China's 60th Anniversary - Then and Now

From the October issue of Fast Company,

Don't get all worked up by the headline, Sinophiles. We're talking about the 60th birthday of the founding of the People's Republic, which Mao Zedong declared on October 1, 1949. Here's a look at China then and now.

Most people would have used a bar chart, but a little good design work makes this a compelling infographic.

Not easy to find the designer credit, but the infographic is from Nicholas Felton.

The History of Jack The Ripper (Infographic Poster)

Ryan Nussbaum is a recent graduate of the design program at Washington University in St. Louis, and he created this infographic poster mapping out the murders of Jack the Ripper.

In this exhibition panel, I mapped the possible escape routes of a chief suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders. Upon closer examination, one can see the different types of wounds and removed organs of each of the victims. The piece is meant to dispel the notion that the murders were random occurrences.

Psst…Ryan is looking for work in New York…I’m just saying.

Graphical History of the American Flag

 

 

A great infographic for America's Independence Day from Mike Wirth.  The graphical history of the American Flag shows a circular timeline of when changes were made over the years and when stars were added.  I love additional information Mike included like the official folding pattern and the state each star represents by showing them chronologically.  Makes a great poster!

The Story (so far) of Twitter

Graphic designed for Manolith.com, by infoshot.  It’s a reverse timeline of Twitter.

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Seems every where you turn these days that little blue bird is staring you right in the face. But how did it all start? Where is it all going? Who’s to say really, except you I suppose, in 140 character bursts. In the meantime let’s take a look back on some milestones of microblogging.  Please do enjoy, The Story (so far) of Twitter. Start at the bottom and work your way up on this one.

Of course, I found this on Twitter!

The Evolution of the Modern Skateboard

From The Odeus Skate Blog comes this timeline infographic showing the history of skateboard design.  I got my first skateboard in the 70's, so it already had the kicktail, but it was still really narrow.

 

The History of Beer infographic

The History of Beer was published on Manolith.com.  I like the twist on a timeline infographic.  First, it's vertical instead of horizontal.  Then, it's actually four timelines in one highlighting different events in Science, Religion, Literature and Facts using the four colored tracks.

Design and layout by 600 Series Design, illustrations by Dan Zettwoch.

Check out some of the original sketches and story on Dan's blog.

The Browser Wars Infographic

Great timeline infographic depicting the rise and fall of different browsers portrayed as knights marching across a field.  The data set used is available here.

It took me a while to find any information about the author, but I found this description on the Wired.com blog.

Here's a creative look at the history of the browser wars from 2002 through mid-2008. The infographic was submitted to Reddit by a user named BovingdonBug. He says he created it as part of an application for a graphic design job on a newspaper.

 Thanks Alwyn for the link!

Mapping the Growth of Target

Nathan Yau over on FlowingData.com has done a great job creating an animated map showing the growth of Target stores across the U.S.

Well, fortune was smiling on me last week, and I got a hold of data for Target opening dates and locations (thnx, Cole). So here it is - a map that shows the growth of Target from 1962 through 2008.

Nathan has promised to combine the data from this map with his previous work mapping The Growth of WalMart, into one map where you can see the differences.  So we'll keep our eyes out for that.

The Best Beer in America

Mike Wirth, The Beer Geek, created this map of award winning beers using 20 years of data of the Great American Beer Festival medal winners from 1987-2007. Originally created for the Lyke 2 Drink blog, it also shows the breweries with the most medals and the specific beers with the most awards.

Great work Mike!

UPDATE: Mike has put up an updated version of the Best Beer in America map.

The Ultimate Mammal Family Tree

This is very cool.  Going back 166 million years to see each of the branches where we share common mammalian ancestors.  The PDF is available for download, and is very detailed.  You need to zoom a long way to even see that there is text naming each of the known mammals in existence today.  It's a radial family tree that also represents a timeline as you move outwards from the center.  Here we are:

 

 

ABC TV in Australia did a short video on the family tree hosted by Dr. Paul Willis, and he literally walks around the infographic describing different parts.  Well done, and seemed very reminiscent of Carl Sagan in some of his shows.  The video credits Robin Beck, a Mammalian Systematist as the University of NSW, of creating the family tree.  Here's the link to the ABC page where you can watch the video, or you can click on the image below.

Thanks for the link Alwyn!  Great find!