, 2010
Fastcompany posted an article today discussing President Obama’s appointment of data and visualization whiz, Edward Tufte, to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, the group that keeps the Stimulus’ Accountability and Transparency Board accountable for their actions. As Fast Company notes, “infographics could sway politics mightily, given their unsurpassed power to convey messages that people remember.” Tufte, an author, lecturer and information design know-it-all has been hired to visualize the progress of the $787 billion stimulus program enacted by President Obama in 2009.
source
For those in the social media world, and more specifically, those involved in data visualization, this may be a crucial event for the industry as a whole. The appointment of Tufte by the President further legitimizes the “infographic” as a useful tool for displaying and conveying information, and as the gatekeeper of data integrity in visualization, he is a great fit for the job. Hopefully Tufte’s work will help to reveal the concrete facts behind the stimulus plan, where the money is being channeled and the overall impact it is having on our economy. For Tufte’s own statement on the appointment, check here.
Published in News
March 5, 2010
Star Wars can apparently be a metaphor for just about anything, even fast food. With McDonalds representing the allies and all second-tier burger joints being the rebels, this graphic, found on weathersealed.com, displays in true galactic fashion the distribution of fast food restaurants across the U.S. The black void is the area controlled by McDonalds, while the color spots represent one of the seven competing chains. With knowledge of the allies’ alarming burger penetration across the country, the rebel tactics appear to be all about increasing density, thus controlling a specific territory. The best example of concentrated resistance is Sonic Burger which apparently has 900 stores in Texas alone.
As quoted on weathersealed.com,
“Each individual restaurant location [on this map] has equal power. The entity that controls each point casts the most aggregate burger force upon it, as calculated by the inverse-square law – kind of like a chart outlining the gravitational wells of galactic star clusters, but in an alternate, fast food universe.”
This graphic is a beautiful rendering of what can be done with a subject, a little math, and a story to which it relates.
Published in News
March 3, 2010
This infographic was fun and was our first collaboration with GOOD Magazine, which has always been known for their infographics in their Transparency section. The people at GOOD Magazine are great to work with, and stay tuned for our next infographic for them coming soon. (click on the image to view large)
Published in GOOD Magazine, Infographics
March 2, 2010
Click on the infographic below to view large.
Published in Clients, Infographics, Permuto
February 23, 2010
Published in Clients, GigaOM, Infographics
February 23, 2010
Published in Infographics, Turbo Tax
February 3, 2010
Published in Clients, Infographics, Turbo Tax
January 19, 2010
Charting the discography of prolific musicians is quite the undertaking, but Michael Deal has made an outstanding contribution to the Charting the Beatles project. Our favorite is the Self Reference piece, in which he shows the lyrical allusions and connections among different Beatles’ songs. More musically-inclined folks will certainly love the piece that breaks down the song keys of each album. Here is a sample of some of his pieces, and you can view all contributions to the project in process by visiting the Charting the Beatles Flickr pool:
Published in News
January 12, 2010
Published in Clients, GigaOM, Infographics
January 4, 2010
Published in Clients, Infographics, Visual Economics
December 30, 2009
Published in Clients, Infographics, Interactive, Mint
December 30, 2009
This year has seen an explosion of infographics, and while they have been around for decades in their current form (at least with regards to illustrated/2D visualizations) and centuries in some form or another, this has been the first year where they have been widely popular on social news sites as a fine addition to the typical arsenal of text/photo/video for content creators to utilize to convey information in a more interesting and digestible way, and to get more exposure to their site in the process. A quick search of Digg.com stories shows the increased usage in the titles of submissions:
Through the creation of many successful infographics, and a few that have tanked, we understand that there is still much to be learned of course, but have also picked up some best practices. By adding designers to our team with decades of experience in print infographics, we also have the benefit of remembering that a fundamental purpose of each piece is to make a complex or boring set of data understandable and interesting by highlighting that which is important. Further, we have always enjoyed the fact that experimentation is still fun and necessary, and in our particular practice of creating a graphic and getting it as much exposure as possible, we are constantly given fresh feedback on which aspects and methods are preferred from people of all ages from around the world who all interpret the message through their own worldviews.
First, at the foundation of our piece, we have solid data. One of our favorite things to do is to work with clients who have proprietary data, as that gives us a unique angle and a fresh source of current statistics. If we have a great idea, but the data isn’t fresh or credible, then it’s best to either table it for later or pursue proprietary data to fill in the gap.
Next comes the question of what to do with that data, and what a good infographic/data visualization does and looks like…this is where the artistic side of the information designer has a chance to shine. Of course you will have inspiration in the back of your mind from stuff that you have seen that you like, but it is best to continually draw from other unconventional resources as well. As much as there are fundamental and appropriate methods to use, there is no reason to just do what everyone else doing.
There was a great thread started by Nathan Yau at Flowing Data in October called “What the **** is Visualization Anyways?” that drew in some great answers from the robust community over there. The first commenter, Christian, gives us a pretty useful standard, saying “(Information) Visualization is an umbrella term for any translation of a set of abstract information into a visual representation with the objective of increasing insight into this information.”
Some of the most visually stunning and complex pieces have had holes shot through them by commenters who immediately dismiss it as needlessly confusing. Or perhaps the piece is very aesthetically pleasing (to us of course, since the artistic aspect is always subjective) but the data isn’t labeled with the level of detail that one person might prefer, say in the case of a piece that is showing a ratio relationship. We ultimately just take the feedback and strive towards that hybrid goal of making our infographics visually pleasing and artistic without drawing away from or distracting people from the (usually most important) goal of making complex data more interesting and easily understood.
David McCandless posted a pretty cool and useful venn diagram at Information is Beautiful called What Makes Good Information Design? that gives a good perspective on some of the necessary ingredients for a universally loved piece: interesting, easy, beautiful and true (click image below to view full size on his site).
As Steve Duenes of the New York Times said in a Talk to the Newsroom Q&A awhile back:
Our criteria for what makes a great graphic varies a little. There are things we attempt, and we hope the result will be spectacular, but we also think there’s such a thing as daily graphic excellence. It doesn’t do us much good to produce a few splashy graphics but stumble on the smaller, routine things. If a reader can glance at a map or simple chart and quickly orient themselves or understand a statistic, and then continue reading the story without skipping a beat, it means we’ve edited and designed those graphics well.
As you can see, their team consistently compliments the news with beautiful, functional and informative graphics that can tell the story on their own, but are presented in line with the editorial analysis of any given topic, which is a nice homage to their newspaper roots.
That said, we have come to a fairly standard, crowd-informed test of the success of each of our infographics. Beyond the obvious and nice-to-hear comments combined with the quantifiable measures of the reach/traffic of the piece, we feel like an infographic has served its purpose when we find people discussing the topic of the piece and the data itself. This perfect condition is difficult to achieve when experimenting with new formats that are not immediately understood, but that is where the art of the process comes in, and as long as the data itself isn’t manipulated or malformed for the purpose of being more visually pleasing, there is typically no harm done (except in cases where ultra-hot pink permanently damages a viewer’s eyes).
Published in News
December 29, 2009
While reading Futuretainment, a great book that is full of minigraphics and absolutely brilliant design, I’ve thought a lot about the future of content on the web and how much the game will be changed in the new decade to come. Equally important, it is valuable to pay attention to which mediums will remain at the core and continue to be a vehicle for communicating important information (and of course to entertain one another). That said, the incredible timing of the person who submitted this Calvin and Hobbes from December 30, 1989 to Reddit is noteworthy on its own, and of course the commentary there represents the thoughts that the finest minds of the internet have to offer on the matter (click to view full-size).
Published in News
December 28, 2009
The New York Times has one again impressed with a cool piece, summarizing the highlights of each year across multiple categories, from what it meant to be maverick in 2000 to what it means now, for example. In this case, we have an Op-chart called “Picturing the Past 10 Years” by Phillip Niemeyer, an art director at the Double Triple art and design studio. The everyday team over there consists of some of the most incredible minds around, and as you can read in this newsroom interview, they have done an incredible job of bringing some of the best elements of print infographics to the web, and then of course building on that with their remarkable interactive pieces as well.
Published in News
December 16, 2009
Published in Infographics, Travelocity
December 9, 2009
Published in Clients, GigaOM, Infographics
December 2, 2009
Published in Clients, Infographics, Visual Economics
June 17, 2009
Continue reading “Where Has the Day Gone?”
Published in Esquire, Infographics
April 22, 2009
Published in Infographics, SloshSpot
April 13, 2009
Published in Infographics, SloshSpot
February 19, 2009
Published in Infographics, SloshSpot
February 13, 2009
Continue reading “Brutally Honest Beer Labels”
Published in Infographics, SloshSpot
February 12, 2009
Published in Infographics, Odeus
February 6, 2009
Published in Infographics, SloshSpot
December 29, 2008
Published in Infographics, SloshSpot
