Australian Tourism Infographic

Who doesn’t dream about going to the land down under? So if your curious about who is coming or going in Australia, planning a mini-vacation, or perhaps a permanent vacation, the Australian Tourism infographic from WeWish has the information for you!

The only thing we like more than being on holiday is planning a holiday! Find out where everyone is heading this year. This infographic shows people moving in and out of Australia. It also shows the top destinations to visit when down under.

I love how clean this design is!  The information in sequence from top-to-bottom tells a good story about tourism in Australia.  However, a couple of the data visualizations are a bit hard to understand:

• In section 1, the percentage share of global arrivals is the red circle for each country, and theoretically these are all portions of a whole 100%.  It’s very hard for the viewer to compare the sizes of the circles between countries.  The nested circles visualization style shown for each country is a visualization really intended to compare those particular circles among themselves.
• In section 3, the green arcs visualize the percentage change from 2009 to 2010, but an arc visualization is intended to show a portion of 100% like a pie chart.  None of these specific values exceeded 100%, but that type of data could have and the visualization would have broken down because it’s not appropriate for this type of data.  You could have a 200% increase from the prior year.

A couple things missing from the bottom of the design.  The URL to the original infographic posting, and a copyright statement.

Thanks to Stefan for sending in the link!

Hand Jive: Gestures That Can Get You in Trouble Abroad

The Hand Jive-Hand Gestures Infographic from Pimsleur Approach takes you on a world tour of what common hand gestures from America mean elsewhere (for better or worse).

Nearly everyone all over the globe know that flashing the middle finger is meant as a huge insult to the recipient. However, many common hand gestures which are perfectly innocent in the US are in fact quite dangerous in other parts of the world!

This is a great topic for an infographic because it’s so visual.  You have to show the actual gestures as illustrations in order to communicate effectively with the reader.  The pins in the globes are easy to read, and a refreshing visual that’s different from the standard flags on a map.

Simple message, focused topic, easy to understand.  Good design.  For an infographic, the URL at the bottom should link you directly to the original infographic posting instead of the company front page, and some type of coyright statement is missing.

Thanks to Sarah for sending in the link!

Shutterstock Global Design Trends 2011

The Global Design Trends 2011 infographic from Shutterstock shares some of the image usage data that only they have due to the nature of their business.

After 8 years, 17 million images and over 200 million downloads, Shutterstock has become one of the world’s leading marketplaces for visual media. We have artists and photographers from more than 100 countries, and customers in more than 150. But perhaps most significant about these milestones is that it has led to tens of thousands of image searches each day – giving us valuable insight into design trends around the world.

From vintage-themed photographs, to vibrant vector graphics, here’s an infographic detailing what visual stories were told over the last year.

I love that Shutterstock has some unique data internally that they are analyzing in aggregate and now sharing with the world.  It’s not complicated, but I love that they actually included some of the most downloaded images in the design.  They are showing the reader what was popular instead of just telling the reader about it.  My favorite section is the Evolving Visual Vocabulary showing how the meaning of the image keywords is changing over time.

They made a couple unusual publishing choices.  The image posted on the blog is 714px wide (an odd number) so the small text is blurry and pixelated.  I don’t think they have enough detailed data in this design for a zooming viewer, but if you click on the image from their blog post, it takes you to the full 3,300 pixel wide image loaded into Zoom.it.  They also link to the high-resolution JPG image file, and (a great idea!) a lightbox on Shutterstock that includes all of the images highlighted in the infographic.

A handful of statistics are just listed in text instead of visualized like they should be: 150 countries, 16 million downloads, 6 million downloads, 5 million downloads, etc.

A couple standard things missing that a lot of designers seem to consistently miss: a copyright statement, the URL for readers to find the original infographic landing page (the specific blog post on Shutterstock in this case), and a credit mention for the designer (Shutterstock is all about designers!).  I hope the team at Shutterstock paid the license fes for using these images in their infographic design!  No need for a Sources statement, since all of the data comes from their own site server data.

Thanks to Aaron for sending in the link!

Infographic Events Calendar 2011-2012

Outstanding calendar-map infographic from Infographer.ru, a Russian infographics site and design agency in Moscow (view in English).  The Infographic Events Calendar 2011-2012 shows many (but not all) visualization, data and infographic conferences and events around the globe.

For everyone who is interested in information design we prepared the events calendar. We found over 44 conferences and workshops, dedicated to infographics and visualization topic all over the world.

The idea to make this kind of ‘map-calendar’ of events appeared in our mind a long time ago, we started to collect data in 2011 and suddenly 2012 started. So we decided to combine both years and show the history for 2011 and actual events for 2012, which you can use for your personal planning.

They collected over 40 conferences and workshops dedicated to information visualization for last year and the upcoming schedule for 2012.  The calendar-map color codes the events by month and obviously connects them to the correct location on the world map.

If you know any corrections or additions to the event included, please post them in the comments!  I know they will be reading them, and would welcome all feedback.  Here are a few events I think they should add to their list:

• South by Southwest Interactive, Austin, TX, March 9-13, 2012
• TDWI World Conference (Tableau), Las Vegas, NV, February 13-15, 2012
• Big Data 2012, Paris, France,  March 20-21, 2012

I like the text of the city name included in the connecting lines, and the months with no events are gray so they don’t add to the visual noise of the bright colors.  Somewhere on the design they should have included the URL for people to find their original posting.  When this get shared online, readers will have a hard time finding the original site.

Infographer also posted some behind-the-scenes information about the development of the design.  Check out their early drafts in the complete blog post.

Thanks to Irina for sending in the link and posting the English translation of the development process!

Turks & Caicos: Your Personal Tropical Escape Awaits

A beautiful design, Turks & Caicos: Your Personal Tropical Escape Awaits shares information for potential tourists.  Designed by Digital Surgeons for Tranquility Vacations.

The “Your Turks and Caicos Escape” pulls together top attractions and things to do in the Turks and Caicos from our client Tranquility Vacations. The Providenciales based business manages private Turks and Caicos villas and sets guests up with perks like vacation concierge services and the good advice that comes from being longtime island locals. The infographic conveys a calm, sultry feel designed to entice, combined with facts and cool tips for fun in Turks and Caicos.

The colors and images convey a great sense of calm beaches and a carefree vacation experience.  I am left wondering where these islands are, and a globe showing the islands would have been helpful. 

Thanks to Peter for sending in the link!

Unlocking the Mystery of Humpback Whales

Unlocking the Mystery of Humpback Whales is a cool new infographic from MauiWhaleWatchTours.com that shows the reader a handful of easy-to-understand facts about the humpback whales.  The design is clear and stays focused on a narrow topic.  Very informative design.

The Humpback Whale infographic above was built to show some of the annual migration routes across the globe, the most common surface behaviors and the least common (in our experience), names of anatomical parts of a humpback whale, length and weight of a typical humpback whale, tips on whale watching, and some mysteries that have yet to be solved. We hope you like it! ALOHA!

Thanks to Chris for sending in the link!

The Money Chart

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.

You can view it through the online, zoomable viewer OR get the super high-resolution image file!  The 36”x24” printed poster version will be available starting in December for $15.00.

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.

Found on Infosthetics, ChartPorn and FlowingData

Global Hotel Price Changes

A new infographic from Hotels.com showing some of the Global Hotel Price Changes from 2010 to 2011.

The research revealed that:

• New York was the favourite travel destination for UK travellers in the first six months of the year despite the average hotel price in the city hitting £160, according to the latest Hotels.com Hotel Price Index™ (HPI®).
• The 6% rise followed strong demand from domestic travellers and a surge of overseas visitors cashing in on the appreciation of their currencies against the US Dollar.
• The Big Apple was one of six US cities in the top 20 list with Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orlando and Miami also featuring as the Pound held its own.

I like the design experiment with the Polar Area Diagram (Nightingale Rose Diagram), but the colored sections relating to two different axis are a little hard to understand.  I really like the monument silouettes for each destination.  Very similar to an earlier design InfoNewt did for them about the Hotel Price Index.

The infographic is missing some form of copyright license and the URL to make it easier to find the original infographic.

Thanks to Sarah for sending in the link!

How Did We Get to 7 Billion People So Fast?

I love the cool infographic video from NPR.  7 Billion: How Did We Get So Big So Fast? is a video that uses colored liquids to visualize the population rates of the differen continents.  High birth rates mean fast liquid pouring in, slower death rates slow down the liquid dripping out of the bottom.

The U.N. estimates that the world’s population will pass the 7 billion mark on Monday. [Oct 31st]

As NPR’s Adam Cole reports, it was just over two centuries ago that the global population was 1 billion — in 1804. But better medicine and improved agriculture resulted in higher life expectancy for children, dramatically increasing the world population.

Found on FlowingData

Death & Gravestone Symbolism

Death & Gravestone Symbolism from LifeInsuranceFinder.au takes an in-depth look at the most common signs and symbols used on gravestones around the world.

Death is life’s ending.  Because everyone who is born eventually dies, it is the center of many traditions and organizations.  Customs relating to death are a feature of every culture around the world.  Part of those customs are symbols, whcih signify or try to make sense of the phenomena.

I had no idea about some of the meanings behind these.

Thanks to William for sending in the link!  Also found on Chart Porn.