Cool Infographics

Weight of the Union 2.0

2012-01-27T16:09:14Z

From Anytime Fitness has released the Weight of the Union 2.0 infographic to coincide with the U.S. State of the Union Address this week.

Last night, the President gave his State of the Union address to members of Congress and the general citizenry to report that our nation is moving in the right direction. But today we want to address what the President didn’t mention in his speech to the union. We want to discuss our nation’s biggest health concern: obesity. We are offering its own barometer for measuring progress — the second annual report called the “Weight of the Union.”

There’s a lot of data shown in this design, and a good blend of different data visualizations, illustrations and text descriptions.

My biggest complaint is that many of the data points are just listed in text, and they could have been visualized. For example, the dollar values showing that “Being Fat is Expensive”, should have been scaled so they could be easily compared to each other or some outside comparative spending values.

The other major issue I have is the shading of the silhouette as a stacked bar chart doesn’t work accurately. Readers see the “AREA” of the colored sections as being representative of the values. Because of the odd shape, you can’t just color by height. The boots are showing the biggest value “Sleep”, but because that part of the silhouette is narrow, “Work” actually visualizes as a much bigger portion of the whole than the data really shows.

I like the inclusion of the QR Code at the bottom as a promotion tool for Anytime Fitness.

Thanks to Amanda for sending in the link!

The Cool Infographics 2011 Gallery...A Pinterest Experiment

2012-01-24T13:00:10Z

Check out the Cool Infographics 2011 Gallery! I’m trying an experiment using Pinterest to create a one-page, visual gallery of the infographics I post. On this board I have pinned every post from the Cool Infographics blog from last year, and it makes a really nice, visual way to browse through the infographics I have shared. One of the reasons I wanted to play around with Pinterest is that it displays the entire (sometimes very long) infographic, not just a square thumbnail like many galleries.

In general, I keep the 10 most current posts on the front page of the blog. Once they scroll off the front page, of course their traffic and visibility drops off dramatically. I’m looking for a way to create a live, growing gallery of the infographic images so these great examples of design can continue to be easily discovered.

Because infographics is, by definition, a visual media, I think people would be more likely to find examples they like and inspiration for their own type of design if there was a better way to browse. I’m not sure that Pinterest is the answer yet, but it’s certainly worth trying. On the down-side, I haven’t been able to integrate the Pinterest PinIt button into the blog along with the other social sharing buttons. Their button doesn’t seem to work with the Squarespace platform I use for the blog.

I am absolutely looking for feedback, so please leave your thoughts in the comments.

Cheers!

Job Growth at the 100 Best Companies

2012-01-23T19:54:00Z

Designed by Nicolas Rapp, with Anne Vandermey (@Vandermy), Job Growth at the 100 Best Companies is a companion infographic for the Fortune feature article, 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Fat paychecks, sweet perks, fun colleagues, and over 70,000 jobs ready to be filled — these employers offer dream workplaces. Like Google, which reclaims the top spot this year to become a three-time champion. Meet this year’s top 100, network with the winners on LinkedIn, and more.
In the latest issue of Fortune Magazine.

This is a great Bubble Map visualization that shows the reader three different dimension of information: Job growth (or loss), total company employees and total job applications over the course of the last year.

I do wish that all of the bubbles had been identified in the infographic. There are many company bubbles unmarked, but the reader assumes they are a part of the Top 100 list. Just my personal preference, but I would have used the company logos instead of text to identify the bubbles too.

Head over to Nicolas’ site to see the full-size version:

A Visual Guide to Marathon Running

2012-01-20T19:00:18Z

Taking it to the Streets: a Guide to Marathon Running is a cool infographic from CheapSally.com.

As you may already be aware, the number one resolution I made for myself for 2012 was to try my hand at running a half marathon! After some research, I decided to partake in the L.A. Marathon in March, and I have been doing quite a bit to prepare. First and foremost, I put together a handy little marathon training schedule that will help me prepare for the run of my lifetime, I also did tons of research regarding super foods that help sustain energy, and lastly I created this infographic so that all of you can learn a little bit more about what it takes to run a half or full marathon!

A great tactic for the Marketing, the information infographic is being used to draw attention to all of the coupons available on the site related to Dick’s Sporting Goods.

The design starts off slow, with a lot of text that could have been visualized, but gets much better halfway down. I really like the sequence of information that starts with some general information, moves to fears that keeps people from taking up running, then gets into an actual training schedule and finishes with a list of marathons across the country.

The Common Running Injuries section is well done with percentages shown in doughnuts connected to color-coded positions on the runners body. For the non-statistical information, the illustrations are simple and easy to understand.

I love the visual Half-Marathon Training Calendar! Even though these are just stacked bars, the reader can quickly understand a lot about the increasing training regiment required.

I though it finished weak. The banners listing marathons throughout the year should have some visual element to it like silhouettes from the locations, or a map showing them color coded by month. At the bottom, there should be a URL to find the original infographic, a copyright statement to be clear about allowed uses and I always prefer to see the designer listed.

Thanks to Cameron for sending in the link, and I also found it on Infographic Journal.

Geek vs. Nerd: Which Are You?

2012-01-20T12:00:10Z

The Geeks vs. Nerds head-to-head smack-down comes to us from MastersInIT.org.

In the ongoing battle between geek and nerd, one must take sides, but how can this be done without a solid argument for both personas? We here at Masters In IT (a mix of nerds and geeks) decided that it’s time to lay all the cards on the table to determine which is better and answer the question some fear to know: Are you a geek, or a nerd?

A little text-heavy and lighter fare than I normally post, but this one is just fun to read through. There are a handful of stats included, and the doughnut charts and bar charts are easy to understand.

Like many of the infographics I’ve posted lately, it’s missing a URL at the bottom for readers to find the original post, a copyright statement and listing the designer!

Thanks to Gerri for sending in the link! Also found on Infographic Journal, Daily Infographic.

The Manual Photography Cheat Sheet

2012-01-18T14:43:55Z

The Manual Photography Cheat Sheet by Miguel “Mig” Yatco is a very cool infographic for anyone who is ready to move off of Automatic Mode on their camera! Yes, that means you! Quit taking average photos with average settings!

No matter if you shoot with film or digital, understanding of these four aspects of photography are key to taking good shots. I love how each one shows the reader the range of values, the impact of moving along the range to the pcitures and what the actual display looks like in the viewfinder on both Nikon and Canon cameras.

The only thing I would have liked to see was a visualization of the changes to depth of field. How much range is in focus for each aperture setting?

Miguel has prints available on Zazzle.com. You can buy a printed as a poster for $50, or as small as a 4”x6” card to carry around with you. The standard size available is 23”x34.5”, but I wish the standard poster size was 24”x36” to fit in standard poster frames.

Great job Miguel!

Tablet Adoption at Work

2012-01-17T14:25:23Z

The State of Tablet Adoption at Work is a new infographic from VentureBeat.com. It’s interesting that the infographic itself was sponsored by Lenovo and Qualcomm, but included as part of a VentureBeat article. You can find the original version here at TabletsAtWork.com

Since the debut of Apple’s iPad in Jan. 2010, the integration of tablet devices into our lives and work has progressed rapidly — so fast that it’s sometimes hard to put in perspective how quickly got here. The exclusively obtained infographic below breaks down how far workforce adoption of tablet technology has come — and where it’s headed. (The graphic was sponsored by Lenovo and Qualcomm.)

I love the clean, professional design look. I really like the color scheme and the mixed bag of visualization styles; grid of icons, treemap, stacked bar, line chart, etc.

Only a couple of design issues about this one I would improve.

I’m willing to let 16 tablet icons represent 16.1 Million tablets shipped in 2010 (rounding), but why only 144 tablets shown to represent 147.2 Million? That was just the designer wanting a clean, square visual that breaks the actual data visualization.
The line chart showing 134% increase in shipments powered by Android and Windows is way out of scale. It’s visualizing something close to a 900% increase.
At the bottom there should be a copyright statement and the URL to the original infographic landing page so people can find the full high-resolution version.

Found on the Inside Flipboard feed in Flipboard for iPad.

Learning to Love Tennis

2012-01-16T15:58:10Z

Learning to Love Tennis is a cool infographic describing the major changes within the USTA’s rules for kids playing tennis. Designed by Digital Surgeons, the infographic visualizes some the biggest changes like court sizes, raquet sizes and net height. Also, including things like comparing the calorie burn of different sports help show the reader why tennis is such a great sport for kids.

The game of tennis has been scaled for youth play. To date, tennis has been the only major sport without equipment and field of play dimensions specific to children. By introducing smaller and lighter racquets, balls with different compression ratios, lower nets and scaled court sizes, kids can begin playing and competing earlier. Earlier participation and play increases engagement and reduces frustration associated with using adult-sized racquets that kids find clunky and heavy, or court sizes that are simply too large for children to effectively navigate. Far too many of our country’s youth are huddled around the TV or tethered to a video game controller. These new rules provide the means to get kids off the couch and engage in an activity that they can continue for life.

Overall, I really like this design. The style is eye-ctaching and information is laid out in an easy-to-read manner. I like most of the visuals, and there are only a couple things I would change:

The grid of 30 kid icons showing 70% of Kids Quit Sports isn’t accurate. The visual is 22/30 kids , which is 73.3% This type of visual always works better as a grid of 100. Don’t make your readers count icons to figure out what you’re showing them. Rows of 6 are just odd, and tought to understand.
One of the biggest differences is the new balls used by different ages. It would have been nice to visualize the difference in bounce for each ball to help the reader understand.
The Average Height, Stride Comparison and Average Weight is lost in the design, because it’s all text. In an infographic that makes it less important and the reader just skips over that section.
At the bottom should be the URL to the official landing page so readers can find the original infographic.

This is a really huge initialative for the USTA, and the new rules are complicated to understand for parents. An infographic is a fantastic way to simplify their message, and I think this will help them out a lot.

Thanks to Pete for sending in the link!

Multitasking: This Is Your Brain On Media

2012-01-12T12:01:11Z

From Rasmussen College, Multitasking: This Is Your Brain On Media is a cool infographic design that looks at some of the research behind multitasking.

New reports find that multi-taskers are “lousy at everything that’s necessary for multi-tasking.” Considering the amount of time people spend with around-the-clock access to TV, the Internet and mobile devices, it’s not surprising.This infographic looks at the causes and effects of multi-tasking.

From a design perspective, I like the clean look with a simple color palate that is easy on the eyes. The statistics in the Media Addiction section could have been visualized to make them easier to comprehend. Without visualizations, this section feel less important compared to the rest of the data.

I love the brain diagrams. I’m sure there are hundreds of pages of reports from this research, but this simple visual tells the story quickly to the reader. The design is missing the URL to the original landing page, a copyright (or Creative Commons) statement and listing the designer.

Found on Infographics Journal

Calendar Visualization of Fatal Car Crashes

2012-01-11T16:57:25Z

I really like this data visualization from Nathan Yau at FlowingData.com. Vehicles Involved in Fatal Crashes 2010 takes a new look at the statistics released by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Instead of plotting them on a traditional map, Nathan looked at the time data.

After seeing this map on The Guardian, I was curious about what other data was available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Association. It turns out there’s a lot and it’s relatively easy to access via FTP. What’s most surprising is that it’s detailed and fairly complete, with columns for weather, number of people involved, date and time of accidents, and a lot more.

The above shows vehicles involved in fatal crashes in 2010 (which is different from number of crashes or number of fatalities). This data was just released last month, at the end of 2011 oddly enough. It’s a calendar view with months stacked on top of one another and darker days indicate more vehicles involved.

- Nathan Yau

As was suggested by others in the comments on FlowingData, I agree that since the weekends have the higher incidence rate, starting the week with Monday and moving Sunday to the last column may show that a little bit clearer.

Nathan has made all of the data avaialble for anyone that would like to try a visualization themselves. Student project?

The Anatomy of a Vegan

2012-01-10T12:00:36Z

The Anatomy of a Vegan infographic from AdvancedPhysicalMedicine.org takes an “in depth” look at some of the demographic data they gathered in a survey of Vegans.

In spite of its long history, veganism is still considered unusual by many in this carnivore nation of ours. But did you know there are 3 million+ vegans in the U.S.? Yep, veganism has officially arrived. So here are some facts about those who follow this lifestyle.

Designed by InfoMonkeys, I love the X-Ray design style. They do a great job of showing context of the data being represented. Hands with a wedding ring, the house, the shopping cart, the cityscape and the meat grinder is especially humorous.

Eye-popping colors and an X-ray theme give a whole new meaning to taking an “inside look” at veganism. Packed with information, this infographic strikes a great balance between education and entertainment. Based upon a Facebook survey with text provided by the client, this is one of our favorite pieces!

- InfoMonkeys

The black background stands out boldly in blog formats, and the infographic includes all the important information (clear title, data source, copyright, website URL and even lists the designer). It should have listed the URL of the infographic on the Advanced Physical Medicine site instead of the homepage. I like the idea of the “Importantometer”, but I just noticed the size of the arrows in the visualization doesn’t match the data. The 17% arrow shouldn’t be larger than the 38% arrow, etc.

I have a few things I would suggest changing about the design:

I say it often here on the blog. Big fonts do not make good data visualizations. Too many of the statistics are listed as big numbers without any visualization, and it would have been simple to visualize these statistics.
The percentage sign under the value numbers on the bar charts are hard to read and disconcerting. Shrink the numbers and lets the visualization tell the story. The actual numbers themselves are secondary.
The Annual Household Income is shown as a bar chart, but those percentages are all part of the complete 100%. They should be shown as parts of the whole like a pie chart or a stacked bar chart. Same with the shopping statistics.
I have a really hard time reading the script font they used in the quoted responses at the bottom.

One final thought is that readers should always be skeptical of the data sources. 144 respondents from a Facebook survey is not enough to be a statistically valid study that would indicative of the entire population. The reader also doesn’t know how the respondents were screened as part of the survey. By visualizing the data in an infographic, it implies a certain level validity that isn’t truly there.

Thanks to David for sending in the link!

An Intimate Look at Infographics

2012-01-09T18:02:47Z

An Intimate Look at Infographics is a fun, satirical look at infographics from Think Brilliant that comes in the form of an infographic!

A well done infographic has the power to capture one’s acute attention span and convey information that would have taken longer to simply read (oh no, not reading!). However, for every brilliantly thought out and well executed mashup of art and data, there now seems to be an influx of mundane and formulaic counterparts infesting the very internet that we hold so near and dear.

Here we have an infographic that explores commonalities between the seemingly vast expanse of contrived infographics that appear to have spawned in mass over the past year. If you’re an infographic purest, view at your own risk.

This one is not new, but it did make me smile!

Thanks to David for sending in the link!

Everything You Need To Know About CES

2012-01-09T12:00:24Z

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is this week in Las Vegas, NV (Jan 10-13). Sortable.com has released this cool infographic, “Everything You Need To Know About CES” showing the history of the events, and some of the stats behind putting the show on every year.

The International Consumer Electronics Show is the biggest tech event of the year, with an expected 140,000+ visitors and 2,700 exhibitors who are planning more than 20,000 product announcements over a 4 day period. Sortable.com wanted to take a look at the history of CES and just how big the show really is.

I really love how the timeline shows the reader images of the actual products that were the key product launches at various times throughout the show’s history.

A few things that make good infographic designs were left out.

The copyright. Is this free to the public to reproduce, edit, publish and use for commercial purposes?
The URL of the infographic’s main landing page. This always makes it easier for readers to find the original.
List the data sources, where did the stats come from? Why should I believe your data?
The staggered timeline is disconcerting to readers. The years should be evenly spaced out along the timeline.
Give the Designer credit

Thanks to Brenden for sending in the link!

The Timeline of Doctor Who

2012-01-03T14:05:34Z

A highly detailed historical Timeline of Doctor Who from Cabletv.com!

Check out this complete timeline of Doctor Who from 1963 to present, including episodes, seasons, companions, villains, and more. Scroll down to follow all the Doctor’s adventures through time. A Fantastic resource for any Doctor Who fan.

First and formost it’s a timeline of the Doctor Who episodes from 1963-2011. I’ve posted earlier Doctor Who related infograpics here before (The Doctor Who infographic), but none that contained this level of detail. From left-to-right you have seasons, episodes, which Doctor, which companions, key villains and additional facts. When you view the timeline on the original page, the episode titles are also listed on the left side and aligned with the infographic.

There are a couple design changes I would propose that would have made the data easier to understand. One of the things I love is that there is no legend, or any need for one. All of the descriptions for the color-coding and data visualizations is included in the visual designs. However, some of the color-coding is inconsistent. The color for Rose Tyler as the first of the modern companions is green in the timeline, but then additional facts about Rose are colored blue in the last column. This is also true about the character of the The Master, and other companions, where a consistent color-coding would have made the connections easier for the reader to understand.

Thanks to James for sending in the link!

Ultimate Guide to Business Cards

2011-12-30T15:13:48Z

Start the New Year off right with a new business card design! The Ultimate Guide to Business Cards is a very well designed infographic from BusinessCards.com

Business owners can find themselves easily overwhelmed when it comes to working with a graphic designer on creating branded business cards. Often enough business owners underestimate the quantity and importance of design decisions (selecting typeface, font, card shape, size and material) that must be made in addition to organizing basic contact information.

Below are some common areas that sometimes get lost in translation between designer to business owner. If you’re starting a business card or identity project we recommend getting a head start and figuring out the following elements for your project.

I really like how the infographic literally shows the reader what each of the topics mean. Using the actual fonts, showing the color blends, showing the actual business card dimensions is easy-to-compare rectangles, showing examples of the different materials, etc.

Simple, easy-to-read design that tells a story nicely from top-to-bottom.

Thanks to Chris for sending in the link!