The Economics of a UK Christmas

Do you have a budget for your christmas this year? The Economics of a UK Christmas infographic from Bridging Loans covers the spending for Christmas in the UK, and it continues to rise! The UK spends the most money on gifts, and more specifically on technology!

Here is a cool infographic we have created that provides lots of statistics about Christmas in the UK. The infographic is broken down into sections including overall Christmas spending, what type of stuff we spend the money on and how the UK compares to the rest of Europe.

My biggest feedback on this design, is too many of the statistics are shown as just text alone. Big fonts are not data visualziations, and just showing many of those values doesn't provide context for the audience.

Thanks to Dave for sending in the link!

2017 Shipping Deadlines

Tis the season for shipping! The 2017 Shipping Deadlines infographic from Ship Station will help you get your last minute presents to their destination on time!

Holiday shopping season is approaching, so get your team ready — because shipping is coming. As an online merchant, you need to know the holiday shipping deadlines for carriers and services to get your packages delivered by Christmas weekend. Knowing these cut-off dates will help you set accurate shipping costs, offer available services, instill trust in your online customers, and help them shop on time!

My only hesitation with this design, is it's similarity to Gantt chart. The highlighted periods are all of the acceptable shipping dates, but visually it seems to imply the shipping duration of the different services.

Thanks to Margie for sending in the link!

Christmas Quiz: 10 Most Popular Stories

How well do you think you know your Christmas stories? Especially now immediately after the holidays?  Take the Christmas Quiz: 10 Most Popular Stories by Unplag and see how many you can guess right! 

Have you ever resorted to the Internet for Christmas must-do lists? Obviously, this thing can stand you in good stead to timely cope with holiday chores. Aside from stocking stuffers and holiday menus, you need to take care of leisure time activities too. So, why not add a quiz with the most popular Christmas stories to your list? Unplag created the one especially for you! It’s high time to remember the admired plots and characters and find out if you can guess all of them.

The creators of this infographic were quite creative. They told 10 of the most popular Christmas stories with a minimal amount of icons and illustrations! Do you think they choose the right ones? Would you have told the stories differently? Either way, this infographic is a fun holiday quiz to play with family and friends. 

Thanks to Anastasia for sending in the link!

The Logistics of Santa Claus

The Logistics of Santa Claus infographic from Go Supply Chain takes a fun look at what it would take for a modern shipping company to achieve the magic deliveries that Santa makes every year.

Ever wondered how Santa Claus does it all?  In the festive spirit our logistics consultants decided to investigate.  This fun infographic explores the options (besides Santa's sleigh) that could be used. We hope that you enjoy this infographic.

A good content strategy is to tie your business in with a holiday or major event. This keep the topic relevant to your business and entertaining to your audience.

However, this design has a few major flaws! First, the pie charts are both bad. They add up to 173% and 167%, which is just bad data visualization design. Pie charts MUST always add up to a grand total of 100%. If we assume the data is correct, this type of data should never have been visualized as a pie chart.

Second, a number of the statistics are shown in text only. This misses the biggest advantage of infographics, which is an opportunity to visualize data for your audience. If you're not going to visualize the data, you might as well just post a text article instead.

Third, where are the data sources? Where is the copyright or Creative Commons license? Where is the URL to the company website and the infographic landing page?

Fourth, I can't find the full-size original online anywhere. It was posted on their blog at a smaller size which makes some of the text very hard to read. Their post should have linked to the full-size version.

This is a fun, engaging topic, but the infographic execution fall short.

Thanks to David for sending in the link.

The Shapes of Snowflakes

The Shapes of Snowflakes is a fascinating categorization of crystal structures from Compound Interest, a chemistry site run by Andy Brunning in the UK. The site has a huge selection of chemistry and science related infographics.

In the Northern Hemisphere at least, the idealised vision of Christmas involves snow. Whilst no one snowflake is exactly the same as another, at least on a molecular level, scientists have none-the-less devised a system of classification for the many types of crystals that snow can form. This graphic shows the shapes and names of some of the groups of this classification.

The number of categories snow crystals can be categorised into has been steadily increasing over the years. In early studies in the 1930s, they were classified into 21 different shape-based categories; in the 1950s, this was expanded into 42 categories, in the 1960s to 80 categories, and most recently in 2013 to a staggering 121 categories.

Science meets Christmas!

You can also download a high-resolution PDF version.

Top Ten Christmas Life Hacks

The Top Ten Christmas Life Hacks article and infographic from Kid Rated shares some great tips & tricks for the holiday season! Use condiment bottles for icing! Brilliant!

Here at KidRated we have plenty of suggestions of where to go with kids during the holidays. But there will always be those days around Christmas when the weather is awful, you have so much to do, or even you have eaten too much that even the idea of leaving the house would never cross your mind.

So, because at KidRated we really do like to help our brilliant readers and viewers, we have come up with our top ten Christmas life hacks to help you through the holidays. Kids will love doing them so much that you might as well put your feet up and enjoy the few minutes of peace and quiet. It won’t last long.

Clear design that’s easy to follow! I would have cut back on some of the text, but they needed to include enough of the directions for people to be able to follow on their own.

The infographic isn’t currently part of the article page, and that seems like a major mistake. The infographic should be helping to drive traffic and links to the article page.

Thanks to David for sending in the link!

Infographic Holiday Cards 2012

This is a limited time offer!  

Funnel Incorporated is offering a FREE 4-pack of infographic holiday cards to everyone that submits a request (while supplies last) through a giveaway on Facebook.  You must request your free pack of cards through the Facebook page by Noon CT on Saturday December 22 (Tomorrow!).

U.S. and Canada only, but anyone can download the infographic holiday themed wallpaper designs from the Funnel website at http://www.funnelinc.com/holiday

Fire Code Regulations for Live Christmas Trees in Schools

Fire Code Regulations for Live Christmas Trees in Schools is an informational infographic from the team at Balsam Hill, an online retailer for artificial Christmas trees.  This design is meant to help school officials and purchasing agents all over the country, and not really intended for the general public online.

Setting up a real Christmas tree in a school requires detailed knowledge of a state’s Christmas tree fire code. School fire code regulations for real Christmas trees vary by city and state, and can be overwhelming to puzzle out due to a confusing and sometimes conflicting set of rules. The Balsam Hill Christmas Tree Company has compiled each state’s school fire code regulations for live trees into an infographic for schools and school districts to reference. Look through the infographic to help you decide whether or not an artificial Christmas tree may be a more practical alternative for your school this holiday season.

From a marketing perspective, this design succeeds tremendously.  The overall message is clear: “Regulations around live Christmas trees in schools are complicated.  An artificial tree would be much easier.”  Balsam Hill put together a ton of research (look at the number of sources!), and even though they were able to gather the state level regulations, many cities, counties and individual school districts have their own regulations that may be contradictory.  A number of major cities with different regulations than their state are highlighted, but that list is incomplete.  It only shows a few cities that have different regulations to let the reader know that state level fire codes aren’t the only regulations that schools have to follow.

The design does a good job of clarifying very complicated information, but that can only go so far.  The regulations are actually very complex, so this is still a very long design to thoroughly visualize the data.  Great job using visual design to help readers understand a very complex issue!

You can see additional designs that also cover the regulations for Hotels and Churches.

The New Christmas Tradition...Artificial Christmas Trees!

Wow!  Apparently the U.S. has completely converted over to artificial Christmas trees while no one was looking!  The Redefining Christmas Traditions infographic from Tree Classics is a summary of findings from two Nielsen studies in both 2011 and 2012 and information from the American Christmas Tree Association.

Every Christmas tradition begins somewhere, and those of us who follow Christmas tree trends know that more and more families are building their holiday traditions around artificial Christmas trees. Find out who’s buying artificial, where they live, and why more and more people are choosing artificial in our infographic of real vs fake artificial Christmas tree facts. If you’re thinking of starting a family tradition of your own, consider buying a Pre Lit Christmas Tree from Tree Classics and start making holiday memories that will last year after year!

The design does a great job of jumping to the main point right away.  A huge majority of homes in the U.S. use artificial Christmas trees for the holidays.  This is the Key Message of the design, and it communicates that fact in less than 5 seconds to the readers.  So even if they don’t read the rest of the design, they still understand the main point.  Also, what makes a popular infographic is bringing to light some surprising, unexpected information to the readers.

The shear magnitude of the number was surprising to me, and I think it will be to a lot of readers.  We see real live Christmas trees being the symbol of home and family traditions in the media, but the reality is that 3.5x more homes display artificial trees than live ones.

All of the important design elements are there.  Focused topic, clear data visualizations to support the Key Message, respectable sources cited, copyright statement and the URL to the original infographic so readers can find the full-size version.

Designed by InfoNewt with designer Jeremy Yingling

The Ultimate Guide to Secret Santa

The Ultimate Guide to Secret Santa is a fun design for Christmas from MoneySupermarket.com in the UK (so the currency amounts are in British Pounds).  This office traditional strikes fear into many employees that fear getting the gift wrong.

Oh, the joys of working in an office at Christmas time.  Festive decorations, the office party and of course the exchange of “Secret Santa” presents make corporate Yuletide a truly eventful experience. 

Secret Santa involves the anonymous exchange of cheap gifts at Christmas time, typically between office workers.  It is a fun test of your resourcefulness and innovation as you endeavour to buy a present that your colleague will either love, or will find ironically hilarious.  If you go for the humorous option however, it is important to ensure that your colleague will understand and appreciate the joke!

If you are struggling for inspiration this year, hopefully our Secret Santa infographic will provide some ideas.  If you’d rather not play this year and make some savings on your Christmas present budget, we still think you’ll enjoy what we’ve come up with…

The first thing you’ll notice about this design is that it’s an animated GIF file.  A flashback to 90’s web design, this has been pretty tastefully done to only animate the characters eyes to blink and the title text.  You don’t see this in infographic design very often, and I think it was very well done here.

Both a copyright statement and the URL to the original infographic landing page should have been included in the footer space.

Thanks to Paul for sending in the link!