Website Hosting Decisions

The Hosting Decisions, From the Chalkboard infographic from Rackspace UK Hosting helps customers to choose how to host their site with this visually decision map.

OK so you already know that we’ve been helping customers define their hosting needs for some years now.

But as customers adopt more service based computing resources like cloud hosting, it’s only logical that they will also now ask more of their hosting provider to ensure they are getting the correct solution.

So we thought hey, let’s produce an infographic to take customers through a simple decision making process on a route to the solution that’s right for them.

This one is a clear, focused topic.  Easy to read, and not a lot of illustrations or images to get in the way.  This decision for companies is actually a little more complicated, but the infographic does pose the right questions.

Thanks to Sav for sending in the link!

Sinking of the RMS Titanic vs. Costa Concordia

RMS Titanic vs. Costa Concordia (Veja comparação entre o naufrágio do Costa Concordia e do Titanic infographic) from Ultimo Segundo in Brazil compares the crash of the Costa Concordia (Blue) to the Titanic (Red).

Alguns dos sobreviventes do acidente do Costa Concordia compararam o naufrágio do navio italiano, que tombou após bater em uma rocha na costa da Ilha de Giglio em 13 de janeiro, com o do Titanic. “Concebido para ser inafundável”, segundo a operadora White Star Line, o RMS Titanic naufragou em 15 de abril de 1912 após ter-se chocado com um iceberg no Oceano Atlântico duas horas e quarenta minutos antes, na noite do dia 14.

ENGLISH Translation: Some of the survivors of the crash of the Costa Concordia compared the sinking of the Italian ship, which sank after hitting a rock on the coast of the island of Giglio on 13 January, with the Titanic. ”Designed to be unsinkable,” according to the operator White Star Line, RMS Titanic sank on April 15, 1912 after it collided with an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean two hours and forty minutes before the night of the 14th.

What a great design!  The best thing about this design is that it’s in Portuguese, but the visuals still make it understandable to anyone that doesn’t know the language!  I understand the comparison between ship sizes, the dates of service on the timeline, the passenger capacities and the number of people aboard during the final accidents.

Thanks to Guilherme for sending in the link!

The Social Brand Value of the World's Leading Brands

The Social Brand Value of the World’s Leading Brands infographic from Sociagility.

In November 2011, we looked at the social brand value of 50 of the world’s leading brands, creating a revised top 50 ranking according to their social media performance, as measured by our PRINT Index™ KPI.

The PRINT system compares brands on five key dimensions or ‘attributes’ of social media performance – popularity, receptiveness, interaction, network reach and trust – across multiple platforms. The Sociagility Top 50 report analyses the social brand value of the world’s leading brands and the competitive influences that determine their social media performance. Here’s a visual representation of just some of the report highlights.

I really like both the topic, and the design of this infographic.  The colors are bright, and appealing.  In the Top 20 Brand Leaders, I suggest that using the actual brand logos would have made the bar chart easier to understand.  It’s interesting that beyond the first section, the actual values aren’t shown along with the visualizations. I really like the circles comparison of the three attributes of each brand.

Also, “Legends are Evil”.  The color coding by market is at least a secondary level of data, but the legend still makes the reader work harder by looking back-and-forth to understand the meaning behind the colors.  It’s even harder as you move down the infographic, because the color coding continues, but the legend is way up near the top.  You could put icons or the text into the color bars themselves, and the reader would figure out the color coding scheme. 

At the bottom, a copyright and the URL of the original infographic would make it easier for readers to find the original posting.  Some credit to the designer would be nice as well.

Found on DR4WARD.

What's In Your Trash?

The What’s In Your Trash infographic explores what constitutes trash in America.  From Bolt Insurance, this design breaks down all of the stuff we throw away.

The cleaning services industry brings in more than $50 billion a year, from janitorial services to residential cleaning agencies, and the industry is projected to continue growing. Americans generated more than 250 tons of garbage in 2010. In BOLT’s What’s In Your Trash infographic, find out what is really in your trash and how important cleaning services and janitorial services are. Through recycling and waste incineration, as much as 90% of waste can bypass the landfill! Presented as an infographic (created for BOLT by Infographic World) to help you more easily visualize and retain this important information.

Although there is a lot of text here that could have been visualized (big fonts aren’t a data visualization), I really like the doughnut segments split apart to show different components of the trash.  It helps tell the story and lead the reader through the information top-to-bottom of the design.

Thanks to Jane for sending in the link!

The Definitive Cocktails Poster

The Constitution of Classic Cocktails is a cool new poster from Pop Chart Lab.  Available in print for $36, this is a 27”x39” poster.

This definitive guide to classic cocktails breaks down 68 drinks into their constituent parts. Follow the lines to see where spirits, mixers, and garnishes intersect to form delightful concoctions. This massive movie poster-sized print contains over 40 types of alcohol (from distilled spirits to bitters), mixers from raspberry syrup to egg white, and garnishes from the classic olive to a salted rim. This obsessively detailed chart also includes the ratios for each drink, as well as the proper serving glass, making it as functional as it is beautiful. Over a year in the making, this is Pop Chart Lab’s most elaborate chart ever.

I love the circular design, with radial connections between the different alcohol types in the center and the mixed drinks around the perimeter.  I find it easier to start in the center, and figure out which drinks you can make with that alcohol.  They show the different shapes of glassware for cocktails across the bottom, and use those icons to show which glass should be used with each drink.

Pop Chart Lab also posted a fabulous, behind-the-scenes article on FastCoDesign about the process they went through during the design development.  Check out The Only Chart You Need To Mix A Proper Cocktail to see the early concepts and the different stages the design went through.

Found on Chart Porn.

Client Infographic: Hotels.com Romance Survey

Hotels.com has released two Romance Survey infographics that share their own research behind romance and Valentine’s Day.  Designed by InfoNewt with designer Jeremy Yingling, the two versions cover research data both the U.S. and Canada.

Pack your bags, Sweetie Pie, we’re going on a romantic getaway!  We surveyed guys and gals of different ages who shared their secret dreams about the perfect romantic weekend.  Here’s how our lovebirds responded.

It’s fun, timely information that has a long Online Lifespan (won’t change over time), so the infographics will be relevant for years.  There was a lot of survey data, and I really like how the final result mixes up different ways to look at the aggregate data by also using the available demographics to show findings by age and gender.

I was impressed with the chivalry shown by 58% of men (both in the U.S. and Canada) that feel they need to plan and pay for a romantic Valentine’s date.

Thanks to the Hotels.com team for being great to work with!

Infographic Events Calendar 2011-2012

Outstanding calendar-map infographic from Infographer.ru, a Russian infographics site and design agency in Moscow (view in English).  The Infographic Events Calendar 2011-2012 shows many (but not all) visualization, data and infographic conferences and events around the globe.

For everyone who is interested in information design we prepared the events calendar. We found over 44 conferences and workshops, dedicated to infographics and visualization topic all over the world.

The idea to make this kind of ‘map-calendar’ of events appeared in our mind a long time ago, we started to collect data in 2011 and suddenly 2012 started. So we decided to combine both years and show the history for 2011 and actual events for 2012, which you can use for your personal planning.

They collected over 40 conferences and workshops dedicated to information visualization for last year and the upcoming schedule for 2012.  The calendar-map color codes the events by month and obviously connects them to the correct location on the world map.

If you know any corrections or additions to the event included, please post them in the comments!  I know they will be reading them, and would welcome all feedback.  Here are a few events I think they should add to their list:

• South by Southwest Interactive, Austin, TX, March 9-13, 2012
• TDWI World Conference (Tableau), Las Vegas, NV, February 13-15, 2012
• Big Data 2012, Paris, France,  March 20-21, 2012

I like the text of the city name included in the connecting lines, and the months with no events are gray so they don’t add to the visual noise of the bright colors.  Somewhere on the design they should have included the URL for people to find their original posting.  When this get shared online, readers will have a hard time finding the original site.

Infographer also posted some behind-the-scenes information about the development of the design.  Check out their early drafts in the complete blog post.

Thanks to Irina for sending in the link and posting the English translation of the development process!

The Psychology of Color

The Psychology of Color is a cool infographic from CertaPro Painters of Louisville.

This new infographic from CertaPro Painters of Louisville shows how color evokes emotion and triggers your senses. It beautifully explores colors that should and should not be used in interior decorating, as well as why certain colors are used in advertising.

Designed by NowSourcing.com, I love the visual appeal of this design.  Obviously, it’s bright and colorful, but in all three sections of the layout (home, colors and advertising) they provide visual examples to back up their observations about different colors. I would love to have a house that colorful!

There is much more information on this subject, but this design also kept the information fairly simple and straightforward.  The colors make the design very “busy”, but the design doesn’t try to communicate too much information to the reader.

The design is missing the URL to find the original landing page, and a copyright statement.  I also found it odd that they needed to clarify that M&Ms are “an American Chocolate Candy”.  Aren’t M&Ms an international brand?

Thanks to Jay for sending in the link!  Also found on Infographic Journal.

Client Infographic: Top 20 Medical Records Software Solutions

A new infographic design from InfoNewt for Capterra.  Top 20 Most Popular EMR (Electronic Medical Records) Software Solutions shows the results of comparing Capterra’s Popularity calculations in the EMR software category.

As the deadline for implementation in the U.S. draws near, talk of electronic medical records (EMR) and electronic health records (EHR) software is a hot topic at the doctor’s office lately. These systems assist medical practitioners in the creation, storage, and organization of electronic medical records, including patient charts, electronic prescriptions, lab orders, and evaluations (just to name a few common features). While the terms “EMR” and “EHR” are often used interchangeably, EMR solutions allow for patient information to be shared within one health care organization, whereas EHR solutions allow for health-related records to be shared across multiple organizations. Below is a look at some of the most popular options in both categories, but to see a comprehensive list, visit our EMR Software Directory. You can also click on any of the company logos in the graphic to go directly to their websites.

Capterra’s listing current shows 324 EMR software solutions, and for their target audience this is a very hot topic with an upcoming Federal requirement in the U.S. to make all medical records electronic by 2014.  This is a HUGE issue to convert millions of patient records over the next few years, and practitioners obviously only want to do this once, so picking the right platform up front is critical!

Similar to the Top 20 Marketing Automation Software design, this design features a large pie chart as the primary visualization, and then provides additional information.  The main data is Capterra’s Popularity calculations which combine total users, customers, revenue, social media followers and website rankings.  Again, the specific percantage values weren’t as important as the ranking and visually showing how the packages compare.

This software category has the added complication that the different software packages are written for different sizes of medical organizations.  Single medical practitioners don’t need the same software (or have the same budgets) as hospitals.  We also added the element of showing which hardware platforms each package is design to use.  Microsoft Windows hardware is clearly dominant, but Apple hardware and Cloud-based solutions made up 30% of searches in this category.

Capterra is the authority when it comes to finding software solutions for businesses, and they’ve done some great work gathering data and measuring the relative popularity of different software categories.  Although popularity doesn’t necessarily mean the software is right for your business, it is a really good indicator that the solution is working successfully for many businesses and may be worth a closer look.  A better indicator than just total revenue or trying to rate “the best.”  You can read their comprehensive blog post about the data behind the infographic.

Thanks to the team at Capterra for being great to work with!

Weight of the Union 2.0

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!