info-art

I was listening to writer Clay Shirky talk about cognitive surplus – the idea of spare brainpower in the world’s collective mind just sitting there waiting, wanting, to be harnessed.
He had a stand-out statistic that snagged my mind. I thought I would visualise it.

Shocking proportion. Interestingly, when I sketched the diagram, my imagination had the scale way wrong.

The Billion Dollar-O-Gram 2009. The latest version of our fabled treemap of billion dollar amounts.
All the data and more billion dollar amounts: http://bit.ly/bndollar
A little context
This image arose out of frustration with media reporting of billion dollar amounts. That is, that they’re meaningless without context. But they’re continually reported as self-evident facts. 500 billion for this war. 50 billion for this pipeline. Literally mind-boggling amounts of money.
So here we’ve scraped reported figures from The New York Times, The Guardian, and other news outlets and visualized them as a treemap (?). So you can see in one place figures that would otherwise be scattered across multiple news reports.
(**Sorry it’s taken me so long to update this image from the original version. I’ve revised and updated all the figures. Sourced some new numbers. And researched new ideas suggested by visitors. Thanks all!**)

Design: David McCandless
Research: David McCandless, Matthew Sawh, Caroline Flyn, James Key
Sources: NYTimes, The Guardian, CNN, MSNBC and other media reports.
Data: http://bit.ly/bndollar

Design duo Tyler Lang and Elsa Chaves are Always With Honor, an East Coast design team with a specialty in beautifully simple information displays and iconography.
I first got turned on to / by their work when I spotted this awesome poster. It visualizes the many domains within design. Somewhat awesomely.

(Here’s a link to a massive hi-res version)
Simple Is Beautiful
Simple shapes, simple typography, simple colour characterises their work. I snaffled them up for a spread in Information Is Beautiful about the various creation stories across cultures – scientific and mythological.

Struck me there was something cool about trying to visualize such an unimaginably complex process with super-simple graphics.
Iconographtastic
Always With Honor create the best icons! You may have seen some of their work for publications like Monocole. So characterful. More here.

Infographtastic
They also had a strong influence on the look and feel of Good Magazine’s infographic Transparency section. Soft lines and cutsy icons make the data seem less harsh, less griddy. I like!

Colours In Culture
My favourite piece, somewhat selfishly, is the Colours In Culture image on the cover of Information Is Beautiful. It visualizes the meaning of colours across different cultures (Native American, Western, Chinese etc).

Bag yourself a poster
In fact, we’ve just litho-printed a gorgeous poster version of this image on 220 gsm, FSC-certified art paper.
The coolest thing though is that it’s a 6-colour process print. Gold and silver on the diagram have been printed – at great expense – in gold and silver ink. Not only does that look cool. But it also means we’ve been able to remove the legend from the design. Making the image even cleaner and simpler.
Order a copy from our store now.
The first print run is already almost sold out. We have just 25 copies left.
Visit AlwaysWithHonor.com for more beautiful work.

SOME LINKS FOR THEE
:: Always With Honor
:: Tyler Lang’s personal site
:: Order a Colours & Cultures poster

“Live-vizzing” a graphic on the UK government’s emergency budget for The Guardian and Open Knowledge Foundation.

So much great work out there at the moment, I wanted to share it with y’all.
Secret Fermy Magazine
Russian infography seems to be on the rise. Here are some great visuals from a publication apparently called ‘Secret Firmy Magazine“. No idea what it’s about. But my eyes just don’t seem to care.

Images from: Timur Shabaev and BogusFreak.co.uk


Damn Tourists!
Twinned with the Touristy Map Of The World is this amazing set of visualisations from Eric Fisher detailing concentrations of tourists in cities around the world, using geotagged photos. Blue are photos taken by locals. Red by tourists. Gorgeous concept and look. [via Burrito Justice]

If Crime Was Elevation
The peaks of San Francisco. Great concept converting crime figures into topology from coder Doug Mccune. Thanks to @calflyn.

How Much CO2??
Here’s a little interactive thing we did for GE’s EcoImagination initiative. A little window landscaping the relationship between driving and CO2 in America.

quickies

Depth Charge – Not loving all the design elements but I scrolled right down to the end
Visual Medical Records – Nice early idea
Meet iPad’s competition – Another great viz from SectionDesign
Marca World Cup Schedule – About a quillion people have sent me this.
(Thanks Nuno Monteiro, Tom Broughton, Richard Stewart, Feisal, Onur Yirmibesolglu etc)

As ever, if you’ve spotted any goodies, send them over. Thanks! David.

Depressing update of our original DeepWater Horizon image.
The oil spill is now on track to be the 3rd worst in history, depositing the equivalent of 22,000 cars worth of oil into the sea every day.
BTW the NYTimes have done a much better interactive graphic.
More info and our data in this online spreadsheet: http://www.bit.ly/InDeepWater

DESIGN: David McCandless
RESEARCH: David McCandless, James Key, Pearl Doughty-White
ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Joe Swainson
SOURCES: International Energy Association, CIA Factbook, International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Limited, Press Reports
DATA: Explore in this Google doc

The Taxonomy Of The Apple iPhone.
A very smart and good-looking analysis of the infrastructure that supports the existence of the iPhone from Ben Millen. Both from a physical point of view and a Heideggerian perspective, in the context of culture and society.
(Do I sound like I know what I’m talking about? Excellent.)
You can zoom on the two images here and here.
(Having to zoom into these images is annoying. Visualizations don’t always work that well on screen. They’re usually much better in print. Someone ought to create a sumptuous, colourful coffee-table book of these things, I think).

Great places-to-avoid heatmap using distribution of photos on Panoramio. Nice idea! By BlueMoon.ee

International number ones
Data: http://bit.ly/IntNoOnes
Note: Roll over the main image to see the countries.

DESIGN: David McCandless
RESEARCH: David McCandless, Chris J Hall, Alexia Wdowski, Pearl Doughty White, Caroline Flynn, James Key (yes it was a lot of work!)
ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Matt Hancock, Joe Swainson
SOURCES: NationMaster.com, The CIA World FactBook, Wikipedia, FAO @ The UN, Press Reports
DATA: Explore in this Google doc

The World Cup Is So Predictable
Apparently some savante has come up with a formula for soothsaying the winner of this year’s World Cup. Wired UK ran an image visualising the algorithm. Designed by the always awesome SectionDesign.

The Appliance Of Science
How much energy does a microphone use? Or a blender? Or a sateillite dish? And how much does that add up to over a year, money-wise and planet-wise? A lovely playful app from Pentagram team of Lisa Strausfield and Mike Deal (of Charting The Beatles fame). (It’d be nice to change the currency though).

The Four Seasons Visualized!
Beautiful synaesthesic bubble trip through Vivaldi’s classics. An experiment by MotStudio [Via DataVisualisation.ch]
>
Die Hard Index
I don’t understand this beautiful map because it’s about sports. Apparently it depicts baseball’s most ardent fanboys. But it looks so great. It’s like information ice-cream. You know, for your eyes. Ice cream man Russ Maschmeyer.

Still hungry?

How much gas? This is a neat approach at visualising stats for states (Thanks to Felix Sherrington-Kendall for sending)
What Alleviates Depression? Not the most upbeat design – perhaps intentionally? – but an interesting subject and interesting way to research the data.
All 91 Cover Designs For Information Is Beautiful Hey – we got there in the end. Just be glad you *never* have to work with me.

As ever, if you come across any tasty information designs you’d love to share with us, please send them over.

It’s voting day in the UK General Election today. Here’s a hackerly look at the accuracy of opinion polls for The Guardian Datablog. See if you can spot any patterns.
(They’ve run the image a bit small. Here’s a hi-res on my Flickr)
Here’s the data http://bit.ly/polldancing too. It has a load of extra info going back to 1987.
Happy voting!

DESIGN: David McCandless
RESEARCH: David McCandless, James Key
ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Matt Hancock, Joe Swainson
SOURCES: Guardian/ICM Poll Results, YouGov Trends (PDF), Ipsos MORI Research
DATA: Explore in this Google doc

Data here: http://www.bit.ly/InDeepWater

DESIGN: David McCandless
RESEARCH: David McCandless, James Key
ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Matt Hancock
SOURCES: International Energy Association, CIA Factbook, International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Limited, Press Reports
DATA: Explore in this Google doc