Client Infographic: Top 20 Marketing Automation Software Solutions

Designed here at InfoNewt for Capterra, the new infographic: The Top 20 Marketing Automation Software Solutions explores the relative Popularity of different software companies playing in the Marketing Automation arena. 

In this design, I used a pie chart to represent the total Popularity of the Top 20 solutions, and connected the related company logo to each slice as appropriate.  It was a specific design choice to list the rank number, but not the specific percentage of each slice.  Because the data was gathered and combined from a number of different sources that can change daily, the results needed to be informational at a general level and valid for a longer period of time.  Visually, you can quickly and easily understand the relative popularity, but the specific value isn’t relevant to any purchase decisions.

An infographic product comparison is a great way to help buyers cut through the clutter and add value.  There are currently 184 software solutions listed in the Marketing Automation category directory, so buyers need some way to compare products and make an informed decision.

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.”

Designed in OmniGraffle, and I cleaned up the logo images using Pixelmator.

Thanks to Mike and the great work from the team at Capterra!

The Anatomy of a Perfect Website

The Anatomy of a Perfect Website from R.O.I Media does a really good job of looking at the primary components of a good website design.  There are many decisions that need to be made by website owners and designers in each of the different sections, and of course data should be driving those decisions.

Websites need a formula – a vivid blueprint that painstakingly weaves technicality, design and detail into something iconic and memorable. Without it, most wouldn’t function for more than a moment and they certainly wouldn’t impress. You may have navigation and usability down, but in today’s fast paced climate you’ll crash and burn without social media. What about SEO, where would it be without content? These are all the things we have to consider, if we are to succeed – from vital tracking and analytics to the often disregarded footer, every detail oils the machine. With that in mind, we bring you the Anatomy of a Perfect Website…

A couple things bother me about the visualizations used in the design.  Designers need to get the “area” of objects correct for the data visualizations to be accurate.  In the Social Media section, the size of the clocks with the site logos should represent the scale of the time spent on each of the sites, but the sizes aren’t actually connected to the values at all.  They’re only a series of increasing shapes without any meaning.  The Facebook clock should be at least five times the diameter shown.

Also, the Browser Statistics section is another victim of the “area” challenge.  I LOVE the visual design style of the color saturation only extending up on the logos as far as the statistics show!  However, you can’t just use the height of the percentage because all of the logos are round shapes.  You need to use the Area of a Circle Segment to calculate the appropriate height to use.  This visual design is probably close, but it’s not accurate.

Thanks to Francois for sending in the link!

The Rise of Minecraft

This infographic from Jess Bachman at Visual.ly comes The Rise of Minecraft.  The vertical timeline shows the meteroic rise in popularity of the new game from Mojang.

November 18, 2011 marks the Minecraft release out of beta. Follow the rise of Minecraft, from it’s humble beginnings as a one-man experimental project to its overwhelming success in the gaming industry accruing over $1 million in weekly sales. With close to $0 spent on advertising, Minecraft’s popularity can be marked by this year’s sold-out MineCon event in Las Vegas, NV, on November 18 & 19.

I love the 8-bit design style to match the game itself.

Timeplots Poster Sale - 30% OFF!

As an exclusive gift to readers of Cool Infographics, Timeplots.com is offering a 30% discount on all posters when you use the Promo Code “sale2011” before the end of the year. 

I love these posters, and I have both the Supreme Court and the American Presidency posters here at my office.  For your office, for a nearby school, for your kids or even a Christmas gift, these posters are a fantastically detailed infographic reference.  The U.S. Supreme Court, the American Presidency, the U.S. Senate and both U.S. Political Parties!

A big thanks to Nathaniel for all of his designs and offering this end-of-the-year discount to the readers of Cool Infographics!

Client Infographic: The Visual History of Christmas Trees

The Visual History of Christmas Trees is a new infographic from ChristmasTreeMarket.com.  Designed by InfoNewt and designer Jeremy Yingling, this one creates a visual timeline of the major milestones for the Christmas Tree mostly focused on the last 100 years.

The history of the Christmas tree has garnered a lot of fascinating points over the years. A tradition with humble beginnings in 15th century Latvia, the festive tower of foliage has grown to be one of the holiday season’s most beloved symbols. From the first decorated tree in 1600 to Gubbio, Italy’s 650-meter tall wonder, get a glimpse of Christmas tree history through this handy visual guide from Christmas Tree Market.

This one was a lot of fun, and of course is timed to be appropriate for the holidays.  I love how this design turned out, and it was a unique topic that had not received a thorough infographic treatment before.  The design challenge was letting the images shine, keeping the text to a minimum, but still providing the reader with a lot of interesting information.

No matter which side of the Live Tree vs. Artificial Tree debate you fall on, you'll find lots of good information in the infographic.  I bet you'll even learn something you didn't know.  I'm still fascinated by the upside-down Christmas Tree!

The Designer's Toolkit: The Most Popular Design Tools

BestVendor.com recently released The Designer’s Toolkit, an infographic showing the results of a survey with 180 design professionals about the software they use to perform their magic.

What are the most popular tools and apps used by designers? We were curious, so we pulled together data based on 180 design and creative professionals who use BestVendor. Below is an infographic showing results across a range of product categories, from invoicing to wireframing. We also included a few design tools considered hidden gems and rising stars among this audience. One observation: Designers’ powerhouse tools like the Adobe Suite remain on the desktop, but more than half of their favorite apps are in the cloud.

Although 180 designers isn’t enough to be quantitative, statistically accurate results, I really like the overall design layout and the stacked bar style with the most used software on top of each chart.  Easy to read and compare between categories.  However, I don’t understand the color choices (shouldn’t they be related to each software brand color?), and I think it would have looked better with the application icons in the chart.

If you’re interested, you can see the software I use on BestVendor here.

Found on FastCo Design

Unlocking the Mystery of Humpback Whales

Unlocking the Mystery of Humpback Whales is a cool new infographic from MauiWhaleWatchTours.com that shows the reader a handful of easy-to-understand facts about the humpback whales.  The design is clear and stays focused on a narrow topic.  Very informative design.

The Humpback Whale infographic above was built to show some of the annual migration routes across the globe, the most common surface behaviors and the least common (in our experience), names of anatomical parts of a humpback whale, length and weight of a typical humpback whale, tips on whale watching, and some mysteries that have yet to be solved. We hope you like it! ALOHA!

Thanks to Chris for sending in the link!

The Money Chart

The Money Chart from Randall Munroe’s webcomic xkcd.com is a huge poster showing the scope and scale of money flowing all over the world.  In a great move for transparency, the entire list of over 200 sources is also online.

You can view it through the online, zoomable viewer OR get the super high-resolution image file!  The 36”x24” printed poster version will be available starting in December for $15.00.

This is the poster version of comic #980, which is a guide to money. It started as a project to understand taxes and government spending, and turned into a rather extensive research project. With upwards of 200 sources and 150,000 tiny boxes, it’s best appreciated in poster form. The 36”x24” high-quality poster print allows you to stand back and, all at once, take in the entire world economy.

Each square represents one unit of the specific section it’s in.  One dollar, One million dollars, One trillion dollars, etc.  To provide some scale, each section is then visualized to scale in the next higher section.  Here’s the transition from dollars to thousands.

Found on Infosthetics, ChartPorn and FlowingData

Design The Future - Infographic Design Contest!

Calling All Infographic Designers!

Hosted here on Cool Infographics, PosterBrain.com is sponsoring the Design The Future infographic contest for the best Utopia or Doomsday infographic poster.  The grand prize will be a 16GB iPad2.  Plus random prizes will be awarded throughout, no matter what everyone will get something.  Instead of giving you a subject for the infographic we will provide the data and you will create your own subject.  Data MUST be pulled this data spreadsheet available on Google Docs.  THIS IS THE ONLY SOURCE you can gather data for your infographic from.  Judging will be based on creativity, aesthetics, clarity and the story that your infographic tells.

Contest will end when they receive 50 Entries!  So act fast!

Of course you can create you own illustrations and visualizations, but DepositPhotos.com is offering a free, PROMO CODE to all designer participants.  This promo code gets you FIVE FREE images to use in your design!

Click here for all of the Official Contest Page with of the details.

Once you submit your entry, 33% of the judging criteria will be on how many people “LIKE” your image on our Facebook contest page.  Once you email in your entry, PosterBrain will post them on the Facebook page so you can start gathering LIKEs.

Everyone is encouraged to enter, so even if you have never designed an infographic before, this is your opprtunity.  Plus, PosterBrain will be awarding some random prizes to participants

Update on Friday, November 25, 2011 at 4:41PM by Randy

Open to international entries!

The contest sponsor (PosterBrain) has heard the the comments about restricting the contest to U.S. residents, and has now modified the rules to allow entries from around the world!  See the Official Rules for details!

Crazy for Black Friday Deals

In honor of our upcoming shopping holiday, Crazy for Black Friday Deals from BradsDeals takes a look at some of the stats behind Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving) shoppers.

BradsDeals created a Crazy for Black Friday Deals infographic to illustrate historical Black Friday figures as well as the shopping trends and predictions for this year’s holiday.

If you live in Minnesota, congratulations, you live in the most Black Friday crazy state in the country. And while Black Friday fans in major cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago may be more likely to cruise Black Friday deals on their smart phones than shoppers in smaller towns, the Dallas suburb of Carrollton blows everyone out of the water with 60% of Black Friday searches happening on mobile devices. WOW.

I live near Carrollton, but I wouldn’t consider it a particularly tech-savvy area.  Apparently, they’re good with mobile shopping…who knew?

Of course, I get tons of Black Friday infographics submitted to the site, but I really liked the design of this one.  The information is visualized in a clear, easy-to-understand design. The visuals are simple and relate to the data.  Maps for cities, calendar for days shppers make plans, doughnut diagrams for percentages and silhouettes of top products.

On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be a cohesive story to this infographic.  It’s a collection of disconnected data points about top cities, mobile trends, top products and when shoppers make plans.  Also, the design is missing a list of the data sources, the URL for readers to find the original posting, a copyright or creative commons claim and recognition of the designer.  Why should we trust any of these statistics?

Thanks to Amanda for sending in the link!