Celebrating their First $1,000,000 of Custom Made Products

In its first six months CustomMade.com made their first million of custom products! They take their clients ideas and match them with professionals to get the job done.  Their Celebrating Our First $1,000,000 of Custom Made Products infographic shows their process and success. 

Over the first six months of 2012, we here at CustomMade have been thrilled to witness the growth of the first entirely custom online marketplace.  Our team has been constantly working to improve the site experience and our ability to match customer’s idea’s with the talented professional makers who can bring them to life.  Recently we paused for a moment and realized we were about to pass an important milestone for our marketplace – $1,000,000 worth of custom made products!

Along the way we’ve seen some amazing custom creations ranging from $32,000 custom kitchen cabinets to an $11 hand carved wooden pendant. We’ve seen rings made out of vinyl records, rings with amazing details from a family crest, and even an engagement ring in the shape of R2D2 (which any Star Wars fan would love).  Our makers have brought to life a children’s bed in the shape of a slipper, amazing custom humidors, and even a custom cat bunk bed!  You can browse all of our projects in progress on the site, or browse over 35,000 completed projects.

This work is being done by over 2,000 professional makers across the U.S. and Canada.  They include furniture makers, jewelers, ceramicists, glass blowers, metal workers, leather tanners, and much more.  These makers represent that true craftsmanship still exists today and that consumers are able to not just purchase an item off the shelf, but to create an heirloom that can be cherished for years to come.  We are proud to support these local makers and the products they create, and are looking forward to seeing what unique items they make next!

I love the classic, clothes-tailor style that dominates the overall design.

My biggest complaint with this design is the lack of data visualizations.  Big fonts are NOT data visualizations.  Visualization put the values into context for the reader by comparing them to another value so the reader can understand if a number really is big or small.

I love that the infographic itself was “Crafted by hand”, but in the spirit of the business, they should have given the designer credit by name.

Thanks to Zach for sending in the link!

Market and Competitive Intelligence Trends

Meidata brings us the Market and Competitive Intelligence Trends infographic that covers the sources and uses of competitive intelligence online and related Internet trends that affect the availability of information.

Meidata is a company in Israel, but has clients from around the world.  The infographic is based on their own internal information from global customers and system statistics, so this information is not available anywhere else in the world.

Designed by Robert Ungar at Meidata, the design is colorful and easy to follow.  A great design overall.  One of his best design accomplishments is the language translation.  More than merely pasting the translated text, the design has to account for the change in direction between Hebrew and English, and still tell a smooth story.

You can view the original design in Hebrew, and they just released an English language version (above) on their site, and you can download either the English PDF or the Hebrew PDF.

Thanks to Shaul from Meidata for sending in the link, providing the information and the English translated version.

INDi Unzipped - A Visual Business Plan?

Did you know that 60% of Americans wear jeans to work? That the custom retail e-commerce market will grow by 5,000% by 2016?  The INDi Unzipped infographic from INDi Denim fills us in on the jeans we fill out!

We make custom jeans for men and women that can be fully customized in terms of style and fit. We created the infographic to show that custom is a HUGE trend in the e-commerce space and that INDi is a leader of this trend.

This is essentially a visual business plan for INDi Denim.  The infographic shows the data all about the jeans industry, the future growth of custom jeans and about INDi Denim in particular.  I would guess that the primary audience for this one is the investors and customers of INDi, but that’s a fantastic use of an infographic design!

The only thing missing from the bottom of the design, is the URL to the full-size infographic on the INDi blog.  Designers need to include the URL to the infographic so reader can find the original when the infographic gets shared, but isn’t linked back to the INDi page.

Thanks to Becca for sending in the link!

Rock of Ages: The Evolution of SxSW

Rock of Ages: The Evolution of SxSW from Music Festival to Interactive Launch Pad is a new infographic from Rocksauce Studios just in time for SxSW 2012 this weekend.

Since 1987, SXSW has morphed into an interactive, film and music conference and festival that brought together 19,364 attendees in 2011.

Austin-based app development firm, Rocksauce Studios, has created an infographic that dissects the interactive portion of SXSW, and proves why this conference is the new popular techie playground.  

The topics and cited statistics covered in “The Evolution of SXSW from Music Festival to Interactive Launch Pad” include:

- History of SXSW
- 2011 Attendance Demographics
- Top 10 Types of Business of Interactive Registrants  
- Geographic Breakdown of Total Interactive Registrants
- Successful SXSW Startup Launches
- Recent SXSW Web Awards  / Interactive Awards Winners
- Reasons So Many Companies Chose to Launch at SXSW
- The Accelerator

You can read more about the development of the infographic on Silicon Angle

This design does a really good job with the visual basics.  Showing the icons/logos of the startup companies, illustrating the business types, mapping the conference registrants. The overall design tells a good story top-to-bottom to the readers, and it’s easy to follow the flow of information.

Three things stood out to me that could be improved:

• There are a lot of data values in the text of the timeline that should have been visualized.
• The three shapes showing the amount of Interactive Conference Participants, Conference Sessions and Interactive Media in Attendance all of different values, but the shapes are not sized to match those values.
• The last section “The Accelerator” seems to fall apart as all text, even though there are some good data values there that should have been visualized.

Thanks to Kelly 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

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!

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!

Job Growth at the 100 Best Companies

Designed by Nicolas Rapp, with Anne Vandermey (@Vandermy), Job Growth at the 100 Best Companies is a companion infographic for the Fortune feature article, 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Fat paychecks, sweet perks, fun colleagues, and over 70,000 jobs ready to be filled — these employers offer dream workplaces. Like Google, which reclaims the top spot this year to become a three-time champion. Meet this year’s top 100, network with the winners on LinkedIn, and more.
In the latest issue of Fortune Magazine.

This is a great Bubble Map visualization that shows the reader three different dimension of information: Job growth (or loss), total company employees and total job applications over the course of the last year.

I do wish that all of the bubbles had been identified in the infographic.  There are many company bubbles unmarked, but the reader assumes they are a part of the Top 100 list.  Just my personal preference, but I would have used the company logos instead of text to identify the bubbles too.

Head over to Nicolas’ site to see the full-size version:

Tablet Adoption at Work

The State of Tablet Adoption at Work is a new infographic from VentureBeat.com.  It’s interesting that the infographic itself was sponsored by Lenovo and Qualcomm, but included as part of a VentureBeat article.  You can find the original version here at TabletsAtWork.com

Since the debut of Apple’s iPad in Jan. 2010, the integration of tablet devices into our lives and work has progressed rapidly — so fast that it’s sometimes hard to put in perspective how quickly got here.  The exclusively obtained infographic below breaks down how far workforce adoption of tablet technology has come — and where it’s headed. (The graphic was sponsored by Lenovo and Qualcomm.)

I love the clean, professional design look.  I really like the color scheme and the mixed bag of visualization styles; grid of icons, treemap, stacked bar, line chart, etc.

Only a couple of design issues about this one I would improve.

• I’m willing to let 16 tablet icons represent 16.1 Million tablets shipped in 2010 (rounding), but why only 144 tablets shown to represent 147.2 Million?  That was just the designer wanting a clean, square visual that breaks the actual data visualization.
• The line chart showing 134% increase in shipments powered by Android and Windows is way out of scale.  It’s visualizing something close to a 900% increase.
• At the bottom there should be a copyright statement and the URL to the original infographic landing page so people can find the full high-resolution version.

Found on the Inside Flipboard feed in Flipboard for iPad.

Ultimate Guide to Business Cards

Start the New Year off right with a new business card design!  The Ultimate Guide to Business Cards is a very well designed infographic from BusinessCards.com

Business owners can find themselves easily overwhelmed when it comes to working with a graphic designer on creating branded business cards. Often enough business owners underestimate the quantity and importance of design decisions (selecting typeface, font, card shape, size and material) that must be made in addition to organizing basic contact information.

Below are some common areas that sometimes get lost in translation between designer to business owner. If you’re starting a business card or identity project we recommend getting a head start and figuring out the following elements for your project.

I really like how the infographic literally shows the reader what each of the topics mean.  Using the actual fonts, showing the color blends, showing the actual business card dimensions is easy-to-compare rectangles, showing examples of the different materials, etc.

Simple, easy-to-read design that tells a story nicely from top-to-bottom.

Thanks to Chris for sending in the link!