Category Archives: Infographics

Infographic magic via Firefly?

April 2, 2024Adobe Firefly, AI/ML, Infographicsjnack

Hey, I know what you know (or quite possibly less :-)), but this demo (which for some reason includes Shaq) looks pretty cool:

From the description:

Elevate your data storytelling with #ProjectInfographIt, a game-changing solution leveraging Adobe Firefly generative AI. Simplify the infographic creation process by instantly generating design elements tailored to your key messages and data. With intuitive features for color palettes, chart types, graphics, and animations, effortlessly transform complex insights into visually stunning infographics.

Dataviz: Spring breakers fan out, disease likely in tow

March 30, 2020Infographicsjnack

Cripes (both the spread & the degree to which we’re all tracked):

Using cellphone location data from just the phones of the people gathered on a single beach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, this video shows just how far those people spread across the country when they went home, possibly taking SARS-CoV-2 with them. They go everywhere. [Via]

[YouTube]

(rt) Recent infographic goodness

August 3, 2012From Twitter, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Here’s a fun scrolling infographic of the London 2012 Games. (Dig the footer quip.)
Love the stripy arrows, comrade: Cool Soviet-Era Infographics.
The Evolution of the Web is a neat, interactive, HTML-based infographic.
Could be cool: Information Graphics, a new book from Taschen.

(rt) Good recent infographics

July 7, 2011Illustration, Infographicsjnack

From “Indie Designer” to “Eurotrash A-hole”: A fun survey of wine label styles.
695,000 Facebook updates & more: 60 Seconds on the Web.
“Goodbye to Drama”: Very Small Array charts box office receipts by genre over the years. [Via]

Infographics: Losing your time (here included) & more

June 9, 2011Illustration, Infographicsjnack

In A More Perfect Union, Roger Luke DuBois used dating site info to create “a road atlas of the United States, with the names of cities, towns, and neighborhoods replaced with the words people use to describe themselves and those they want to be with.”
“It’s funny because it’s true”: how a designer’s time gets spent, 1980 vs. today.
Not that you asked, but there’s a whole t-shirt lifecycle.

(rt) Illustrations: Strangelove, disfigured Muppets, & more

January 9, 2011From Twitter, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

I love “The Haunted Household“: Clever, beautifully simple illustrations from Christoph Niemann.
“I’m so cute and cuddly! I help you pee!” Hello, Kidney. See also “In Cutero.”
Check out some great Strangelove-style desktop wallpaper from Ross Zietz.
Dig these minimalist posters for musical genres. I love the one for the Twist.
Infographics:
- The horror! “What I remember most about LEGOs.” [Via]
- Outstanding: “People Who Touch Your Junk.” (I’d suggest listing my kids, but they do it pro bono.) [Via]
So, this exists, then: http://muppetswithpeopleeyes.tumblr.com/ (And if you write to say you can’t unsee it, I’ll reply in the vein of Airplane!: “You saw the URL, you knew what you were getting into: I say, let ’em crash.”)

Infographic video: 200 countries over 200 years

December 10, 2010Infographicsjnack

In “The Joy of Stats,” Hans Rosling “tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers… plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810.” Cool.

(rt) Illustration: Goals, gorgeous cars, & more

June 26, 2010From Twitter, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Athletic:
- Retro Infographic: What happens in your head when you shout “Goal!” [Via]
- Illustrations created entirely of handmade shoeprints for the Chicago Marathon. [Via]
Automotive:
- Jeff Koons has designed the new BMW art car. Bold as hell.
- Stunning: the 1948 Buick Streamliner. [Via]
Buzzcuts as illustration: an NYT slideshow.
Heh–here’s a sort of MacGyver-style iPad drawing aid. (Obviously a software solution is needed, but still neat.)

(rt) Infographics & the like

May 6, 2010Infographicsjnack

“PowerPoint makes us stupid.” Dangers of that cognitive style when real bullets are involved.
Which is worse for the environment (emissions-wise), planes or a volcano? [Via]
Check out this witty “Tax Form for the Marginally Employed” by Sam Potts.
Interesting timeline: Watch the Growth of Walmart and Sam’s Club Across America. [Via Ben Hansen]

(rt) Infographics: Space, violence, & more

March 22, 2010From Twitter, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Michael Paukner makes beautiful space schematics & more.
Excellent & eye-opening: The Mariana Trench To Scale. [Via]
FlowingData renders famous movie quotes as charts and graphs. On the Waterfront is my favorite. [Via]
Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg created a beautiful visualization of Boston Common over the seasons, made by querying Flickr.
Here’s the gruesome, functional graphic design o’ the day, which my son and I found while cavorting on heavy machinery.

(rt) Infographics: Hot Pockets, transmogrifiers, & more

March 6, 2010From Twitter, Illustration, Infographics, Typographyjnack

All the ingredients in a ham & cheese Hot Pocket get laid out in a rad typographic poster. [Via]
From XKCD: “Kid with Transmogrifier” FTW! [Via]
Linzie Hunter makes fun, funky map illustrations. [Via]
Massive infographic: Google facts & figures.
This infographic “describes 95% of films, 40% of best picture nominees,” says Roger Ebert.

(rt) Illustration: "Defeat the World!," great logos, & more

February 21, 2010From Twitter, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

“Defeat the World!!” Stephen Colbert + Shepard Fairey = Awesome Olympic Poster.
Logos
- MTV’s logo, like its aging viewers, has chubbed out. [Via]
- Abduzeedo rounds up The Best Google Custom Logos.
Infographics:
- Nice infographic satire: “Data Underload.” [Via]
- I’m loving Ward Shelley’s intricate, painted timeline infographics, chronicling the histories of things & people like Frank Zappa & Andy Warhol. [Via]
- Danny Jones has put together a handsome if not terribly data-heavy Death Valley Sailing Stones Infographic.
- “In case of emergency, open door with dirty look.” — Jim Gaffigan

(rt) Illustration: Best & Worst Logos of '09, more

January 16, 2010From Twitter, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Logos:
- Brand New collects The Best and Worst Identities of 2009. [Via]
- I dig the logo for Colossal Pictures.
- The Museum of Flight features a wealth of classic, vintage airline logos. [Via]
- Ouch: it’s a tongue-in-cheek TSA logo design contest. [Via]
Distressed zest: the Mister Retro “Machine Wash Deluxe” filter has been updated. [Via]
Infographics:
- Dollars spent vs. life expectancy around the world: US = WTF? [Via]
- Enjoy some beautiful Victorian infographics. [Via]

(rt) Infographics: Cereal selection, nukes, & killer jellyfish

December 27, 2009From Twitter, Infographicsjnack

“Are you Chuck Norris? Are you high?” Here’s a hilarious cereal-choosing infographic. [Via]
Solid old cutaways: Nuclear Reactor Wall Charts
Just about every designer will recognize The Dreaded Killer Jellyfish of Graphic Design Favors!

(rt) Infographics: Megafonzies, mind mapping, & more

December 7, 2009From Twitter, Infographicsjnack

Megafonzies, Kilowarhols, & more: Wired lists some fun units of geeky measure. (“1 Warhol equals 15 minutes of fame, so if you’ve been famous for three years, that’s just over 105 kilowarhols.”) [Via]
“Create Random Acronyms Pointlessly”: Core77 features a funny beatdown of “mind mapping” cliches.
The Onion’s infographic take on Jim Brown: “The good kind of crazy, but just barely.” (Love the bit about his empty uniform carrying on after his retirement.)
Visual Aid: Cool infographics available as posters. (Dig the spacecraft size comparison.)
Interesting infographic: “Tokyo vs Cairo”: Using word analysis to compare Obama’s foreign policy speeches.

Animation: Visualizing the fall of empires

November 25, 2009Infographicsjnack

Here’s a rather fascinating animated infographic from Pedro M. Cruz. Stick around for those late-20th-century fireworks:

Here’s some behind-the-scenes info on the project. [Via]

(rt) Infographics: Violent death, Hey Jude, & more

November 16, 2009From Twitter, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Brutal: “In my Swedish elevator i discovered one of the worst ways to die.” [Via]
This excellent interactive infographic shows the relative size of objects, from coffee beans to atoms.
“Hey Jude” as a flowchart. [Via]
I love this set of fanciful theme park maps. (As a kid I used to pore over my posters of Great America & Brookfield Zoo.) [Via]

(rt) Illustration: Friday Infographics

October 30, 2009From Twitter, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Man, what a gorgeous space infographic. See also the lovely Race to the Moon.
A three-year-old’s view of the NYC subway. (I have to get my illustration mojo back & start doing things like this for our boys. I keep wanting to do a diagram of baby Henry scootching around his crib, a la the sailing stones of the Racetrack Playa.)
A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades. [Via]
Map of how long it takes to get to a ‘major’ city (+50k people). [Via]

(rt) Illustration: Martians, killers, and more

October 23, 2009From Twitter, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Infographics:
- A lovely, highly readable, one-image history of missions to Mars. [Via]
- “A billion here, a billion there…” Gigantic expenditures visualized.
- “A Killer Among Us??” The Science News Cycle as a handy infographic. [Via]
Cool: Sketchbook Mobile for iPhone now emails layered PSD files. [Via]
The recent evolution of various logos (Hilton, Hertz, more).
Chris Haines makes some amazing photo illustrations (Thom Yorke & others). (They get better as you scroll down.)

(rt) Illustration: Mickey D's to Decapitated KFC's

October 15, 2009From Twitter, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Infographics:
- Map of the US, visualized by the distance to nearest McDonald’s. Here’s more info. [Via]
- Beautiful “Nonsensical Infographics” by Chad Hagen.
I love the excellently simple Decibel Fest poster.
Check out the nifty retro illustrations from Lab Partners. More are on their blog. [Via]
The best flag in the world. [Via]
Filed under Stuff You Were Previously Unlikely To See Today: A ~~dog~~ fox eating Col. Sanders’ head, courtesy of graffiti artist Banksy. Brainstem-lickin’ good.

(rt) Illustration: Filter Heroes, puke-inducing logos, & more

September 7, 2009From Twitter, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

[Quick reminder: The “(rt)” in the post headline signifies that I’ve previously posted these links on my Twitter account.]

Infographics:
- Venn diagram of mythical creatures. Pretty excellent. [Via]
- Great infographic: Caffeine vs. calories. [Via]
Check out the Photoshop Filter Heroes t-shirt from our pals at Chopping Block.
Eye-popping monstrous illustrated goodness from Niark1. Lots more to like at Niark1.com.
Design Won’t Save the World. See other words of wisdom for budding designers:
Layers for iPhone does photo compositing + natural media & exports PSDs (!).
Awfulness:
- Ouch: YourLogoMakesMeBarf.com. (But the “Johnston County Cornhole” does richly deserve it.)
- Hard-core awesome Web design: Havenworks and uh, this thing. (“How can you even look at that without having a seizure?,” asks my wife.) [Via Sam Potts]

Thursday Infographics: Maps as fashion & more

August 6, 2009Infographicsjnack

Navigate the Big Apple in style with the NYC Metro Cuff.
The NYT offers a cool interactive graphic on How Different Groups Spend Their Day. Click various segments (age, ethnicity, job status, etc.) and then mouse around to slice the data.
“It’s all {Greek} to me…” Yeah, but what do the Greeks say (and Swedes & Russians, for that matter)?
From the Ukraine comes a massive outdoor crossword puzzle

Tuesday Infographics

July 7, 2009Infographicsjnack

White Glove Tracking “asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson’s white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean,” producing all sorts of creative visualizations of the resulting data. [Via]
“A love of baseball plus a love of infographics equals Flip Flop Fly Ball.” Fascinating & beautifully executed stuff. [Via]
Narcissism + Stalking + ADHD = Twitter! It’s the Social Media Venn Diagram Tee.
Ben Fry’s All Streets is an image of the US comprised of “26 million individual road segments.” [Via]

Infographics in motion

June 25, 2009Infographicsjnack

Hot Rocks: The NYT presents an interesting 2:30 overview on the dangers of drilling deep to tap geothermal power.
Realtime 3D Airtraffic Network Simulation: Lufthansa’s Brand Academy features “a 14-meter-wide, 180-degree projection [that] lets the visitors dive into the fully navigable, realtime 3D visualization of 16,000 daily Lufthansa and Star Alliance flights.” Check out the video. [Via]
Update: Looks like the links have been pulled, at least for the moment. Check out alternate links (courtesy of Ken Beegle) in comments.

Thursday Infographics: From Rambo to D&D

June 18, 2009Infographicsjnack

How does Rambo’s shirtlessness affect his per-minute killing prowess? Flowing Data has the answer! [Tangentially related: Five terrible fake Sylvester Stallone franchise revivals. Even more tangential: My wife has ancestors named Rambo, but strangely she won’t sign up for using “Rambo” as our forthcoming son’s middle name.]
“Effing Hail!” It’s infographics as a game. [Via]
Crossing a couple of nerd-streams, check out these D&D-style maps of the C++ programming language.
Wikipedia shows the mean center of United States population as it has evolved throughout the years. [Via]
oobject collects maps of 12 of the world’s most fascinating tunnel networks. [Via]

Cool recent infographics

June 11, 2009Infographicsjnack

“Dustin Curtis is a Statistic,” presenting his life as a series of data points. [Via]
The GOOD Transparencies Archive offers a terrific set of infographics. [Via]
NYC
- Horizonless New York presents a really unique take on city topography.
- iPhone app UpNext NYC is an interactive 3D map to explore Manhattan.
The Joy of Tech has a funny take on How Apple Approves iPhone Apps. [Via]
Oh yes–this is American Apparel in a nutshell.

Monday motion goodness: Waves in HD, bearded hippies, and more

May 18, 2009Infographicsjnack

BBC cinematographers captured waves from under the surface in gorgeous high-def slow-mo. [Via]

Lucinda Schreiber and Yanni Kronenberg used chalkboard drawings to produce the Autumn Story music video for Firekites. [Via]
Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational early-70’s Scanimate demo. Some part of me kind of wishes that Adobe tools involved more retro levers, switches, cable splicing, etc.–and of course that their use was accompanied by funky 70’s horn sections.
Infographics:
- Melih Bilgil’s The History of the Internet tells, well, you know, using minimal lines but loads of attention to detail. (The fly-over of Cuba is terrific.) Adobe designer Ethan Eismann writes, “My new personal mission in life is to bring this level or higher of engaging instruction to an Adobe welcome screen near you.”
- Slagsmålsklubben would be cool just for its name.

Infographic comedy jams

May 13, 2009Infographicsjnack

I love Jessica Hagy’s clever, minimal index card diagrams. [Via]
The Photographer’s Math blog consists of nothing but snarky little equations. [Via Bryan O’Neil Hughes]
Artist “lunchbreath” nails the creative design process. His Flickr stream is full of great stuff (e.g. fun with Bluetooth).

Friday Science: All space, all the time

April 17, 2009Illustration, Infographics, Scientific & Technical Imagingjnack

Wanderingspace has created 19 fetching Planetary iPhone Wallpapers.
An old chart illustrates the “Unbelievable Time Required to Cover Immense Distances of Space.” [Via]
40 hours of exposure time were required to create this composite of the night sky. [Via]
Ministry of Type highlights some great science and technology ads from the 50s and 60s, found in a much larger Flickr set of the same.
In a short & interesting slideshow/audio piece on the NYT, “The Hubble Repairman” John Grunsfeld talks about his arduous missions to the space telescope.
Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 looks like a groovy kids book.

Recent infographics

February 5, 2009Infographicsjnack

The NYT shows Twitter Chatter During the Super Bowl organized by time & geography.
The paper also charts the grim state of print advertising.
Queens of InfoVis: “Ever see an awesome graphic or visualization in the New York Times and wonder who did it?” asks MetaFilter. “Chances are it’s either Amanda Cox or Megan Jaegerman.” The site links to some notable examples. [Via]
Andreas Nicolas Fischer has turned financial charts converted to computer-generated 3D wooden sculptures. [Via]
A poster from Very Small Array graphs the genre of #1 hit songs in the USA, 1950-present, though unfortunately it’s not possible to zoom in on the design.

Interesting Inaugural bits from the NYT

January 18, 2009Infographics, Photographyjnack

The New York Times features an interactive photography portfolio called Obama’s People, offering portraits of key staffers. The audio commentary (via the link below the photos) is worth a listen, describing the subjects’ choices in what to bring to the shoot (e.g. a chocolate chip cookie for David Axelrod). The separate making-of piece features Kathy Ryan talking about how shooting digitally has enhanced the collaborative aspects–and maybe the time pressures–of portraiture. [Update: Ellis Vener points out a hilarious “Real Behind-the-Scenes” take on the shoot, followed by some good discussion in the comments. “Blue Steel…”]

The paper (that term seems more than a little outmoded, doesn’t it?) also features an excellent overview of the Inauguration Day goings-on via a 3D-rendered map and timeline.

Looking back, another piece depicts the changing configuration of the White House.

I’d love to be in DC in person, but that map triggers a memory of having gotten stuck on the Metro under the Potomac on a sweltering July 4 years ago. With Tuesday temperatures due to hover around freezing, maybe I’m okay with TV after all.

Kuler adds Community Pulse

January 9, 2009Infographics, kulerjnack

The team behind Kuler, Adobe’s color harmony creation & sharing site, has introduced a neat new feature:

Explore the Kuler global community with Community Pulse, a big picture view of color usage. This is a beta feature, using data visualization (screenshot) to show the relative popularity of colors across a sampling of countries, time periods, and tags.

To check it out,

Sign in with your Adobe ID to play around with it
Mouse over the histogram to see the hues on the color wheel
Try the granularity slider to see more/less color detail
Use the comparison icon (two circles) to compare/contrast

If you have questions, check out Kuler Help. And don’t forget to check out the Kuler panel in Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and InDesign CS4 (see Window->Extensions->Kuler). Here’s a couple of screenshots, plus a video demo. [Via]

New infographics: Hockey Moms to Wu-Tang Clan

September 6, 2008Infographicsjnack

The NYT visually represents word usage at the Democractic & Republican conventions. Hmm, the Dems must really want "four more years" of this "Bush" character… [Via Ken Lawson]
DIY 411: MIT’s Mycrocosm is "a Web site that makes it possible for people to use statistical graphs and other visual language tools for expressive social communication. In particular it provides an alternative to purely text based micro-blogging software." [Via]
Reader "PW" (presumably not PW Herman) points out Pratt’s interesting mechanism for navigating classes & faculty.
Mission Creep illustrates US troop presence worldwide by country over the last half century. [Via]
Slate’s got a short history of information visualizations. It’s good to be reminded of beautiful work like Ben Fry’s Genome Valence (video). [Via]
It’s not an infographic per se, but it riffs nicely on their familiar shapes: Sony’s new Walkman ads play with the forms of famous subway maps. Zooming in on the Sydney piece, you can see that station names have been replaced by bands.

Recent infographic goodness

August 27, 2008Infographicsjnack

Stefanie Posavec creates beautiful, sometimes abstract images from data in her “On the Map” project.
The NYT renders Olympic medal counts by country, also enabling the user to navigate through time. (Tossing it around too freely, I managed to blow up Safari.)
“UFO sighting convincibility” is on the rise, thanks to Photoshop. [Via Rob Corell]
xach.com offers a cool way to visualize 2008 box office results. [Via]
I think I should chart my mood on a line stretching from “Earnest” to “Scurrilous*,” as Vanity Fair does with the content of their Blogopticon. [Via Tom Hogarty] It’s similar to New York Mag’s Approval Matrix.

*Defined as “grossly or obscenely abusive… characterized by or using low buffoonery; coarsely jocular or derisive.” Hells yeah.

Infographic stylings: From bacon to Ludacris

June 19, 2008Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Love bacon, love the bacon flowchart. "Are you wearing pants?" (Evidently this will prove important.)
Men’s Vogue celebrates Massimo Vignelli’s sleek 1972 New York subway map.
The Boston Globe teaches you to nap. [Via]
Stefanie Gray maps the area codes in which Ludacris claims to… uh, know ladies. [Via]
Mark Rabinowitz uses the graphical language of nutrition facts to illustrate some truths about prostitution.
How many employees does Google have? About this many. [Via]
It’s tangentially related, maybe, but I dig these out-of-context small boat images. [Via]

Infographic goodness

June 10, 2008Infographicsjnack

The NYT has been kicking out the good infographic jams lately:

Andrew Kuo created a funny, handsome infographic on why music festivals are worth skipping. For more from Andrew, see his blog + previous.
Matthew Bloch, Shan Carter and Amanda Cox have created an interesting Flash-based infographic that totes up "All of Inflation’s Little Parts." I often find presentations like this dense, impenetrable, and/or over-designed, but this one’s an exception. [Via]
Adobe XD guy Ethan Eismann points out a couple of video-based info presentations. In one of them, interactive voting is tied in with the content.

Elsewhere:

Ben Terrett pulls together lots of interesting visualizations. [Via]

Rorschach Economics: Japan’s Phillips Curve looks like Japan; cigarette consumption looks like Virginia.
It’s been around a while, but I still dig Michal Migurski’s flashy newsmap

From D&D to decapitations, in infographics & maps

March 10, 2008Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Sam Potts has created a hilarious infographic for Sunday’s NY Times, part of their sendoff for D&D creator Gary Gygax.
The NYT has been posting other interesting graphics lately, including How Americans Spend Their Money and the Flash-enabled Ebb & Flow of Movies.
In Rudimentum Novitiorum, Bibliodyssey surveys maps & other infographics of antiquity.
With a more modern spin, Colourlovers talks about the use of color in transit maps, offering a number of cool examples.
How about a world map made from musical notes? [Via]
What does an hour’s worth of movement in front of the TV look like? One Flickr user endeavored to find out, using a video camera & a grid of masking tape to plot the positions of dad, kids, and cat. [Via]
For the greater good:
- Easier voting through graphic design: Marcia Lausen is "determined to apply the highest possible standards of information design to make [voting systems] clear, accessible, easy to use and the results accurate." [Via]
- John Emerson’s Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design offers a guide for NGOs, non-profits and advocacy groups. [Via]
If you can’t go another day without knowing how to stage a realistic decapitation, well, consult these graphics.

From D&D to decapitations, in infographics & maps

March 10, 2008Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Sam Potts has created a hilarious infographic for Sunday’s NY Times, part of their sendoff for D&D creator Gary Gygax.
The NYT has been posting other interesting graphics lately, including How Americans Spend Their Money and the Flash-enabled Ebb & Flow of Movies.
In Rudimentum Novitiorum, Bibliodyssey surveys maps & other infographics of antiquity.
With a more modern spin, Colourlovers talks about the use of color in transit maps, offering a number of cool examples.
How about a world map made from musical notes? [Via]
What does an hour’s worth of movement in front of the TV look like? One Flickr user endeavored to find out, using a video camera & a grid of masking tape to plot the positions of dad, kids, and cat. [Via]
For the greater good:
- Easier voting through graphic design: Marcia Lausen is "determined to apply the highest possible standards of information design to make [voting systems] clear, accessible, easy to use and the results accurate." [Via]
- John Emerson’s Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design offers a guide for NGOs, non-profits and advocacy groups. [Via]
If you can’t go another day without knowing how to stage a realistic decapitation, well, consult these graphics.

Naked saunas, 3D Flash globes, and other infographic goodness

February 24, 20083D, Flash, Illustration, Infographicsjnack

My wife and I are nervously quizzing each other on these expert (and very funny) baby care instructions (boosted wholesale, it would seem, from David Sopp’s Safe Baby Handling Tips). [Via]
Wable is “a coffee table that displays a user’s web activity via physical bar graphing.” Yes, I remember pining for such a thing not ever. (Are Venn-diagram kiddie pools next?)
Maps:
- Concentric circles are coming for us!! The Onion has fun with news infographics.
- Seeking to place events into geographical context, Yahoo has created a 3D NewsGlobe using Adobe Flex. ComputerWorld’s got background on the project. [Via]
- In similar vein of “Learning America Smarter,” check out the naked saunas, black metal, and ass-beating of Scandinavia. (And you thought it was all chilling out with MDF.) [Via]
- The Gough Map is said to be the oldest accurate map of Britain, dating from around 1360.
Signage:
- My little brother Ted let me ride along last month as he drove his garbage truck. This safeyman image (somewhat dodgy iPhone-cam quality, sorry) I snapped in his cab shows the truck really putting the “screw” back in “screw of Archimedes.”
- “Do not iron while wearing shirt (on an iron-on decal)”: more good advice from the safetyman chronicles. [Via]
- I can get behind this “Faith healing sign” at Disneyland, not to mention Serbian children escaping a triangle.[Via]
Blogging software has made self-publishing seem simple, but beneath the covers, a whole lot’s going on. Wired has a Flash-based diagram showing what all happens when one hits “Publish.” [Via]

Fun & clever recent infographics

February 15, 2008Illustration, Infographicsjnack

I’m endlessly fascinated with how people display information visually. Here are some cool recent examples:

JamPhat features a hilarious (and huge!) collection of hip hop-inspired infographics. Images are helpfully linked to YouTube vids of the related songs. It was a good day…
Fun with Venn diagrams: I love the simplicity of this clever music elitism t-shirt. (Compare to Wu-Tang Clan.) [Via]
What if we regarded flags as info visualizations? That’s what Brazilian designer Icaro Doria did for the magazine Grande Reportagem. [Via]
Call it "Most Inscrutable. Karaoke Interface. Ever." Or just call it pretty. Robert from Flight404 (see previous) has used Processing to create the lovely video Solar, incorporating lyrics from Goldfrapp. [Via]
HistoryShots sells prints of really cool infographics.
ArmsFlow presents global arms transactions, visualized in an interactive map. Clicking individual countries shows their import/export flow for a given year. Interesting concept, but the lines overlap so densely that it’s hard to see what’s happening. I’d love to see the whole thing taken further. [Via]
Knowing things Biblically:
- Chris Harrison pours ancient texts through graphical filters in his Visualizing the Bible project. [Via]
- In the early 20th century Clarence Larkin turned his scriptural knowledge into Biblical infographics. [Via]
Virtual China features a Chinese diagram on how to cook chicken with beer. [Via]

Fun & clever recent infographics

February 15, 2008Illustration, Infographicsjnack

I’m endlessly fascinated with how people display information visually. Here are some cool recent examples:

JamPhat features a hilarious (and huge!) collection of hip hop-inspired infographics. Images are helpfully linked to YouTube vids of the related songs. It was a good day…
Fun with Venn diagrams: I love the simplicity of this clever music elitism t-shirt. (Compare to Wu-Tang Clan.) [Via]
What if we regarded flags as info visualizations? That’s what Brazilian designer Icaro Doria did for the magazine Grande Reportagem. [Via]
Call it "Most Inscrutable. Karaoke Interface. Ever." Or just call it pretty. Robert from Flight404 (see previous) has used Processing to create the lovely video Solar, incorporating lyrics from Goldfrapp. [Via]
HistoryShots sells prints of really cool infographics.
ArmsFlow presents global arms transactions, visualized in an interactive map. Clicking individual countries shows their import/export flow for a given year. Interesting concept, but the lines overlap so densely that it’s hard to see what’s happening. I’d love to see the whole thing taken further. [Via]
Knowing things Biblically:
- Chris Harrison pours ancient texts through graphical filters in his Visualizing the Bible project. [Via]
- In the early 20th century Clarence Larkin turned his scriptural knowledge into Biblical infographics. [Via]
Virtual China features a Chinese diagram on how to cook chicken with beer. [Via]

Hipsters, gangstas, & unacceptable haircuts

October 29, 2007Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Chart! And! Graphs!

Maps
- “As a resident of Manhattan and an owner of a complete set of bodily organs, [Jack Anderson] knows a thing or two about subway maps and anatomy. Now you do, too.” Check out his Illustrator-designed digestive-system-as-subway-map t-shirt. [Update: See also the Metropolitan Cardiac Authority.] [Via]
- Online comic xkcd offers a map of online communities. (It somehow makes me think of a Hobbit map that spent years stuck to my childhood bedroom ceiling.)
- This Virgin Atlantic map drives home the vast number of movies available for viewing in flight.
- I love the incredible intricacy of Christa Dichgans’s maps. [Via]
Graphs
- Artist Andrew Kuo spent the summer hitting as many NY concerts as possible, and he “obsessively charted the entire experience, from reviewing the bands to counting the number of porta-potties.” Check out the results. See also the brief accompanying article. Many more infographics live on his blog.
- Protec’ ya neck: Chris Sims lets us peer into the rigorous science of gangsta rap. [Via]
- This Australian dating ad uses infographics to make its pitch. (Only 11% of suitors have “unacceptable haircuts”? They must not be counting the vast number of Aussie dudes with fauxhawks.)

Hipsters, gangstas, & unacceptable haircuts

October 29, 2007Illustration, Infographicsjnack

Chart! And! Graphs!

Maps
- “As a resident of Manhattan and an owner of a complete set of bodily organs, [Jack Anderson] knows a thing or two about subway maps and anatomy. Now you do, too.” Check out his Illustrator-designed digestive-system-as-subway-map t-shirt. [Update: See also the Metropolitan Cardiac Authority.] [Via]
- Online comic xkcd offers a map of online communities. (It somehow makes me think of a Hobbit map that spent years stuck to my childhood bedroom ceiling.)
- This Virgin Atlantic map drives home the vast number of movies available for viewing in flight.
- I love the incredible intricacy of Christa Dichgans’s maps. [Via]
Graphs
- Artist Andrew Kuo spent the summer hitting as many NY concerts as possible, and he “obsessively charted the entire experience, from reviewing the bands to counting the number of porta-potties.” Check out the results. See also the brief accompanying article. Many more infographics live on his blog.
- Protec’ ya neck: Chris Sims lets us peer into the rigorous science of gangsta rap. [Via]
- This Australian dating ad uses infographics to make its pitch. (Only 11% of suitors have “unacceptable haircuts”? They must not be counting the vast number of Aussie dudes with fauxhawks.)

Cool new infographics

July 21, 2007Illustration, Infographicsjnack

The Internets, it’s well known, are a series of tubes. That reality is now depicted in this info graphic from Information Architects Japan, mashing up online players with a map of the Tokyo subway system. Nice to see Adobe occupying what seems to be some sunny downtown space (“They continue to move towards the center of gravity without being too loud about it”). More info on the project is here. [Via]
Edward Tufte celebrates the NYT infographics of Megan Jagerman in a detailed profile on his site. [Via] Speaking of work done in the paper, this week they posted a cool Flash-based map of The Wealthiest Americans Ever, efficiently plotting net worth, rank, and life span.
CraigStatsSF combines data from Craigslist with Google Maps in order to produce heat maps that depict housing cost and density by region. (Disclaimer: “We only identify with hotpockets which are tasty and lethal.”) [Via]
I don’t know whether it’s an infographic per se, and it’s hardly new, but Henrich Bunting’s 16th-century depiction of the world as a cloverleaf (joined at Jerusalem) is interesting enough to deserve mention. [Via]
Free Press features a visual representation of how AT&T has been reconstituted, T2-style, after being broken up in 1984. Somehow I keep hearing Johnny Rotten saying, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” [Via]
Update: Greg Dizzia has posted a chart that graphically depicts the details of every relationship he’s ever had. (Note: The chart is work-safe, but it may not be everyone’s cup of tea.) [Via]

Adventures in Infographics

April 27, 2007Illustration, Infographicsjnack

I’m intrigued by work that strives to make sense of large, complicated sets of data (see previous). Along those lines:

This London-style NYC subway map is generating a lot of conversation, both online & inside Adobe. Weird, I remember discussing this exact topic when I first started at an NY Web shop–nine years ago! Bridge engineering manager Arno Gourdol points out Mr. Beck’s Underground Map, a thorough account of the Tube map design. And from there I found this page, brimming with more resources on the subject. [Via]
PingMag chats with Andrew Vande Moere, creator of the Infosthetics blog, about the beauty of data visualization. Both links are chock full of loveliness. (Bonus: No Edward Tufte w/young white-gloved flunkies.)
The Strange Maps blog depicts right- vs. left-hand driving around the globe, while providing the interesting back story of how these conventions came to be. [Via]
Covering 5000 years in 90 seconds, Maps of War shows the tides of conquest that have swept through the Middle East. [Via]
The US government gets into the game, using census data to drive home the aging of the populace.
I dig illustrator Christoph Niemann’s witty little visual comparison of some pieces of music. (I’m a Jaws-level pianist at best.)
Pentagram designer Paula Scher created this anatomy of a blog conversation for the NYT. Ahh, the descent into ennui… [Via]
At FITC last weekend I really enjoyed meeting Evan Roth, the dude behind the SkyMall demographic visualization, laser graffiti, and much more. Though I’m coming up short on links to it, he’s created a method of visualizing one’s daily clicks: wiring up two USB cables from a single mouse, plugging one into a main work computer, and plugging the other into a machine running Photoshop or other graphics app. As you click around email, the Web, etc., you produce a drawing (of sorts) on the other machine, with paint blobs mapped to the same coordinates as your clicks. (It sounds like AttenTV might be doing vaguely similar, for profit.) Oh, and bringing this post full circle, Evan’s crew at Eyebeam has created an interactive NYC subway map.