Evolution of the F1 Car: Video & Infographic

This is totally cool!  Here is an infographic animation created by Rufus Blacklock of his infographic Evolution of the F1 Car. You can find his original video on biplaneblues.blogspot.com.

All done :) here you can watch 60 years of F1 design condensed into a minute. Each car is the winning chassis from the respective seasons. The music is ‘Together’ by She.

 

Here is the original Evolution of the F1 Car infographic that the video was based off of. Found at biplaneblues.blogspot.com.

Woo finished! This map tracks the history of F1 cars across the circuit at Monza. Hopefully its clear enough… its my first infographic, let me know if you have any keen ideas to improve readability.

The cars are grouped into decades, around the track you can follow various innovations and driver aids, some which became banned. Top right is steering wheel development.

Olympic Swimming 2012: Faster, Better, Stronger

CREAX created this infographic for their June 2012 newsletter. Every day, they analyse tens of thousands of patents and look for clues of “the next breakthrough innovation” in all kinds of industries.  In their Olympic Swimming 2012: Faster, Better, Stronger infographic, they combined their knowledge of innovation with the upcoming olympics.  The infographic links the performances of swimmers with technology in swimming gear, pools and venues for the last 10 Olympics, and their predictions for the future.

At CREAX we are always fishing for the latest technological evolutions. Infected with Olympic fever, we wanted to investigate the link between technological evolutions and athletic performance. We had a closer look at swimming in the Olympic games since 1972. We took a deep dive into scientific literature, patents, Youtube movies and old school pictures of macho men in speedos and designed the Next Generation of Swim Equipment!

This design had a number of really cool data visualization styles that are nicely customized to the data they represent.  Just remember that the 2012 data is their suggestion, not the actual data from the current Olympics!

• I like that each visualization matches the timeline across the top for consistency, and the monument silhouettes are great for each location.
• The timeline of swimming pool lanes is great, as the overal width changed over the years.
• I liked the depth of the swimming pool as an inverted bar chart, but the small icons of Speedo swimsuits are totally unnecessary and detract from the data.
• Love the isotype hair styles
• I like actually seeing designs of the swim suit styles, and I guess the flags are for the gold medal winner for each Olympics?

Overall, a good design.  The text blocks are too small to be full-justified.  A copyright statement and the URL to the high-resolution original infographic should be included at the bottom.

Thanks to Frederik for sending in the link!

Kelly Slater: Greatest Athlete of All Time?

Kelly Slater: Greatest Athlete of All Time? is a design collaboration between InfoNewt (my company) and the design team at Quiksilver.

It is common knowledge among our tribe that June 20th is recognized as International Surfing Day so who better to celebrate then Kelly Slater, 11X ASP World Champion. In the spirit of ISD, we’ve created an Infographic comparing Slater to athletes from traditional sports who have made history and measured their achievements to our Champ’s. Have a look and decide for yourself if Slater truly is “The Greatest Athlete of All Time”.

Do you think Kelly Slater is “The Greatest Athlete of All Time”? If yes, share this with your friends and get ready for summer with a pair of Kelly’s Cypher Nomad Boardshorts.

Of course it’s difficult to compare athletes from different sports, but Kelly Slater’s surfing achievements are truly impressive.  Despite being both the youngest and the oldest to win the ASP World Champion title, holding three Guinness World Records, winning 11 Would Tour Championships and winning events in 11 different countries, Kelly Slater has never been on the cover of Sports Illustrated.  :(

Here are some of the design aspects that this infographic gets right:

• The key message is communicated within the first couple of seconds.  Even if a reader doesn’t read the whole infographic, they will leave understanding the key message.
• Visually appealling with vivid, colorful images, but still easy to read top-to-bottom.
• Intergrated the visual brand style of Quiksilver using photos, with the data visualizations about his career.
• Good mix of different data visualization styles that are unique to the data they communicate
• The key parts at the bottom are all there.  Data sources, brand logo, copyright statement and the URL to the original, full-size infographic.

The data for this design was the key challenge, and finding similar titles or awards in the other sports inspires discussion and debate among readers of the infographic.  Whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter or blog comments, this design draws in readers and invites everyone to share their own opinion.

Check out the full-size infographic HERE, and you can voice your own opinion about Kelly Slater in the comments below.

Thanks to the team at Quiksilver for being fantastic to work with!

The Trivi.al Side of Trivia

Here’s some trivia on trivia! The history of trivia is mapped out in a board game fasion in The Trivi.al Side of Trivia infographic from trivi.al. The game we love is now an app! 

We’re a few days away from releasing our app Trivi.al. It’s in the hands of Apple now and we wanted to share with you an Infographic that we put together on the history of trivia called “The Trivi.al Side of Trivia.”

It’s a fascinating industry with a lot of cool tidbits of knowledge we’ve throughly enjoyed learning about. And, this journey has led us to meet so really cool people from all over the world. We’ve talked with people from New York to London to Warsaw, Poland and many more in between. We’ve loved the journey so far and we hope it continues to grow as we introduce you to the app. Stay tuned and if you enjoy the infographic leave us a comment below. We’ll have some printed versions soon so if your interested let us know. Thanks

As a great way to promote thier new iOS app, Trivi.al created an infographic timeline history fo trivia that starts with taverns (places of ill repute) in Roman times and follows the trail throughout history leading up to their app launch.

Not much in the way of data visualizations, but the illustrations of celbrities, games and gameshows draw in the reader to see if they can recognize any of them.  Cool promotional infographic. 

Thanks to Joey for sending in the link!

Digital Technology in Your Car

Here is an infographic from Allianz called Digital Technology in Your Car that illustrates current technology in our cars to keep us safe and entertain us.

Digital technology has transformed and continues to transform every aspect of our lives. In the motor industry, technology developed throughout the years has enhanced our safety and comfort. The introduction of modern safety mechanisms such as lane departure warning and brake assist systems as well as iphone applications such as Driver Reviver and Car Butler has seen technology faithfully assisting drivers in times of need. With technology advancing and disseminating at a rapid rate, Global Positioning System units have already become a staple accessory in Australian cars.

There’s not much in the way of data visualizations in this one, but it does tell a good story about the history of new technology in your car, and what’s coming soon.  There’s too much text, but the use of icons and illustrations helps the story.  

I’m not sure what all the dead space at the bottom is.  Plenty of room for the copyright, company logo, URL to the original landing page and even a mention of the designer.

Bring on the self-driving cars!

Thanks to Sandra for sending in the link!

The History and Beginnings of Memorial Day

The History of Memorial Day does a good job of explaining the background history of the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S.  

Learn about how we celebrate memorial day and how it was formed in the United States.

We work hard to bring you insight to memorializing a loved one at In the Light Urns. Information provided through graphics can really help communicate the important points and we really enjoy using the infographic approach to discussing memorials. Visit our military urns page for more information on memorializing a veteran.

Nice, clean design that blends the use of data visualizations and icons to explain some of the history.  Some basic things are missing at the bottom of the design though: Company logo, copyright statement and the URL to the original landing page.  You can’t assume that people who share your infographic will also share additional information from your landing page.

Thanks to Susan for the link!

Hans Rosling TEDTalk: Religions and Babies

Another great TEDTalk from Hans Rosling called Religions and Babies about the growth of the world population.

Hans Rosling had a question: Do some religions have a higher birth rate than others — and how does this affect global population growth? Speaking at the TEDxSummit in Doha, Qatar, he graphs data over time and across religions. With his trademark humor and sharp insight, Hans reaches a surprising conclusion on world fertility rates.

In Hans Rosling’s hands, data sings. Global trends in health and economics come to vivid life. And the big picture of global development—with some surprisingly good news—snaps into sharp focus.

Wielding the datavis tool Gapminder, Professor Rosling is a master at using data visualization to tell his story.

The video is also avilable on YouTube for portable devices:

The Evolution of the Handgun

There have been literally thousands of different gun models, but The Evolution of the Handgun infographic from GunVault.com covers most of the major advancements in handgun design.

I really like the first two sections of this design, and I think the last section was unnecessary.  The timeline and the gun specifications sections do a good job of laying out the data and keeping it simple.  The barrel length and the calibers of each model work very nicely.  Since the # of Rounds data is quantitative, I would suggest visualizing that as a series of circles instead of a solid bar to better communicate quantity.  

The last section adds a lot of text, repeats the data from the second section and makes the overall infographic gratuitously long.  The flags showing the country of origin could easily have been added to the earlier sections.

Thanks to Archie for sending in the link!

The Eagle Scout Infographic

The Eagle Scout infographic is a new design from the Boy Scouts of America, and shows them experimenting with using infographics to share their message.  It’s odd that I can’t find any mention of it on Scouting.org, but found it posted on the Bryan On Scouting blog, which is the official blog from Scouting Magazine, and posted in the official BSA Twitter stream (@boyscouts).  There’s also a high-resolution PDF file available for download if anyone wants to print it out.

My son just bridged over to Boy Scouts from Cub Scouts, and their national office is here in the DFW area, so I was naturally interested.  This is a really good first attempt at an infographic design from their design team, but makes a few mistakes visualizing the data.

• Good use of the red, white and blue color scheme.  It’s clearly scouting, and specifically related to Eagle Scouts
• The data being presented is fantastic since only the BSA would have access to many of these statistics.
• I love the choices of imagery used.  The embroidered patches and icons used for the scouts keeps the design clean and easy to read.  Many BSA publications use a lot of full-color photos of the scouts, and that would have added too much visual noise to an infographic design.
• The BSA logo at the top clearly identifies this as an official publication, but it’s missing a title.  What should we call this infographic?  Why should I read this infographic?  Something like “100 Years of Eagle Scouts: By The Numbers” would have worked nicely.
• The information included will change over time since the data is a current snapshot of the state of Eagle Scouts.  2,151,024 Eagle Scouts as of what date?  The infographic should more clearly identify the date that the data is gathered from, because people will be looking at this for years on the Internet.
• Filling unusual shapes to show percentages is always a challenge.  With images like the hand icon and the globe you can’t just calculate the height of the colored area like a bar chart.  You have to calculate the AREA of the space to be colored, or you end up with false visualizations like these.
• The same is true for sizing shapes, like the people icons for the Average Age of Eagle Scouts visualization.  You have to size the overall AREA of the shapes to match the data being presented, which is hard with complex shapes.  You can’t just change the height.
• The space shuttle avoids this issue by only coloring a rectangular shape in the middle, turning it into a stacked bar chart, but the visualization doesn’t match the data.  The red colored section is visualizing more than 60 astronauts as Eagle Scouts, when the number shown is only 40.
• I love the Eagles by Decade data, but avoid 3D charts.  The 3D effect doesn’t add anything to the data being presented and it’s incosistent with the rest of the design.  The data tells a great story, and clearly shows that Boy Scouts continues to grow strongly and is a viable organization in the 21st century.
• I like this use of the word cloud for Notable Eagles, but don’t change the font sizes because in infographic design this is assumed to convey data.  With Brave and Loyal in larger fonts, it implies that these are more important than all of the other virtues.  The virtues should all be one, consistent font size, and the names should all be a second font size.
• At the bottom, there should be a copyright (or Creative Commons) statement, and a URL for readers to be able to find the original high-resolution version. 

Thanks to Dean for sending in the link!

Gov 2.0 Infographic: Bringing the Tobacco Control Act to Life

In 2011, Enspektos, a health marketing communications innovation consultancy, invited InfoNewt (my company) to be involved in a special project the firm was leading on behalf of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products (CTP).  As a new federal agency, the CTP is tasked with regulating tobacco products and preventing tobacco use – especially among youth.

During the project, we collaborated with the CTP to help create The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act: Facts, History and Milestones, an infographic timeline that covers the past and future actions related to the Tobacco Control Act passed in 2009.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (Tobacco Control Act) is an important piece of legislation with many requirements. This infographic illustrates the history, rationale and major events associated with the Act. The Tobacco Control Act provides all of the events, deadlines and requirements in full and should be used as the final resource for information about the Act.

The infographic is yet another example of Gov 2.0, or the effort to utilize a range of digital technologies to improve government transparency and public understanding of how federal agencies function.  The original Tobacco Control Act is a 68-page document available online, but in actual practice that isn’t easily accessible or understandable by the general public.  The FDA has created several tools to help the public understand the Tobacco Control Act, like a snapshot overview of the Act, an interactive scrolling timeline viewer, a searchable interface and the infographic timeline.

On Wednesday, April 25^th, the FDA is holding a LIVE webinar to share the different tools they have created to help everyone access and understand specific information from the 68-page law. 

Attend Our Live Webinar!

• Wednesday, April 25, 2012, 1 – 2 p.m. EST.
• Visit https://collaboration.fda.gov/tobaccocontrolact to login to the webinar. (turn up your speakers for audio).
• For audio, dial 1-888-989-6520; passcode: 2397828.

As you might expect from an official government publication, the design went through many iterations of review and revisions.  In my opinion, the final infographic is text-heavy, but strikes a balance between optimal design and content that was vetted and approved by many different individuals at the CTP. 

Fard Johnmar, Founder and President of Enspektos agreed to answer some questions about the project.

Cool Infographics: How do you think the infographic and other tools will aid public understanding of the Tobacco Control Act and the CTP? 

Fard Johnmar:  I think the infographic and other tools are an important step for the federal government.  Transforming dense and complicated legislation into simple, visually appealing information products is a very difficult process.  You have to balance the wish to make things clear and concise with a requirement that information be as accurate and complete as possible.  

We had two primary goals: The first was to improve the public’s understanding of the Tobacco Control Act.  The second was to get people within FDA comfortable with using new tools that help visually communicate important regulatory and public health information.  Now that this project is complete, I think FDA will be looking for other ways to communicate about its mission and activities in more visually appealing ways.

Cool Infographics: Do you see other health and medical organizations using visual communications techniques? 

Fard Johnmar: Absolutely.  In fact, since we published the Empowered E-Patient infographic a few years ago, I’ve seen a number of health organizations using infographics to communicate about a range of topics, including GE for its Healthymagination project (click here for a few sample infographics).

Cool Infographics:  How difficult was it to push the infographic through the FDA approval process

Fard Johnmar: As you can imagine, getting final approval for a novel visual project like this can be difficult for large organizations.  However, there was a real passion for the project from Sanjay Koyani, Senior Communications Advisor at the CTP and other members of his team.  They helped to successfully meet all of the legal requirements and answer the numerous questions posed by colleagues at the CTP.  Now there is a higher comfort level at the agency with utilizing these types of visual tools to tell the CTP story.

I truly appreciated being involved in the project, and think this is a really big step towards making the often overly complex information released through official government channels more understandable to more people.

Thanks to Enspektos and the team at the Center for Tobacco Products!