How Star Wars Changed the World

The original Star Wars has certainly gone on to produce more than just sequels.  It has created the people and the technologies that are now considered the best in the industry.  Michelle Devereaux created this family tree for Wired magazine back in 2005 and I love how the line colors indicate people, technologies and company connections, but the tree is organized into movies, sound, effects and technologies.

I actually believe the tree is incomplete.  I think Star Wars had far greater reach and influence that what Michelle mapped out here.

It all started with a band of rebels who wanted to help a farmboy follow his dream.  Three decades later, the Star Wars empire has grown into one of the most fertile incubators of talent in the worlds of movies (Lucasfilm), visual effects (Industrial Light & Magic), sound (Skywalker Sound), and videogames (LucasArts).  Along the way, some of the original Lucas crew has gone on to become his biggest competitors.  This chart maps the people, companies and technologies touched by the Force. - Michelle Devereaux

Thanks Alwyn!

Seasonal Visual Timelines

 

Roberto Rovira, and assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Florida International University's, School of Architecture, was kind enough to allow me to share some of his work with the readers of Cool Infographics.

 

Working as a consultant, these seasonal timelines were developed to show the activities and the plants used in a proposal for a project he led called "Envisioning Hudson Square" on the Hudson River near Manhattan, NY.

 

The first one shows the time of year that different activities would be active in this green area during the year like bicycling, bird watching and ice skating.  It also shows the different wildlife that would be present during the year like blue heron, striped bass and snowy egrets. Using the visual timeline you can see how the different activities overlap and that there would always be some type of activity during the year.

 

The second timeline from the same project show the proposed plant and trees to be used in the project, and with the use of the visual timeline shows their color and appearance throughout the year.

 

Graphics by Roberto Rovira, RLA, with assistance from landscape designer Kelly Woodward. Roberto is Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at Florida International University (www.fiu.edu/~soa) and Senior Landscape Architect consultant for ArquitectonicaGEO (www.arquitectonicageo.com), a Miami-based landscape and planning firm. He led GEO's design team and developed the concepts for 'Hudson Square Prints Green!', a proposal for a 30-block New York City district on Manhattan's West Side, adjacent to the Hudson River.

It's the Economy, Stupid!

Great timeline from GOOD Magazine (via picdit.com).

What most of the doom-and-gloom reports on our economy don’t provide is perspective—a historical survey of an economy that’s been through more than a few ups and downs in its day. Here’s a farsighted view of how our temperamental economic machine works, and a close-up of how it stands today.

Thanks Adam!

Air Traffic Worldwide movie

Very similar to the Flight Patterns video I posted back in October 2007, this is a video showing all commercial flight in the world over a 24-hour period.  The previous video was only the U.S., but this one shows the entire world.  It also shows the day/night areas and you can see the increase in air traffic as dawn rises around the world.  Its from the Zhaw School of Engineering in Zurich.

Found via FlowingData.com

Savings Mis-Trust video

Our friends over at XPLANE have done a fabulous video explaining what led up to the recent credit crisis in the U.S. economy.  A great job simplifying a complex problem.

Thanks Parker, and great job to your team!

Watercube, The Book

Watercube, is a new book by Ethel Baraona Pohl.  The book is about the National Aquatics Centre built in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics, and has some cool infographics inside.  Some of the graphics were contributed by architect César Reyes Nájera.  A review of the book can be found here on www.v2com.biz

WATERCUBE: The Book is a complete monographic publication about the National Swimming Center for the Beijing Olympics 2008. With an exhaustive description about the Watercube we present a detailed study of the project. The book makes an holistic approach to the project that starts with a brief description of urban and social changes that China has been experienced in the last decade. These facts have encouraged the construction boom that made possible these kind of projects occur in cities like Beijing.

 

This page compared the amount of steel used to built the Watercube to some of the most well known buildings around the world.

This page shows a comparison to the same set of buildings around the world, but shows the tons of CO2 produced due to the steel used in their construction.

This page is one of the years of the timeline leading up to the construction of the Watercube.

Here you can buy Watercube, by Ethel Baraona Pohl, on Amazon.com.

Special thanks to Ethel for sharing the images from her book, and allowing me to post them on Cool Infographics!

The Age of Pop

From verysmallarray.com, the Age of Pop visualizes the #1 songs every week from 1960-1969.  You can see that Pop ruled the decade.  Check out their home page to see how other decades sounded.

Olympic Wrap-Up

To complete the week of Olympic Infographics from the NYTimes.com, they have created a page to summarize all of the infographics they created.  They've been adding to it every day, so it won't actually be complete until the Olympics are over.

Beijing Air Quality Index

NYTimes.com is also tracking the Air Quality Index by day during the Olympics using a heatmap style graphic.  There's definitely more pollution and particles in the air than most of the participants are used to.  So far, there have been a couple of days in the 90's, but didn't cross over 100 into the "unhealthy" range.

Olympics Schedule Tracker

The Olympics Tracker is an interactive schedule of the events.  It now only shows which events are scheduled each day and hour, but you can drag them to rearrange your favorites to the top.  Clicking on past events shows the results, and clicking on future events shows the upcoming event details.  Medal awarding events marked with a small medal icon.  You can even download a desktop version for Mac or Windows.