52 infographics in 52 weeks

2014-05-04T16:59:00.000+12:00

Hi folks

Just a quick note to let you know if you're interested in following what infographics work I've been up to since finishing 52-infographics, head over to The Infographers. My wife Imogen and I have been busy tackling some fascinating infography projects since 2012 – including which potato?, an expanding annual report, and filmographics…

Enjoy!

Gareth & Imogen

Week #52 – The Making Of

2011-08-14T16:34:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Complete 52 infographics in 52 weeks (give or take a few) by making an infographic about making infographics.

How I approached the challenge

Done!

Sure it took 56 weeks, but that's pretty good going I reckon.

This week's infographic gives a bit of insight into the process I've followed over the last year, and shows some of the outcomes so far. I couldn't resist using the ever-popular ribbon to help me out. Love the ribbon!

I hope you've enjoyed this project. I have! If you're interested, my favorites are weeks 9, 15, and 50.

I'll continue to make and share infographics here, just not one a week…

If you've got something you'd like infographised I'd love to help. Drop me an email and we'll talk.

And don't forget to take a look at the PDF in Scribd.

What did I learn?

Infography is a time consuming hobby.
Quantity can jeopardize quality.
I have a slightly obsessive personality.
20,000 pageviews does not a rich man make.
I like the idea of infographic art.
A late breaking statistic: this project takes up about 20GB on my hard drive…

Week #51 – Who Owes What?

2011-08-07T18:56:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about debt.

How I approached the challenge

What's each countries balance of assets and debt?

That question's been on my mind over the last few weeks of credit downgrades and national insolvencies. Ideally this week's infographic would answer that question – showing each countries' assets less their total internal and external, public and private debt. But I couldn't find the data I needed in the time I had.

But I did find this nice little list of countries by external debt. By the time I'd spent a few days ruminating over the list, I'd mapped out exactly how this infographic would look: a world map made up of relatively-sized circles representing each countries' external debt.

Except Luxembourg ruined it.

Luxembourg's hearty US$3M+ external debt dwarfs it's next closest rival (Ireland, with US$0.5M), not to mention the 75% of countries with less than US$0.005M per capita debt.

So I switched to a continental view, and fortified it with the top five external debt owing countries within each continent.

I found the results quite surprising…

Check out the details in Scribd.

What did I learn?

That one significant difference between a developing nation and a first world nation is seemingly the enormity of the latter's external debt.
I wish there was more current, publicly-accessible data.
Is all this debt really sustainable?

Next week's challenge

1. Complete 52 infographics in 52 weeks (give or take a few) by making an infographic about making infographics.

A Fully Operational Week #50 – Coffee

2011-07-31T17:01:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about coffee.

How I approached the challenge

First of all, thanks for your patience. I think this is the first infographic that I couldn't complete in the week-long timeframe. Who knew so much went into coffee?

I knew I wanted to work through the process of coffee from growing to drinking. And I've been meaning to do something like one of those brilliant old Usborne books from my childhood. Boy they were choice!

There's plenty more about coffee that could (should?) have wound it's way into this infographic – but with the week (two weeks?)-long time limit, this'll just have to do.

Once again, Wikipedia's a great source. Needs tidying, but a great source.

You'll definitely need to look at this one in Scribd to see any detail…

What did I learn?

This sort of infographic takes an eternity to complete.
I could bash out crap clipart for a living.
I need help to edit down what I'm working on. I keep adding, but struggle to do the removing…
Sometimes, the style of the infographic I'm working on ends up emerging, rather than by conscious decision.
Working two full consecutive weekends on a hobby is neither good for one's health, nor one's housework…

Next week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about debt.

A Partially Complete Week #50 – Coffee

2011-07-25T21:27:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about coffee.

How I approached the challenge

Okay, sorry. I've not finished this one. It's just too much fun (and too much work) to cut into one week.

So here's a sneak peek. Lots still to do as you'll see. I'll wind this one up this weekend.

Thanks for being so understanding.

Week #49 – Natural Disasters, Animated

2011-07-18T21:25:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Take a week off.
2. Redo an old infographic.
3. Collaborate.

How I approached the challenge

The week off was very pleasant, thanks friends!

The old infographic and collaboration was also a lot of fun, courtesy Mark Easton.

We picked Week 35 – Natural Disasters to animate. Mark could see this working beautifully using paper.js. And here's the result! Let me know what you think.

What did I learn?

Google's Web Fonts rock, but take a little bit of fiddling around to get them to work in Google's blogspot. Here's a reasonable summary, courtesy Taffiq Awan.
Paper.js is a mystery to me…
Actually, coding is a mystery to me: fun, but easy to get confounded.

Next week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about coffee.

Week #48 – The Creative Process

2011-07-03T14:13:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Make an infographic that's related to the creative industry.

How I approached the challenge

I've been reading Mario Pricken's book Creative Advertising – a jolly fine read. It's jam packed with ideas to help stimulate the creative process in advertising. It's also got a really good introduction that describes how to make the process a success.

I've mindmapped that introduction out, embroidered a few bits based on my experience, and published it here for you to enjoy/be confused by. Let me know which camp you fall into!

Check out the PDF at Scribd.

What did I learn?

It's easy as pie to make your own typeface. Take NZD12 to yourfonts.com and have a crack.
The creative process as it relates to advertising, is quite different from the creative process as it relates to writing, architecture, music, painting – in fact, most other creative disciplines.

Next week's challenge

1. Take a week off.
2. Redo an old infographic.
3. Collaborate.

Week #47 – Animal Protein & Disease

2011-06-26T19:59:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Make an infographic out of some statistics in a book you've read. Or are reading. (Or someone close to you is reading…)

How I approached the challenge

Imogen's reading T. Colin Campbell's fascinating and terrifying The China Study. On the cover it's described as 'the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted'. Synopsis: it's a comparison of the results of the China Study, a 20-year research project into the nutrition of 6,500 Chinese, with other international nutritional research projects. It's findings are very disturbing: a strong correlation between high consumption of animal protein and western disease, notably breast, prostate, and colon cancers; heart, kidney, auto-immune, and brain disease; osteoporosis; obesity; multiple sclerosis; and diabetes.

I must admit, I've read little further than the introduction and a skim of the charts. However, what I've read so far ensures that I'll be reading the whole book, and will probably make some lifestyle changes, my dear cheese and bacon.

In the introduction Dr. Campbell describes his softly softly approach to this research. After all, accusing animal protein of a negative role in cancer et. al, is a rather controversial notion. I, on the other hand, am willing to sensationalize the notion in the hope of leading people to Dr. Campbell's work, and changes in behavior.

Check out the PDF at Scribd.

What did I learn?

One mustn't always use brush strokes in ones' work.
Animal protein is possibly the root of many kinds of evil.
Popular belief trumps science and research. At least for a little while.
Sometimes, sensationalism is important.

Next week's challenge

1. Make an infographic that's related to the creative industry.

Week #46 – Hermeneutics

2011-06-19T20:08:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Describe hermeneutics in an infographic.

How I approached the challenge

Okay, so I managed to make pretty hard work out of a simple concept.

The concept: show one of two three-dimensional hermeneutic methods used by Kevin Vanhoozer in his book Cultural Theology.

I should clarify a few things. Hermeneutics means interpretation, most frequently the interpretation of the Bible. So a hermeneutic method is a way of interpreting something. And from what I can tell, Vanhoozer's two three-dimensional methods are:

Method One

Dimension one: the author (or authors), the text (anything that's been made, be it writing, music, film, a sport…), and the reader.
Dimension two: the past, the present, and the future.
Dimension three: a field of study – like politics, economics, or science.

Method Two

Dimension one: the creation, the fall of man, and salvation.
Dimensions two and three: not sure really – I suspect any of Method One's dimensions – perhaps even all of them…

So to be thorough in one's interpretation, one should put a number of questions the object of their interpretation, using a multi-dimensional method like Vanhoozer's. For example, what does the author's political past say about the text? Or, how does the reader's scientific future enrich our understanding of the text?

I see where I got stuck. It's a great book, but it's very heavy going. I figured pictures would help. I just didn't figure that I wouldn't be able to draw those pictures…

Check out the PDF at Scribd.

What did I learn?

A hard to understand concept can easily lead to a hard to interpret infographic.
Modified hash tags are fun.
It's heaps of fun to play with perspectives and angles. But that doesn't mean it's easy to understand. So fun doesn't always correlate with effectiveness.
Installing recessed lights takes heaps longer than you first think.

Next week's challenge
1. Make an infographic out of some statistics in a book you've read. Or are reading. (Or someone close to you is reading…)

Week #45 – The Martin Jetpack

2011-06-12T18:03:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Make an infographic out of newspaper, from something in the newspaper.

How I approached the challenge

Inspired by Annika Syrjämäki's infofabrics, I thought making an infographic out of cut-up bits of newspaper would be choice.

But it was a stupid idea, really. It took ages to do. Ages. Here's my method:

read paper for interesting articles
pick article and read it in depth
sketch out infographic
search paper for each word
search paper for colours and shapes
cut everything out
bluetack everything to A4 sheets
photograph everything
Photoshop everything.

Took all afternoon. And it was very fiddly. Very fiddly. Sorely tempted to, I refrained from cheating. No pretending to find a word in the paper, but actually printing it and sticking it in. It's all genuine.

Check out the PDF at Scribd.

And have a read of Michael Dickson's excellent NZ Herald article – the source for this week's infographic.

What did I learn?

Collage is extremely time-consuming.
My name is very difficult to find in a newspaper. As is infographic, and blogspot. But numbers are really easy to find. There's lots of them.

Next week's challenge

1. Describe hermeneutics in an infographic.

Week #44 – 2010 Music Piracy & Profit

2011-06-04T17:31:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about music.

How I approached the challenge

I was awake for a lot of last night, tossing and turning as the ship's timbers creaked and moaned in the howling storm.

Well, we did have a storm, and the house did make a lot of noise in it, and it did sound like a ship at times, and the analogy did seem to fit the comparison of music industry sales (he he he – read 'sails' for a banal pun) and music piracy.

It took a bit of time and dodgy mathematics to track down the figures for this infographic. After a good hour's rummaging (at 6:45, courtesy the storm) I came up with the following. In 2010:

$US15.9 billion of music was sold, $US4.6 billion digitally, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IPFI – cool name!)*
$US2.3 billion of profit was made by the music industry**
$US17.5 billion of music was pirated, according to the IPFI***

*IPFI note $US4.6 billion in digital music sales, and that that makes up 29% of total sales, therefore total sales = 4.6B*(1/.29), or 15.9B.

**According to Wikipedia, about 70% of worldwide sales came from the top four – Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Walker Music Group, and EMI. Taking their profits for 2010 from their annual reports (respectively $US688M, $US469M, -$US143M, and $US548M), and multiplying them by (1/.7), and you get $US2.3 billion.

***My calculations are a bit rudimentary here, I'm afraid. If 4.6B = total digital music sales, and those sales = 5% of the volume of music downloaded, then 0.9B = 1%, and 17.5B = 95%.

All in all, the industry made a return of a touch over 14 per cent for 2010. Given that more than half of their product was effectively stolen that year, it's a pretty healthy return.

Check out the PDF at Scribd.

What did I learn?

There's good money in music.
What other market has more than half of it's goods stolen?
To stop using display typefaces. Well, I haven't really learned that yet.
To stop making book covers.
Get cool textures at deviantart.
Arthur and FreeVectorFinder do some choice ship clipart. Yes, that's right: clipart. Fault me. I dare you.

Next week's challenge

1. Make an infographic out of newspaper about something in the newspaper.

Week #43 – Doomsday.

2011-05-29T13:33:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Hmm, something topical? Make an infographic about the apocalypse.

How I approached the challenge

So, Harold Camping's May 21 has come and gone without Rapture.

In some ways it was a bit disappointing. I believe that Jesus Christ will return, someday, and the world will end. But I have no idea when those things will happen, and sort of chuckle a bit at those who think they can predict the end. Regardless of whether those predictions are due to the Rapture, some other form of enlightenment, unusual scientific phenomenon, cosmic disruption, or alien annexation.

It's that mix of causes that are represented in Wikipedia's list of doomsday predictions. I've focussed on the future doomsday predictions at the bottom of that list.

I started playing around with this one in chalk. I have no idea why, but couldn't shake it. So here it is. On a blackboard.

Check out the PDF at Scribd.

What did I learn?

I had a crack at colouring each prediction by category (like religion, science, aliens…). While it's nice to pack infographics full of levels of data and meaning, simpler is better than complexer. So I dropped the categories.
Why bother looking anywhere other than Wikipedia for data? Wikipedia has everything.
Listening to topical music really helps design. For example, I've been listening to Metallica and chanting Cistercian Monks…
2012 features heavily in doomsday predictions.

Next week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about music.

Week #42 – Rivers of the World – e-coli bacteria count per millilitre of river water

2011-05-22T20:29:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Make a comparative infographic.

How I approached the challenge

Hannah Miles suggested I tackle pollution levels in New Zealand's rivers, and I think that meets this week's challenge perfectly thanks Hannah! I thought as well as comparing several New Zealand rivers, I ought to compare them to other rivers around the world, and also against some kind of standard.

I had a fish around and found some statistics and guidelines for river pollution on the World Health Organisation and the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment websites.

There are lots of ways of measuring river pollution: like water clarity, bacterial counts, and a range of specific pollutants like phosphorous or chlorine. All of the rivers I was looking at measured escherichia coli (or e-coli) bacteria counts, so I picked that as a universal measure.

Nasty things, e-coli. They usually indicate human or animal waste in the water, and can cause lots of unpleasantries, particularly to younger people or those with compromised immunity.

For safe drinking water, the World Health Organisation recommends no e-coli bacteria per 100 millilitre sample. In New Zealand, when freshwater samples are greater than 550 e-coli bacteria per 100 millilitres, the Ministry for the Environment recommend informing the public of a health problem…

The results are pretty surprising, and very disappointing.

Check out the PDF at Scribd.

What did I learn?

Not to swim in New Zealand rivers. Or the Danube. Or pretty much any river.
Any infographic that involves a map takes a lot more effort than any infographic that does not involve a map.
The greater the desire to find a simple, universal measurement; the more likely the results are to be misleading.

Next week's challenge

1. Hmm, something topical? Make an infographic about the apocalypse…

Week #41 – In A Heartbeat

2011-05-15T13:48:00.000+12:00

How I approached the challenge

My paramedic pal Simon Thompson had the bright idea to infographise a cardiac arrest, which he promptly backed up by emailing me a detailed description of just such an event.

I spent some time trying to work with Henry Gray's heart illustrations, but as the week disappeared and the infographic continued to get more and more complex, I backed away and settled on a simple schematic.

As I worked away on my simple schematic I realized that to get a proper sense of the mechanics of a heartbeat, the infographic really needed to motion. So I had a bit of a play at creating a stop motion animated GIF in Photoshop. Here's the outcome.

What I've ended up with is 135 frames of varying length that describe what Simon described as 'the heart 101'. I'd have love to have kept going into what happens in a cardiac arrest, but time got away on me a bit…

Any factual errors I've made are entirely the result of my own misinterpretation. Do comment if you find something amiss.

I think it could really benefit from some squishing and plopping sounds. What do you think?

Lastly, thanks to Janet McAllister, who mentioned 52-infographics.blogspot.com in a good NZ Herald read about the 'art of making the complex simply beautiful'.

What did I learn?

Stop motion animation is heaps of fun!
Stop motion animation needs careful planning. Anytime I wanted to add something into the sequence, it meant another dozen or so frames. Anytime I wanted to change something in a sequence of frames, it meant making the same tweak to each frame.

Next week's challenge

1. Make a comparative infographic.

Week #40 – A Simple Ratio of Civilian Casualties

2011-05-07T17:41:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Take two weeks off, and then make a infographic about something. Interesting. And simplify it!

How I approached the challenge

Firstly, I feel an explanation is in order for taking two weeks off. I've been away from my desk you see, unable to access a computer for infography. I've been tramping around the majestic Lake Ohau region of New Zealand's South Island. Scintillating. If you haven't been, go. If you don't believe me, more photographic evidence can be found in my Facebook album.

Right. May 2. The concept for this infographic commenced a few moments after following the outrageous celebration (read what you will into 'outrageous') at the end of Osama on Twitter.

You be the judge of whether the comparison is fair.

For more detailed data, take a look at Wikipedia's civilian casualties in the War in Afghanistan article.

Check out the PDF at Scribd.

What did I learn?

Simple is best.
Walk more.
New Zealand has some tremendous wilderness.
The world is a strange place.

Next week's challenge

1. Make a health-related infographic.

Week #39 – What just happened

2011-04-17T16:48:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about time.

How I approached the challenge

How many widgets per second, or how many seconds per widget?

I've gone with the later. This week was about time after all, and not widgets.

Used worldometers as a data source. Great site.

Reckoned a fish scale diagram would do the trick. At one stage it got turned into a horizontal tree, with some delightful curled and gradiated branches. 'Cept it got extremely confusing. Simplify. Here's the results.

Apologies to Mr. Wells, who I believe expected this week's infographic to expose a unified theory of time. That one'll need a little more percolating…

Impossible to view unless you check out the PDF at Scribd.

What did I learn?

I can't get away from icons. I like icons.
An awful lot happens every second. The world is a big place.
Simplify!

Next week's challenge

1. Take two weeks off, and then make a infographic about something. Interesting. And simplify it!

Week #38 – Is my trade free, fair, or neither?

2011-04-10T13:03:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about food.

How I approached the challenge

So, this one loosely satiates that brief…

It started life as a venn diagram exploring the different fads in food movements: free range, fair trade, organics, food labeling, slow food, ethical sourcing, natural food, additives, anti-antibiotics, anti-GE, foodism, rawism…

As the research spiraled into infinite complexity Imogen suggested I refine the brief. We picked fair trade and decided to unpack the contributing factors in a flowchart.

I got a bit carried away with that flowchart. So much so that it wasn't until last night that Imogen pointed out that fair trade seemed to have dropped off the infographic and that I'd designed a flowchart of the differences between free trade and protectionism.

Fortunately I'd canvassed this one past Dave, my corporate finance buddy, earlier in the week. Dave had said that there's a strong argument that the only form of fair trade is free trade. So, I figured I could turn the two outputs of this flowchart: protected trade or free trade; into a venn diagram with a third option: fair trade. I hope it's accurate. I'm sure you'll tell me if it isn't!

Check out the PDF at Scribd.

What did I learn?

Flowcharts are fun.
You still can't beat a good old CMY combination.
It's easy to get lost in a topic.
The topics of free range, fair trade, organics, food labeling… are very complex.

Next week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about time.

Week #37 – Spend

2011-04-03T13:17:00.000+12:00

This week's challenge

1. Take an infographic I've already completed, and simplify it.

How I approached the challenge

Not as easy a challenge as I figured it would be. I flicked through each of the last 36 infographics and shortlisted four (weeks one, five, 13 , and 32). I had a quick pen and paper play with each before settling on week five: New Zealand Government Spending. I like what I came up with for week five, but don't think it's a particularly simple representation of the data.

The winning pen and paper idea: pie charts using the reverse side of coins from 1972, 1990, and 2009. Except when executed, they looked tremendously awful.

I tried everything, even creating a three-dimensional exploded view of a pie chart coin. Late on Saturday night I biffed the coin/pie idea and went to bed in disgust/despair, hoping my subconscious brain could do some work on this one for me.

It did, at least in part. My subconscious mind suggested a bar graph. That's pretty much what I've done (although my conscious mind couldn't resist adding a semi-circle pie chart too. It even tried to insert a tracing of the Queen's profile, made from the reverse side of coins, into the diagram: Imogen rescued me from that humiliation). My subconscious also appears to have felt that representing New Zealand Government spending as a sequence of three neon jellyfish would be appropriate. If you're able to draw a relevant connection, let me know about it.

Tip: add /view to the end of your favourite blog's URL (or just click here), to check out Google's new blogger interface. Way cool.

This week is definitely best viewed as a PDF.

What did I learn?

The old 'play and walk away' idea for concept generation works for me:

Have a play with the initial idea: push it around for a bit to get it out of the system.
If it's great, stick with it. Most often it isn't.
So walk away and give the subconscious a chance to assemble the right answer for the problem.

Next week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about food.

Week #36 – Fruit, 2009

2011-03-27T15:30:00.001+13:00

This week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about fruit.

How I approached the challenge

Until I read Wikipedia's list of fruit, I had planned a wall chart showing all of the different kinds of fruit, and their groupings. Two problems. There's a lot of fruit. I didn't count those listed on Wikipedia, but a quick Google says there are hundreds of thousands of different fruits in the world. And second, there's heaps of ways to group fruit: by use. By family. By region. By colour. Yikes.

I started tracing fruit anyway. It seemed to me to be worth the effort. Trace stuff that might be useful, while thinking about what to produce. I traced 78 fruits before taking stock.

Imogen challenged me midway through tracing. "Isn't that just a poster?" She asked. "Shouldn't an infographic answer a question, like, 'how much fruit is produced globally each year?'?" I was a bit skeptical about the existence of that data, so I kept tracing. Until I realised I was drawing a poster. So, I Googled the data, and found the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, with loads of great stats.

Download the PDF from Scribd for a closer look.

What did I learn?

An infographic probably needs to be more than a collection of tracings.
Watermelons have the highest yield.
Figs have the lowest yield.
If the whole of the world's cranberry harvest was moved to one location, it would be about the size of Palmerston North.

Next week's challenge

1. Take an infographic I've already completed, and simplify it.

Week #35 – Natural Disasters

2011-03-19T06:50:00.000+13:00

This week's challenge

1. Research and design an infographic in one hour.

How I approached the challenge

I picked a question that I've heard asked quite a lot over the last few weeks: are disasters increasing?

As is often the case, I turned to Wikipedia, and found a list that I've made this week's infographic out of.

I'm afraid that list and this infographic do nothing to quell the controversy of the aforementioned question. Disasters do seem to show an alarming upward trend in both frequency and casualty magnitude. Given my self-imposed budget of time I didn't get to research the reasons behind that trend, but suppose it's likely a combination of:

an increase in the reporting of disasters
an increase in population and populated areas
a little bit of climate change
omissions or errors in Wikipedia's list
the end times…?

The scale of these disasters is quite horrific. The y-casualty-axis works on a logarithmic scale, starting at 10, and finishing at a billion. The black earthquake dots alone range from 10,000 to 900,000 casualties. It's been a very sobering exercise. Thoughts and prayers remain with Japan and Christchurch.

I tried hard to fit this into an hour, but probably just squeezed in under the two-hour mark. If I was to tackle the hour-long limit again, I'd probably avoid using a computer.

Download the PDF from Scribd for a closer look.

What did I learn?

Excel has a pretty cool graphing engine.
Taking a graph from Excel and tidying it up in Illustrator can be rather fiddly.

Next week's challenge

1. Make an infographic about fruit.

Week #34 – Player Profile: Gareth Parry

2011-03-13T20:19:00.000+13:00

This week's challenge

1. A sad admission: I've kept my cricket stats since the start of the 2002/3 season. And next week's challenge: infographise 'em!

How I approached the challenge

Well, the research was easy : )

But deciding to embroider the whole thing took quite a while...

I tried to mash-up a few different ideas in this infographic.

Cricinfo's player profiles. (Note that I've chosen to show Baz' stats. Kindly compare my batting stats with his. Ignore playing levels.)
Character profiles from role-playing-games.
Badges, like those from Foursquare, Boys Rally, and Boys Brigade.

Things did get tricky when trying to find data for badges. Which club I have the best strike rate against, or have scored the highest per cent of boundaries against, for example, took some Excel-fiddling.

Download the PDF from Scribd for a closer look.

What did I learn?

Maybe I didn't learn this point, as it's the same as last week, except 50% worse: don't try doing anything in an Illustrator document with 1,571,859 points, unless you're okay to make a cup of tea or similar between every action.
Don't draw your own string. Search for it. There're loads of free Illustrator brushes, just a Google away.

Next week's challenge

1. Research and design an infographic in one hour.

Week #33 – There are about 2,703 insects per square meter of land

2011-03-06T15:50:00.000+13:00

This week's challenge

1. Sticking with last week's theme, choose a topic and take just one hour compile research on it, before designing and building an infographic on it.

How I approached the challenge

Done. I suppose the time spent during the week trying to find something interesting to infographise ought to come out of the hour-long budget. Even so, I reckon it's taken no longer than an hour to triangulate some sources, and even to find some photos to trace for this week's effort.

Still, despite Googling several different sources that estimate our insect population per square mile as being about the same as our entire human population, I can't help but be a bit suspicious of the figure. I've spent all week looking around me, and haven't been able to tally more than a handful of insects per square meter at a time. I'm worried about where the balance lies...

Download the PDF from Scribd for a closer look. Zoom in, if you dare.

What did I learn?

Laying out 2,703 vector images takes a while.
Don't try doing anything in an Illustrator document with 1,026,507 points, unless you're okay to make a cup of tea or similar between every action.
Making your own type, no matter how basic, involves lots of fluffing around.
And punching type out of a grid involves similar levels of fluffing.

Next week's challenge

1. A sad admission: I've kept my cricket stats since the start of the 2002/3 season. And next week's challenge: infographise 'em!

Week #32 – Systems of Government

2011-02-27T14:42:00.000+13:00

This week's challenge

1. Pick a topic, read about it, and take one hour only to design and build an infographic representing it.

How I approached the challenge

This week has been terrifying for many, as an earthquake devastated the lovely city of Christchurch. My friends and family are fortunate to escape with only property damage. Some of their friends have been less lucky. Thoughts and prayers remain with you, Christchurch.

Earlier this week, I started tackling this challenge. I chose systems of government (perhaps after following the Egyptian revolution, the Libyan uprising, and the Bahraini protests), and found some good information about The Economist's Democracy Index on Wikipedia.

It took a while to compile the research, but I tried to stick with the hour-long 'design and build' challenge. I failed. Here's where I got to after an hour:

It took me a further hour and three-quarters to tidy this monster up. Far too much content!

Download the PDF from Scribd for a closer look.

What did I learn?

That capitalization of proper nouns is an area of uncertainty for me.
That an hour to design and build an infographic can be quite difficult.
That New Zealanders are amazing people.

Next week's challenge

1. Sticking with last week's theme, choose a topic and take just one hour compile research on it, before designing and building an infographic on it.

Week #31 – A Timeline of Valentine's Day

2011-02-20T18:13:00.000+13:00

This week's challenge

1. It's Valentines Day. Make a related infographic.

How I approached the challenge

After reading through Wikipedia's Valentine's Day article and associated references, I figured a timeline tracking the day's origins and history would work best.

But I'm a bit over the plain old horizontal or wavy-lined timeline. So I had a play with a V/heart-shape.

I'm happy with how the timeline turned out, but a bit disappointed with the typography and overall layout. Too much to fit in, and some tricky shapes to work with.

Download the PDF from Scribd for a closer look.

What did I learn?

Wikipedia is brilliant for research.
Black, white, grey, and red is a little too safe.
You can't always use Helvetica, particularly if you're working with long copy.
If you're working with lots of copy, use InDesign. If you're not, use Illustrator.

Next week's challenge

1. Pick a topic, read about it, and take one hour only to design and build an infographic representing it.

Week #30 – Things that are 30

2011-02-13T14:57:00.000+13:00

This week's challenge

1. It's week 30, so make an infographic about the number 30.

How I approached the challenge

I read a bit about 30 on Wikipedia early in the week and let what I'd read simmer until this morning.

That simmering had congealed into some kind of organic swirly thing in my head, but I struggled to get any rhythm out of the shapes I'd found to represent each thing on paper (to mix several metaphors).

Perhaps watching Exit through the gift shop last night helped, or perhaps it's just the look I've been cultivating for the last wee while: but I settled for tracings, a bit of geometry, and some big colours.

Interesting, the things that are 30.

Download the PDF from Scribd for a closer look.

What did I learn?

Starting from scratch on a Sunday takes about four hours...
Geometry is maths.

Next week's challenge

1. It's Valentine's Day. Make a related infographic.