Exoplanets is a great infographic that tells one story really well by focusing on one data visualization for the whole story. Randall Munroe at xkcd.com occasionally mixes in some great data visualizations and infographic designs with his comics.
All 786 known planets (as of June 2012) to scale (some planet sizes estimated based on mass).
[Our solar system planets are shown in the middle]
The rest of these orbit other stars and were only discovered recently. Most of them are huge because those are the kind we learned to detect first, but now we’re finding that small ones are actually more common. We know nothing about what’s on any of them. With better telescopes, that would change. This is an exciting time.
This visual is so powerful. You could write in text that we have found 786 extra-solar planet, but the visual helps the reader wrap their head around the scale of that large number and adds the size of the planets as a second level of information.
It’s also a clean design that focuses on communicating the scale of how many planets we have found, and doesn’t try to add all of the other information we know like which stars they orbit, what are their names, when were they discovered, which telescope found them, and who was the team or individual that discovered each one. Just because we have more information doesn’t mean it should all be included in the infographic. The story is cleaner and easier to understand without the clutter of too much information.
Another great infographic from Randall Munroe’s xkcd online comic. Lakes & Oceans visualizes the various depths of the worlds water, and even includes…a mysterious door that James Cameron built his deep-sea submersible to reach at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and open?
The Tea and Biscuit infographic fromGreen Hat Design in the UK shows avid dunkers of biscuits the proper timing to keep their favorite snacks in the tea or coffee to conquer floppage and avoid the disappointment of contamination! Also available as a high-resolution PDF.
This biscuit infographic is based on 8 of our favourite UK brands which helps us (and others) to get the best out of his (or her) biccy when dunking it in hot tea or coffee, while at the same time assisting the user to avoid… floppage. That unfortunate moment that the biscuit suddenly gives way and contaminates your beverage. Nasty. We feel many could actually benefit from such details. I know it has changed my life.
This one is a fun topic. Apparently the biscuits in the UK are so hard you have to dunk them to eat them… :)
The radial design works well to show three values for each biscuit, and is easy for the reader to compare them. The illustrations work well, even though readers in the U.S. (myself included) won’t recognize any of the biscuits.
A couple things are missing from a Marketing Infographic design perspective. It needs a title! I made up the “Tea & Biscuit Dunking Guide” because it didn’t have a good title of its own. There should be some type of license statement, and in this case I would suggest Creative Commons.
The PDF file is hosted on the Green Hat Design site, but the infographic isn’t displayed anywhere. t’sI hard to share a PDF compared to how easy it is to share an image file online. It REALLY needs it’s own official landing page on the Green Hat Design site to display the infographic, and be the one place you want everyone else (like this blog) to link to. They had uploaded it to visual.ly, and I linked to it there, but that shouldn’t be the primary landing page if they want to drive traffic to their site and awareness to their brand.
Santa’s been throwing ’em back for a few centuries and has zipped around the world a thousand times, which has been plenty of time to pick up some wicked Christmas cocktail recipes. In this infographic from Treetopia are some of his favorite mixed drinks he’s collected from around the globe - complete with easy-to-follow mixing instructions. More than just your father’s traditional eggnog recipe!
Whether you have family coming to your house, or you’re going to visit family, you will probably have the opportunity to try one of these recipes out in the next couple of weeks. Although, some of these recipes are a little more complicated than just mix & serve.
I love the color-coded pie charts to show the main ingredient proportions, especially the peppermint swirls in Candy Cane Eggnog. The cocktail glass illustrations can be misleading though, since the eggnog recipe actually makes almost a gallon of nog. What a fun idea for a Christmas infographic!
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.”
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.
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.
The new 2012 Death & Taxes poster has been released, and this year it’s better than ever. Designed by Jess Bachman (ByJess.net) this poster visualizes the 2012 proposed U.S. Federal Budget. The Death & Taxes poster is one of the best infographics I’ve ever seen, and it gets better every year.
“Death and Taxes” is a large representational graph and poster of the federal budget. It contains over 500 programs and departments and almost every program that receives over 200 million dollars annually. The data is straight from the president’s 2012 budget request and will be debated, amended, and approved by Congress to begin the fiscal year. All of the item circles are proportional in size to their funding levels for visual comparison and the percentage change from both 2012 and 2002 is included so you can spot trends.
PURCHASE: This year, Jess also had the opportunity to partner with Seth Godin and his Domino Project to make the full-size 24” x 36” poster available for purchase through Amazon. Currently, you can purchase a copy of the poster for $19.99. Also, check out Jess’s video introduction on the Amazon page.
POSTER GIVEAWAY: Cool Infographics is giving away one FREE copy of the poster. The free poster will go to one randomly chosen person that tweets a link to this blog post on Twitter and includes the hashtag: #deathandtaxes. I included the hashtag in the post title, so any retweets will be automatically eligible. NOTE: you must also be following me on Twitter (@rtkrum) so that I can send you a direct message if you have won!
I will choose the winner at 12 noon (Central Time) on Friday, November 11, 2011 (11/11/11). I will contact the winner, and order the poster from Amazon to be delivered to the winner.
INTERVIEW: Similar to last year, Jess was willing to answer some behind-the-scenes questions about this year’s poster:
Cool Infographics: What’s the most interesting thing you learned from the 2012 data?
Jess Bachman: Lots of reductions in the military side. It’s mostly from the OCO war funding, but its interesting to see what actually is getting cut the most. Mostly Army funding and RDT&E across the board. I would think the OCO was mostly Operations and Procurement.
Cool Infographics: Has you design process changed at all this year? What software did you use to help dig through the data and create the design?
Jess Bachman: Well this year I tried to work exclusively within the official spreadsheets, rather than pick out the numbers from the paper (PDF) budget. I think it’s more accurate and easier to get totals. Mainly just used excel and photoshop as always.
Cool Infographics: When did the 2012 data become available, and how long did it take you create this year’s poster?
Jess Bachman: It was supposed to be released in February but it was a month late. I started moving on it at a full clip then got involved with Amazon/Godin and the timelines shifted quite a bit, so while I usually get the post out in April, it was released in September this year.
Cool Infographics: How did working with Seth Godin and the Domino project come about?
Jess Bachman: Seth just emailed me out of the blue. We talked and it seemed like a no-brainer.
Cool Infographics: How does working with Amazon and the Domino project change how you print and distribute the poster?
Jess Bachman: Well previously my Mom did most of the shipper and I also had a 3rd party do fulfillment and shipping. It’s a rather time consuming and frustrating process. Sending out orders, doing customer support, paying vendors, etc. Now it’s all in Amazon’s hands. They got it printed and of course are warehousing and shipping it too. I’m quite glad as they do a much better job of shipping than I do. Of course they also take their cut of the profits. As for Domino, they have their own distribution channels and lists and also work closely with Amazon to make sure the product page is well presented too. This year it reached #18 on the best sellers list. I guess that makes me a best selling author. I don’t think I could have accomplished that without Domino/Amazon.
Cool Infographics: I see you made a video to include on the Amazon page, how was that experience?
Jess Bachman: Seth told me they needed a video ASAP so I just made one that afternoon. I suppose I would put more effort into it next year but videos help sell products and i think it does a good job of that.
Cool Infographics: Any new design features added to the poster this year?
Jess Bachman: I wanted to include some non-governmental items in the poster this year for reference. They are in the bottom left and include things like the size of the video game industry, bill gate’s net worth and other such things. When talking about billions of dollars all the time, sometimes you need to get out of government-mode to put those figures into further context.
Cool Infographics: The past posters have been shared very heavily in social media, which social sharing sites have you found most successful?
Jess Bachman: Well, Digg has traditionally been a big asset, but then Digg fell apart so I no longer pay attention to it. In general, I have abandoned the traditional accelerants like Digg, reddit, etc. and instead focus on my network of bloggers and influencers. Combine that with Facebook liking and you can really spread something.
Cool Infographics: Last year we talked about some favorite places that have the poster on display. Any new ones this year?
Jess Bachman: Well, with a larger audience and hopefully more sales, the poster will be everywhere. Unfortunately, I get lots of requests for discounts for schools with tight budgets, but I have no control over price anymore. I can say that an iOS app is in development so that will be interesting. My ultimate goal is to get on the Daily Show to talk about the poster in April. People constantly tell me I need to be on there, and I’m a huge fan, so I figure I have a good shot, just need to nag the right people.
The United States Oil Consumption infographic from the Christensen Law Firm looks at the massive amounts of oil we use in this country. Where does it come from? How do we use it? How does the U.S. compare to the rest of the world?
Have you ever asked yourself how much you actually know about the oil you use? Many politicians and media outlets discuss U.S. oil consumption as if the average American understands what the reality of U.S. oil habits are and the extent of our dependence on foreign oil sources. U.S. Oil Usage is an attempt to educate the average person about where U.S. oil comes from, how it is being used and how U.S. consumption compares with that of other major oil consumers. The information is both shocking and concerning!
I think the first doughnut chart that breaks down the imports by country, should have included the domestic oil as well to put the imports into proper context. We don’t get 21% of our oil from Canada, we get 21% of our imported oil from Canada. That’s a difference that could be misinterpreted by the reader.
Personally, I thought more of the oil was used by the airline industry, but automotive is completely dominant.
The U.S. Debt Visualized is a great visualization of scale, and can be found at usdebt.kleptocracy.us, where you start with a single $100 bill, and start stacking them in orders of magnitude. Stack them on pallets, start stacking the pallets and show them in comparison to other real-world items.
$114,500,000,000,000. - US unfunded liabilities To the right you can see the pillar of cold hard $100 bills that dwarfs the WTC & Empire State Building - both at one point world’s tallest buildings. If you look carefully you can see the Statue of Liberty.
Numbers this large become too big to truly comprehend to many people, and I love visualizations like this one that put the unbelievable high numbers into context and scale. Here’s one trillion dollars:
A visualization like this has a natural bias. Whatever object the designer chooses to show in relation to the stack of bills can make the pile appear large or small in comparison. In this example, the piles of money are truly staggering, but that’s all the reader can walk away with. In it’s defense, this visualization isn’t trying to propose a solution, it’s just trying to make the viewer understand how big the number is.
Randy
