How 5 Tech Giants Make Their Billions

How 5 Tech Giants Make Their Billions is a good doughnut-style data visualization design from Visual Capitalist.

These five tech companies are the most valuable stocks in the U.S. market, worth a collective $2.9 trillion in market capitalization. In 2016, these companies combine for $555 billion in revenue, and a $94 billion bottom line.

Each of these companies is pretty unique in how they generate revenue, though there is some overlap:

• Facebook and Alphabet each make the vast majority of their revenues from advertising (97% and 88%, respectively)
• Apple makes 63% of their revenue from the iPhone, and another 21% coming from the iPad and Mac lines
• Amazon makes 90% from its “Product” and “Media” categories, and 9% from AWS
• Microsoft is diverse: Office (28%), servers (22%), Xbox (11%), Windows (9%), ads (7%), Surface (5%), and other (18%)

The doughnuts are simple and easy to read with match brand colors and a minimal number of slices. I always prefer that pie charts and doughtnut charts consistently start at the top, but these are aligned with the callouts to the right. I also prefer the slices to be sequenced in descending order.

One potential issue is that the doughtnut charts are all the same diameter, which can visually imply that all of these companies are similar in size. I know the market capitalization, revenue and earning are shown in bars to the left, but they're much smaller. I think it would work better if the doughnut charts were actually sized to match each company's revenue number.

Shutterstock's Global Design Trends 2014

Shutterstock’s Global Design Trends 2014 infographics is essentially a visual press release.  Based on their own internal web stats from their users, they are sharing the most popular image searches and trends from 2013.  And of course is should be shared visually!

One of our favorite annual traditions at Shutterstock is sharing our hard-earned design-trend data with the world. For this, our third annual infographic, we used data from our 350 million all-time downloads to explore recent and emerging trends from around the globe.

Check out the infographic below, then scroll on to view a lightbox featuring images showcased in the design, get the code to embed the infographic on your site, and share your own thoughts and insights in the comments.

Searches for infographic design elements in 2013 were up 332% compared to 2012!

Many infographics include data sources, but this one is based on their own internal data!  As a alternative, I love that they include clickable links to all of the stock photos, vectors and videos included in the design on the infographic landing page.  However, it would have been helpful to readers for the infographic to include the longer URL directly to that landing page on the Shutterstock blog, instead of just the front page.  Readers that make it that far, then have to search for the specific blog post to find the links and the original infographic.  Today, it’s the most current post and easy to find, but after a few more blog posts it will be much harder to find.

Thanks to Danny for sending in the link!

PepsiCo Q2 2013 Performance Infographics

PepsiCo has begun to publish an official infographic along with each of their quarterly earnings reports to investors and analysts.  The PepsiCo Q2 2013 Performance infographic was just released online to coincide with the press release and earning call to analysts.

I love seeing infographics used in this way, and I think we will be seeing many more of them from other companies.  Visualizaing the financial data can make the complex filings much easier for investors to understand.

As much as I love this idea, this particular design needs help visualizing the data.  Big fonts are not data visualizations, and many of the financial stististics presented were shown in text only.  It takes a data visualization to put the values into perspective for the audience, and make them easier to understand.

This is the second infographic in the series.  It appears that each one will be released with a unique website dedicated to hosting the infographic.  This on can be found at: www.pepsicoinfographicq2.com, and a PDF version is also available to download from the site.  You can find the infographic from the prior qurter here: www.pepsicoinfographicq1.com.  The infographics were also published on the PepsiCo Multimedia Downloads section of the Media page.

Thanks to Chris Hoyt for posting on Google+

Client: Avoid the Dip from IPO Lockups

Avoid the Dip: The Effect of Lockup on Stock Price is a new infographic InfoNewt designed for Wealthfront.

A flood tide of shares is hitting the market in May and June, as a number of the high-profile tech IPOs from the fall emerge from lockup periods, including Jive Software (JIVE), Zynga (ZNGA) and Angie’s List (ANGI).

If you’re one of the employees of the 28 companies whose lockups are expiring in May or June, you’re wondering how to diversify your portfolio and when to sell.

Here’s our research on the question of what to do in the days immediately following the lockup expiration, presented visually to help you see the dip that typically follows the end of the lockup.*

As valuable financial information to many employees of the tech companies going IPO this year, Wealthfront looked back at 254 prior technology company IPOs to chart “The Dip” that consistently have a price dip the first day after the Lockup ends.

Don’t understand what a Lockup is?  That’s explained in the infographic as well.

Thanks to the team at Wealthfront!

What is a Stock?

What is a Stock? from Mint.com explains what stock ownership is.  It’s informative to the readers (a little text heavy), and doesn’t come across like an ad.

To make investment choices that ultimately pay off, you need to start by knowing the fundamentals. It’s a step many investor wannabes skip, since… well, studying the basic terms and trends is not exactly entertaining. We thought one way of helping you get a jumpstart on your basic investing terminology is a series of infographics that explain, visually, basic concepts. First up: what is a stock?

This is a good example of what I call the Online Lifespan of an infographic.  Instead of an infographic about a recent news topic, this one covers an informational topic that doesn’t change or drop out of the news cycle.  It’s more than a year old, but the information is still relevant, and continues to drive traffic for Mint.  This design probably has an Online Lifespan for 4-5 years before the Dow Jones chart at the bottom makes the whole infographic feel dated.

What’s the line chart in the middle?  It’s a timeline, but the height of the line chart has no meaning whatsoever.  This should have shown some type of information, but instead is just confusing to the reader.

Thanks to Dawn for sending in the link!

The World Without Apple

The World Without Apple, from Infographic Labs is a great design.  The main feature combines the history of Apple’s products in a timeline with its stock prices and new product introduction prices.  Also included are some statistics about the app store and all of the different aspects to Apple’s business.

The AppleGazette team asked us to analyse the complete product timeline and stock value of the Cupertino based company. The result is another stunning graphic, first published at AppleGazette.