UN Against Corruption infographic video

This UN Against Corruption infographic video is actually a highlights overview of a six-part video series from the UNCAC (UN Convention against Corruption) Coalition.  This video does a good job of showing how corruption impacts societies, escpecially in third world countries.  You can view the complete series at http://www.uncaccoalition.org/en/uncac-review/uncac-review-mechanism.html

Highlights of the six-part suite of 2D infographics videos commissioned by Transparency International in collaboration with UNODC. This video infographic uses animated typography and simple, iconic animated graphics and pictograms to explain the effects of corruption on society. It also incorporates a short segment of live-action video, embedded within the context of iconic elements. It provides a compelling and fast-paced tutorial for organisations and activists on how to bring pressure to bear on governments to more effectively fight corruption.

Credits:

• art direction: mariano leotta
• motion graphics: alessandra leone
• sound design: ex-directory
• sound mixing: enrico anicito guido
• voice over: tom tucker
• shooting: luca fuscaldi
• production: artereazione.org
• commission: transparency.org

The full six-part series is now available on YouTube:

Animated History of the iPhone

CNET UK brings us this infographic video, The Animated History of the iPhone.  I love this style of animated, infographic video, and they did a great job with this one.  Some of the data goes by quickly, but that just means you’ll have to watch it again.

What’s better than an infographic? A video infographic, that’s what. In anticipation of the announcement of the iPhone 5, currently tipped to be on 4 October, we’ve made a gorgeous animated video charting the history of the iPhone. (Editor’s note: this turned out to be the iPhone 4S, so have a look at our preview while you’re here)

We’ve divided the iPhone into its component parts and charted how the technological and design developments of the past few decades have influenced the look, feel and features of the different models so far. If you want to know what connects the Walkman to Tim Berners-Lee to the NeXTcube, you’ve come to the right place.

We’ve seen previous, popular videos in this design style (like the music video to Remind Me by Royksopp and the Little Red Riding Hood project).  In fact the brief image of the world map in the iPhone video looks like the same illustration as the Royksopp video.  It just highlights California instead of the UK.  If you’re going to be inspired by an infographic video, they picked one of my favorites.

Found posted on Facebook by Griffin Technologies.

Also now available on YouTube:

The Value of Data Visualization [video]

The Value of Data Visualization is a cool motion graphic used as an advertisement for infographic design services from our friends at Column Five Media.  The short video does a really good job of showing the viewer a few good examples of why visual information can be easier to comprehend.

They say knowledge is power, but how do we make knowledge powerful? The challenge of communicating information becomes especially difficult when trying to convey a message full of complex data, which is often difficult to interpret quickly and clearly to the naked eye. This motion graphic looks at some of the many visual techniques used by Column Five to communicate information effectively to a large audience.

 The video is now also available on YouTube:

US/China Trade Infographic [Making-of Video]

Back in 2009 Jess Bachman designed the Visualizing the US/China Trade infographic for Mint.com.  This design uses a sankey diagram visual that has line widths representing the relative size of all the country values.

Like it or not, the US and China have a trading relationship that has global repercussions. The plastic US flags that say Made in China don’t tell the whole story. No, not everything is made in China. In fact the US manufactures and exports almost as much as China but it consumes a great deal more. Hence, the trade imbalance. What’s interesting is exactly what the US imports, stuff like machinery and toys and as much steel and iron as it does shoes. And what we export — high-tech stuff like airplanes and medical equipment and, for some reason, 7 billion dollars worth of oleaginous fruit which is used to make cooking oil, presumably for Chinese food.

A cool infographic all by itself, but even better is that Jess captured screen shots every 10 seconds automatically using Snagit (a process he calls flowcapping), and recently put them together into a behind-the-scenes video and blog post showing his design process.  10-hours of design work, compressed down into a couple minutes.  View the high-resolution version if you can so you can actually read what’s on the screen.  This is the short version.

And the longer, 7-minute version let’s you see even more details behind his process.

Jess (ByJess.net) is best known for his annual Death & Taxes infographic poster of the U.S. Federal Budget, and recently joined the team at Visual.ly as Creative Director.  Great job Jess, and thanks for sharing your process with the world!

Our Choice: Interactive, Infographic iPad book

Our Choice, is a new ebook for the iPad and iPhone by Al Gore that includes many infographics and interactive data visualizations that the readers can interact with.  Intended to be the sequel to his book and presentations, An Inconvinient Truth, Our Choice brings a lot of the global warming data to life.

Mike Matas presented the book design in the TED Talk video above, and he’s the co-founder of Push Pop Press, a new digital publishing company. This is the first book from Push Pop Press, but they are working to make the software tools used to make this ebook app available to produce more ebooks.

Ignoring the message and any controversy this book will inspire, the use of data visuals in a ebook format like this is a sign of many more data visualizations to come.

Al Gore’s Our Choice will change the way we read books. And quite possibly change the world. In this interactive app, Al Gore surveys the causes of global warming and presents groundbreaking insights and solutions already under study and underway that can help stop the unfolding disaster of global warming.

Our Choice melds the vice president’s narrative with photography, interactive graphics, animations, and more than an hour of engrossing documentary footage. A new, groundbreaking interface allows you to experience that content seamlessly. Pick up and explore anything you see in the book; zoom out to the visual table of contents and quickly browse though the chapters; reach in and explore data-rich interactive graphics.

More than 30 original interactive infographics and animations

100% of Al Gore’s earnings from Our Choice will be donated to the nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection.

The app is $4.99 in the iTunes Store, and if you purchase through this link, Our Choice ebook, a small portion will go to helping maintain the Cool Infographics site.  You can also buy the printed book from Amazon.

Rhinos by the Numbers & infographic video

A cool infographic from Earth-Touch.com, Rhinos By The Numbers tells a good story about the plight of rhinos and their struggle against poachers in Africa.

Here in South Africa, we lost 333 rhinos to poaching in 2010. And things are not looking up this year. Five incidents of poaching were recorded in just the first ten days of 2011. If you’re in the dark about the poaching crisis, you’ll find some need-to-know facts in our slick infographic (click to enlarge).

This is organized very well, and tells a very clear story that progresses as the reader moves downs the graphic.

They also created a great animated video based on the infographic!

Thanks to Chris for sending in the link!

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus [video]

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus is a video that claims to be a “motion infographic.”  Created by Patrick Clair, it explores some of the information that has emerged as people have been dissecting the Stuxnet computer virus.

An infographic dissecting the nature and ramifications of Stuxnet, the first weapon made entirely out of code.

I really like the idea of motion infographics, but I disagree that moving text and animation make this an infographic.  There is a lot of information, but there aren’t any data visualizations.  There were a couple of animations that looked like data visualizations, but they’re vague and don’t convey any data to the viewer.

I really like the video, the topic of weaponized software is fascinating and the Security Now podcast #291 has a really good explanation of what has been publicly learned about the virus.

Question for everyone reading: “Does informative = infographic?”

Direction and Motion Graphics: Patrick Clair patrickclair.com
Written by: Scott Mitchell

Found on Visual News

The video is now also available on YouTube:

Artfully visualizing our humanity: Aaron Koblin's TEDTalk

In March 2011, Aaron Koblin, Creative Director of Google’s Data Arts team, gave a good TEDTalk presentation, Artfully Visualizing our Humanity, looking at a number of his visualization projects, and how visualizing data is becoming our interface to large datasets.

Artist Aaron Koblin takes vast amounts of data — and at times vast numbers of people — and weaves them into stunning visualizations. From elegant lines tracing airline flights to landscapes of cell phone data, from a Johnny Cash video assembled from crowd-sourced drawings to the “Wilderness Downtown” video that customizes for the user, his works brilliantly explore how modern technology can make us more human.

Found on FlowingData.com and Infosthetics.com

The video is now also available on YouTube:

Eat, Drink and Be Thrifty: #infographic video

New infographic video from Mint.com,  Eat, Drink and Be Thrify uses their data to visualize the statistics behind monthly spending habits.

So how does your spending on food and dining compare to that of your peers? Using aggregate and anonymized data on Food & Dining spending from Mint.com, we created the video above to highlight some of the most interesting trends we found in Mint’s data, from average transaction at a variety of coffee shops, grocery stores and fast food restaurants, to the time of year when Mint users spend the most — or the least — in those categories.

Designed by Column Five Media and Akorn Entertainment.

BT Financial Infographic Commercials

BT Financial Australia created a series of video commercials called The Bigger Picture using florescent light tubes to animate growth charts in the infographic ads.

I’m very impressed that the design group BT used, The Glue Society, went out looking for a visual way to convey the data that was interesting, but also created a unique look for BT.

They also published a cool Making-Of video looking behind the scenes at setting up the physical light structures and filming the ad spots.

Found on Information Aesthetics and Fast Company.