Australian Tourism Infographic

Who doesn’t dream about going to the land down under? So if your curious about who is coming or going in Australia, planning a mini-vacation, or perhaps a permanent vacation, the Australian Tourism infographic from WeWish has the information for you!

The only thing we like more than being on holiday is planning a holiday! Find out where everyone is heading this year. This infographic shows people moving in and out of Australia. It also shows the top destinations to visit when down under.

I love how clean this design is!  The information in sequence from top-to-bottom tells a good story about tourism in Australia.  However, a couple of the data visualizations are a bit hard to understand:

• In section 1, the percentage share of global arrivals is the red circle for each country, and theoretically these are all portions of a whole 100%.  It’s very hard for the viewer to compare the sizes of the circles between countries.  The nested circles visualization style shown for each country is a visualization really intended to compare those particular circles among themselves.
• In section 3, the green arcs visualize the percentage change from 2009 to 2010, but an arc visualization is intended to show a portion of 100% like a pie chart.  None of these specific values exceeded 100%, but that type of data could have and the visualization would have broken down because it’s not appropriate for this type of data.  You could have a 200% increase from the prior year.

A couple things missing from the bottom of the design.  The URL to the original infographic posting, and a copyright statement.

Thanks to Stefan for sending in the link!

The Startup Ecosystem: Predator vs. Prey

The Startup Ecosystem: Predator vs. Prey is a fun but informative infographic from udemy.  It looks at the different roles related to tech startup companies in an amusing way by personifying them as fish in the sea.

The startup waters are murky and full of hidden dangers. Below the surface, the ecosystem rests in a delicate balance between predators and prey.

To help you navigate these stormy seas, we’ve created the infographic below. Read on to find out where you stand in the startup food chain.

This one is light on data, but does convey valuable information to the reader.  The visual scale of Ubiquitous to Endangered is easy to understand, and the color coding is consistent throughout the design.

Found on Best Infographics

Payroll and Tax Deductions

The Payroll and Tax Deductions infographic from Paycor takes an unbelievably dry topic and makes it interesting by visually walking someone through their paycheck.  The design allows them to understand all of the different things that may come out prior to the final amount that makes it to their bank account. 

Most American workers aren’t aware of the factors that determine how much is deducted from their paychecks, yet it’s important to have that understanding so you can speak up about any errors. Read more about the details of payroll and tax deductions in this infographic.

So what exactly is that payroll software deducting from your paycheck? Typical deductions include federal income tax, OASDI, Medicare tax, disability and state income tax. Your tax bracket will range from 10% to 35% depending on your amount of taxable income. Medicare tax rates will be different depending on whether you work for a company or are self-employed.

At the state level, individual states handle taxes differently, with seven states charging all residents a flat tax rate and nine other states not collecting any income taxes at all. 

I think this is a fantastic use of an infographic to explain a really confusing and boring topic.  The visual design makes it much easier to understand and the character illustration help lighten up the topic to make it more approachable by readers.

I do think the visualizations using the stacks of cash are weak.  They show a size comparison between deduction amounts, but don’t visualize their specific value well.  There is also still more text than I would like in the design, but with this topic you do have to be clear and precise because the tax laws are so complicated.

At the bottom, the design is missing the URL for the original landing page, a copyright statement and any credit to the designer.

Thanks to Matt for sending in the link!

iPad3: USA in anticipation of the new iPad

Anticipation is building strong momentum expecting the release of the next iPad from Apple in the near future.  Ask You Target Market (AYTM.com) is an online survey service, and they gathered data from a couple of their own surveys to compile the iPad3: USA in anticipation of the new iPad infographic.

The rumor is that the iPad 3 announcement will come in the first week of March, but doesn’t specify when it will be released. For reference, the iPad 2 was announced on March 2nd of last year, and available on the 11th.

There are some significant changes expected and to gain a better understanding on the current state of the American consumers’ current iPad usage and anticipation of the iPad 3, AYTM conducted DIY market research utilizing our online consumer panel and survey tool. The highlights of our discoveries are encapsulated in this infographic:

This Infographic is based on a survey of 2000 Americans who don’t own an iPad (request full stats report by e-mailing us: support [at) aytm.com) and another survey of 500 iPad owners (open full stats report) that we’ve collected for you on aytm.com in February 2012.

A few thoughts about the design:

• I like the idea to that each fingerprint on the iPad to represents 100,000 people, but because it’s a data visualization, the different sizes of the fingerprints makes you think that the size has meaning when it really doesn’t.  It was so subtle, I initially missed the number 3 reversed in the fingerprints.
• In the “What could Apple do” section, the illustrations do help give meaning to each of the statistics, but because the numbers are all in the text, their impact is lost.  These values should have been visualized.
• The model distribution is clear, and easy to understand.  For the Models breakdown, I really like the use of the pie chart to represent two levels of data.  Primary is the size, and the secondary level is the WiFi vs. 3G split.
• I really like the 3G satisfaction breakdown.  Very easy to understand.
• Great use of the logos and colors in the Carrier split data.  Orange isn’t in the AT&T logo, but is a very dominant color on their website, and Verizon got a red bar to match their logo and primary website color.
• The Family trees are hard to understand and the 1.7x visualization isn’t clear.
• I’m not sure why they picked area charts for the apps visualizations.  That’s really the wrong type of visualization for the data since these are all supposed to add up to 100% of users.
• The male vs. female bar charts work well, and are easy to understand.  I appreciate that they were consistent with the female number always first, and of course the color-coding work perfectly.
• “Where iPads are used” is really just an illustration, and doesn’t visualize the percentages at all.  I simple stacked bar under the illustrations (like the carriers above) would have worked nicely.
• Surpirisingly, I really like the use of word clouds here.  You don’t need the specific numbers, and the word cloud visualization makes the point well because the top responses are so overwhelming.
• I love that they gave credit to the designer, Lev Mazin!  It doesn’t hurt that he’s the CEO and Co-founder of AYTM.com, but happens to also be a graphic designer.

Only one thing missing at the bottom: the URL to find the original infographic.

Found on Mashable

Update on Wednesday, February 29, 2012 at 7:20AM by Randy

After some discussion with the designer, Lev, in the comments section, he redesigned the area charts into two half-circle pie charts, shown here:

I think this works much better to accurately show the data as portions of a whole 100%, and still effectively show the inverse comparison between high numbers of Free Apps, and low number of Paid Apps.

What do you think of the design changes?

See Mix Drink: Infographic Cocktails

The See Mix Drink Cocktail Guide is a fabulous infographic drink recipe book from Brian D. Murphy (@murph_e).  Currently available for about $10 on Amazon.com, it’s on my wish list.  Featured on GQ.com back in October when it was released, I have been totally remiss by not posting about it until now.  (My apologies Brian!)

Have you tried mixing a Mojito? What about a Rusty Nail? Or a Cosmopolitan? With See Mix Drink, the first-ever cocktail book to offer instruction through info-graphics, making the drinks you love at home is as easy as, well, See, Mix, Drink.

This unique, illustrated guide graphically demonstrates how to make 100 of today’s most popular cocktails. For each drink, color-coded ingredients are displayed in a line drawing of the appropriate glassware, alongside a pie chart that spells out the drink’s composition by volume for intuitive mixing. No other cocktail book is this easy or fun. Instantly understandable 1-2-3 steps show exactly how each drink is prepared, and anecdotes, pronunciation guides, and photographs of the finished drinks will turn newbie bartenders into instant mixologists. 

The GQ.com feature has the designs for ten of the recipes from the book.  They are all simple to understand, and easy to follow.

One thing I would suggest to improve the visualization design style is to combine the key and the ingredient portions.  No need to make the reader look to both sides of the glass illustration to figure out how much of each ingredient.  Just putting the name with the amount on the left side and getting rid of the color key would eliminate an eye motion for the readers.

Thanks to Brian for sending in the link (back in October!) and congratulations on the publication!

Hand Jive: Gestures That Can Get You in Trouble Abroad

The Hand Jive-Hand Gestures Infographic from Pimsleur Approach takes you on a world tour of what common hand gestures from America mean elsewhere (for better or worse).

Nearly everyone all over the globe know that flashing the middle finger is meant as a huge insult to the recipient. However, many common hand gestures which are perfectly innocent in the US are in fact quite dangerous in other parts of the world!

This is a great topic for an infographic because it’s so visual.  You have to show the actual gestures as illustrations in order to communicate effectively with the reader.  The pins in the globes are easy to read, and a refreshing visual that’s different from the standard flags on a map.

Simple message, focused topic, easy to understand.  Good design.  For an infographic, the URL at the bottom should link you directly to the original infographic posting instead of the company front page, and some type of coyright statement is missing.

Thanks to Sarah for sending in the link!

Tea & Biscuit Dunking Guide

The Tea and Biscuit infographic from Green Hat Design in the UK shows avid dunkers of biscuits the proper timing to keep their favorite snacks in the tea or coffee to conquer floppage and avoid the disappointment of contamination!  Also available as a high-resolution PDF.

This biscuit infographic is based on 8 of our favourite UK brands which helps us (and others) to get the best out of his (or her) biccy when dunking it in hot tea or coffee, while at the same time assisting the user to avoid… floppage. That unfortunate moment that the biscuit suddenly gives way and contaminates your beverage. Nasty. We feel many could actually benefit from such details. I know it has changed my life.

This one is a fun topic.  Apparently the biscuits in the UK are so hard you have to dunk them to eat them…  :)

The radial design works well to show three values for each biscuit, and is easy for the reader to compare them.  The illustrations work well, even though readers in the U.S. (myself included) won’t recognize any of the biscuits.

A couple things are missing from a Marketing Infographic design perspective.  It needs a title!  I made up the “Tea & Biscuit Dunking Guide” because it didn’t have a good title of its own.  There should be some type of license statement, and in this case I would suggest Creative Commons.

The PDF file is hosted on the Green Hat Design site, but the infographic isn’t displayed anywhere.  t’sI hard to share a PDF compared to how easy it is to share an image file online.  It REALLY needs it’s own official landing page on the Green Hat Design site to display the infographic, and be the one place you want everyone else (like this blog) to link to.  They had uploaded it to visual.ly, and I linked to it there, but that shouldn’t be the primary landing page if they want to drive traffic to their site and awareness to their brand.

Thanks to Steve for sending in the infographic!

The United States of Craigslist

Welcome to The United States of Craiglist! This infographic map, found on the IDV User Experience blog, shows approximately how craigslist divides its geographic zones across the U.S.! Very important for a website who bases its usefulness on location!

WHY?  Locality is inherent to the value of craigslist; I go to craigslist.org but I get kicked over to the local instance of craigslist (my IP address sources me to somewhere in the illustrious Lansing, MI).  But how does craigslist know where to send me?   Some mysterious system of assigning a geocoded IP address to just the right site must be in place…I wonder what that map looks like.

When Ian Clemens proposed the idea, I looked around to find an existing map of craigslist sites-to-areas -maybe even find the lookup that they themselves use. I couldn’t find anything like it.
Whether it matches their system well or not, here is a map that approximates geographic coverage to individual sites using a Voronoi process as a base (more info on process below).  It is at least a start at visualizing the geographic coverage and distribution of the community-driven instances of craigslist.  Shapes like this might provide some useful context for other data, demographic or market information, for instance.  Also, when pulled into VFX, it can serve as an input to some spatial querying on those other metrics.

It’s worth noting that this is not from Craigslist at all, but an outside analysis of the cities from the craigslist site and approximates the geographic areas covered by each.  A complete post about how this map was generated is available here, and they have even made all of the data files available in a number of different formats.  Bonus!

Craigslist doesn’t care about state lines, counties, time zones or voting districts.  They care about defining an area that covers certain population levels that effectively use their service.

Thanks to Jim for sending in the link!

Shutterstock Global Design Trends 2011

The Global Design Trends 2011 infographic from Shutterstock shares some of the image usage data that only they have due to the nature of their business.

After 8 years, 17 million images and over 200 million downloads, Shutterstock has become one of the world’s leading marketplaces for visual media. We have artists and photographers from more than 100 countries, and customers in more than 150. But perhaps most significant about these milestones is that it has led to tens of thousands of image searches each day – giving us valuable insight into design trends around the world.

From vintage-themed photographs, to vibrant vector graphics, here’s an infographic detailing what visual stories were told over the last year.

I love that Shutterstock has some unique data internally that they are analyzing in aggregate and now sharing with the world.  It’s not complicated, but I love that they actually included some of the most downloaded images in the design.  They are showing the reader what was popular instead of just telling the reader about it.  My favorite section is the Evolving Visual Vocabulary showing how the meaning of the image keywords is changing over time.

They made a couple unusual publishing choices.  The image posted on the blog is 714px wide (an odd number) so the small text is blurry and pixelated.  I don’t think they have enough detailed data in this design for a zooming viewer, but if you click on the image from their blog post, it takes you to the full 3,300 pixel wide image loaded into Zoom.it.  They also link to the high-resolution JPG image file, and (a great idea!) a lightbox on Shutterstock that includes all of the images highlighted in the infographic.

A handful of statistics are just listed in text instead of visualized like they should be: 150 countries, 16 million downloads, 6 million downloads, 5 million downloads, etc.

A couple standard things missing that a lot of designers seem to consistently miss: a copyright statement, the URL for readers to find the original infographic landing page (the specific blog post on Shutterstock in this case), and a credit mention for the designer (Shutterstock is all about designers!).  I hope the team at Shutterstock paid the license fes for using these images in their infographic design!  No need for a Sources statement, since all of the data comes from their own site server data.

Thanks to Aaron for sending in the link!

The Changing Role of the CIO

The Changing Role of the CIO infographic from Wikibon explores the varying roles of the CIO. The prominence of the CIO position has risen greatly as information technology has become an increasingly important aspect of the modern organization.  The amount of information that companies ahve to deal with and make sense of is only going to continue to increase.

CIOs today have a top operational and strategic priority (not technology priority) to support the mission of the business through the application of technology. While they are under pressure to reduce costs, CIOs must deliver agility and efficiency to the organization. The CIO is also VERY concerned about risk. CIOs don’t want to disrupt what’s working while chasing new opportunities.

Think of the CIO as managing a portfolio of applications, technologies, people and processes. The technology portfolio is allocated to initiatives that are designed to 1) Run the business 2) Grow the business and 3) Transform the business. Like a good portfolio manager, the CIO must balance risk and reward by allocating resources in a balanced manner. The degree of risk is a function of the objectives of the board of directors and the strategic plan and operating plans of the companies.

I really like the topic, and the information covered in this design.  However, there isn’t a clear path for the reader to follow the information story down the design.  It’s crowded, and has different data scattered throughout the design.

Four things are missing from the bottom of the design: a copyright statement, the URL where readers can find the original infographic landing page, credit to the designer(s) and SOURCES.  Where did the data come from?  Why should we believe it?

Thanks to Jay for sending in the link!