PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) published an infographic in their customer magazine, which was made by Golden Section Graphics. For this, I programmed two small applications: one converted a world map into a differently projected one (Fuller Projection). The other one generated te surrounding triangles for any countries of the world and the included bar charts. The represented values are specific indexes for the nation’s sustainability.
This interactive infographic delivers answers to questions such as: What is my blood alcohol concentration when I have drunk a beer? Can I still drive after having two cocktails? What fines would I have to pay if I get caught driving drunk (german version)? How does the alcohol influence my mood and my body (english version)?
This infographic won bronze in the category online at the Malofiej18 infographics award. Read more about it on the website of the spanish chapter of the Society for Newsdesign (SNDE).
Two and a half months after I started working for Golden Section Graphics in Berlin, we opened the doors to our fibonacciLAB. Here, we experiment with new technologies to design new ways of visualizing data. Read more about our intentions on our website!
On December 30, 2009, the German daily economy newspaper »Handelsblatt« published five unusual looking infographics made by Jan Schwochow (head of Golden Section Graphics) and me. Since it was the end of the year, the graphics were about numbers of last year’s/decade’s finances and some outlooks on this year/decade. Also, the title page featured a mashup of those single graphics.
The people at »Handelsblatt« had quite some chutzpah letting us go nuts with the mostly quite small data sets and the disproportionately generous space!
Read more about it on Golden Section Graphics Blog (in German).
Although this issue seems to be quite obvious, I frequently notice it being done the wrong way.
Comparing numerical values by illustrating them as shapes, especially circles, needs to be done with the area in mind, not only a one-dimensional value that defines this shape. A circle is drawn with a radius, so another circle depicting a multiple of the value the first one is representing may not only have this multiple radius. It should have the corresponding area.
Another more extreme example showing how a circle with 25 times the radius can’t be a symbol for 25 times the size:
On www.ionz.com.br, one can quickly make a profile infographic on preferred way of transportation, food, social networks and other stuff by clicking through some suggestions. I really like the animated icons. It’s not even necessary to understand portuguese. Here’s mine:
Found here.
Yesterday I made a trip from Berlin to Augsburg. Since this is actually a distance to travel by car or train, it’s something special when you go by plane. That’s what I did, and I thought this process is a nice opportunity to test my skills in non-interactive Infographics. See the result above.
Roland Loesslein (weaintplastic.com) created another interactive information graphic. It is called »The Human’s Development« and focuses on three aspects of it: health, education and living standard. On a world map and a ranking graph, nearly all nations of the world can be compared to each other. It uses data from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and visualizes trends over the past few years. Plus, the user can take action by joining a GlobalGiving project to help people in less developed countries.
Just like »synoptic«, this application was created during a class about infographics by Prof. Michael Stoll at the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg, Germany.
Two weeks ago, the German weekly Newspaper »Die ZEIT« started a series of featured Infographics on three current topics.
The first one by Golden Section Graphics in Berlin (website here, blog here) is about virtual water. It explains the amounts of water used to produce things like beer, milk, cheese, jeans and a car by depicting cubes of water with the corresponding volume. This way, the reader gets a very good idea of how many liters of fresh water he actually comsumes by buying or using one of these products. Also, the graphic briefly explains how these amounts are being calculated as well as how much water there is on our planet and how it splits up into groundwater, atmospherical water etc. The daily consuption of one person per day and its parts for hygiene, doing the laundry and watering (among others) is revealed in a simple pie chart.
The first person on the moon 40 years ago is the occasion for the second graphic, and it has one big map of the moon with all sites where past missions, manned and unmanned, succeded or… well, crashed. A neat timeline on the left tells a story about the race to earth’s oldest satellite at the end of the 1960s between the United States and Russia. For many years, there were virtually no efforts for further explorations — the lunar surface was better charted than the earthly seabed. One possible future mission led by the US and planned for not later than 2020 is explained by highlighting a good location for a manned permanent moon station at the south pole. This is an in-house graphic by ZEIT.
The third graphic, published today, is about the evolution of the bicycle. In this case, the start of the Tour de France in two days is the occasion. A spiral timeline carries 11 detailed models and explains the inventions that made the bikes of today secure, comfortable and fast. The oldest one is from 1817 and it had no pedals, no brakes and was etirely out of wood. A second timeline explains other inventions with small illustrations, for example the penny farthing, the chain drive, rubber tires and aluminium frames. This graphic was also made by Golden Section Graphics (see No. 1).
The work »random walk« by Daniel A. Becker is a collection of several printed information graphics about randomness, a phenomenon that is difficult to explain.
It proves that Daniel took a really deep dive into the matter, considering how detailed his research resuls are displayed in his graphics and explained in the accompanied text. He approaches aspects like (pseudo) random number generators, the lottery and radioactive decay of atoms. The subject pervades the entire work, even each of his 14 double-sided A2 posters has a different layout.
All illustrations are not only drawn arbitrarily, they are simulated and plotted with the help of processing.
In her thesis on a work called »Fear Tuners — Protheses for Instincts« Susanna Hertrich writes about a wearable device that helps people to sense global and abstract dangers, be it a stock market crash or the rise of the oil price. It stimulates the autonomous nervous system to cause a state of increased awareness. Whenever stressful data is being delivered to this gadget, one can feel physically uncomfortable about it, although we lack the corresponding instincts.
I like the visualization of some exemplary fears we all know but mostly misjudge, for example of the consequences of environmental pollution, a plane crash or cancer. Susanna’s »Reality Checking Device« uses this graphic as well. I find the depicted information very interesting, although it consists of very few data. The mostly very big mismatch between how we use to feel about risks and the actual danger made me think. How about you?
image credit: Susanna Hertrich
Synoptic is an experimental application for visualizing weather data in an unusual way, namely in 3-D. It can be explored interactively by choosing from the weather values, e.g. average temperature, wind speed, humidity and air pressure. There is a timeline for choosing the displayed period of time. This plus changing the viewing angle via mouse dragging is the basic navigation.
Roland Lößlein (weaintplastic.com), currently a student of the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg, Germany, and a good friend of mine, created this application during a class about information graphics led by Prof. Michael Stoll. You can admire many other resulting projects in his “show, don’t tell. student’s work” Flickr set.
Roland won a Malofiej silver award in the category “innovative formats” at the 17th Infographics World Summit at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. Congratulations!
CDN: Roland, tell us something about the study course you’re in and the infodesign classes.
Roland: It is called Multimedia and it’s a combination of design and computer science. You learn coding and design basics at the same time. At the end, you can specialize in one direction, in my case it’s infomation design. Prof. Stoll’s class is being offered every semester for some time now, and it always has an general topic the participating students have to approach. Last semester, it was weather.
What was your train of thought that led you to create synoptic?
I decided very quickly to develop a realtime updated interactive online thing, even I didn’t have a clue what this “thing” finally will be.
Yesterday we returned from Spain where I attended the SND Infographics World Summit at the University of Navarra in Pamplona.
By “we” I mean me and 5 students from the University of Applied Sciences Augsburg in Germany. I myself graduated there a few weeks ago and was a student of Prof. Michael Stoll. One of those students I traveled with is Roland Lößlein, who won a silver award for his experimental weather visualization called synoptic.
Chiqui Esteban did a great job on listing all the winners with many examples of their work on his infographic news blog. I recommend reading about the highlights on the SND Update page. Also, have a look at some photos that have been taken during the event.
Visualizing complex data requires knowledge, skills and experience. Since we possess sophisticated tools to help explain our ideas, we have great responsibility as well.
There are several ways to make clear what’s important, one of them being the use of color. With it, we can build (visually appealing) contrasts, which are often needed to illustrate our point. But there are so many of them, so we should be careful when adding some of them into our works. In fact, reducing the amount of color often makes understanding the substance easier.
This website shows and discusses information graphics found in visual media, particularly the internet. Aspects like animation and interactivity are the challenges I want to write about, preferably in a dialogue with the readers. So, if you see something you like or don’t, let me know why!
Benjamin Wiederkehr of datavisualization.ch happens to recommend some reading about this topic.