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:

U.S. Oil Consumption infographic

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.

Thanks to Jake for sending in the link!

Client Infographic: The Hotel Price Index

Twice-a-year, Hotels.com updates their Hotel Price Index, and this year I was contacted to design some new infographics to go along with the report.  InfoNewt worked with designer Jeremy Yingling to create two infographics for the current set of data from the first half of 2011.  Since the research is global, we created one infographic based on American travelers and one based on Canadian travellers.

The hotels.com® Hotel Price Index™ (HPI™) is a regular survey of hotel prices in major city destinations across the world. The HPI is based on bookings made on hotels.com and prices shown are those actually paid by customers (rather than advertised rates) for the first half of 2011. The report largely compares prices paid in 2010 with prices paid in 2011.

The research is extensive, so we had to keep the information shared in the infographics fairly focused on only a few categories.  This keeps the design clean and easy to read, but also whets the reader’s appetite for more.

We varied the visual designs for each category.  The monument silhouettes attached to locations on the globe was a unique way to show map data and not look like a standard map.  The silhouettes also help the reader recognize the cities faster than reading the text.  It’s subtle, but the lines are color-coded by continent as well.

The Canadian data was a little bit different, so the design had to adapt:

You can see the complete report data on The Hotels.com Hotel Price Index page.

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!

Client Infographic: Sudan, Bombing Everything That Moves

Sometimes, you get the opportunity to work on a project with a very serious topic and global relevance.  Recently, InfoNewt (my company) worked with Prof. Eric Reeves and designer Mike Wirth to design the infographic Bombing Everything That Moves (hosted on Eric’s site SudanBombing.org). 

For well over a decade the Government of Sudan—the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party (NIF/NCP) regime in Khartoum—has engaged in a sustained campaign of deliberate aerial military attacks on civilian and humanitarian targets in both South and North Sudan. These attacks have been only fitfully condemned by the international community, and no effective action has been taken to halt them.

Obviously, the topic is very political.  Prof. Reeves has published an extensive report and makes his Excel data file available to everyone on his site, so I’ll keep my comments focused on the unique challenges we faced when designing the infographic.

The data for this visualization is much different that the readily available Internet stats we see every day.  There is no database to query or reseach data file to purchase.  The exhaustive work Prof. Reeves has done to manually consolidate these confirmed bombing attack reports from U.N. observers, humanitarian aid personnel, radio reports and news reports is a massive, ongoing effort.

Even though the number of attacks in the report was known, most reports had unknown numbers for casualties and the number of bombs used in the attack.  Because of that, the bar chart-style visualization that is the center of the design only shows the number of attacks (a solid number we could work with) and separately shows the average numbers of bombs and casualties from the reports that had that information available.

Data transparency is always important.  As an infographic, the data sources have to be very transparent becuase you want your audience talking about the implications of your information, not challenging your credibility.

Eric Reeves is Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. He has spent the past twelve years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the US and internationally. He has testified several times before the Congress, has lectured widely in academic settings, and has served as a consultant to a number of human rights and humanitarian organizations operating in Sudan.

Due to the nature of this infographic, please keep any comments on the infographic design itself.  Any inflamatory or political comments will be removed based on my judgement.

OUTBREAK: Deadliest Pandemics in History

OUTBREAK: Deadliest Pandemics in History is a cool collaboration between GOOD magazine and Column Five Media.

From the Black Death to the measles, rapidly spreading diseases have taken a toll on humanity for centuries. Here’s a look at the biggest and deadliest pandemics ever.

I like the circles for each disease sized to the death toll, and illustrated to look like a virus molecule.  I can’t tell if the extra design elements around the circumference of the circles are part of the circle size or not.  The readers’ eyes see the area of each circle to represent it’s relative death toll compared to the others, but looking at the Measles circle, which radius do you see as the size of the circle?  The solid black line or the outer reaches of the appendages?  I think arguments could be made both ways.

Although I personally don’t like legends, the hexagons to indicate all of the different symptoms of each disease work nicely.  The shape implies scientific information, and the designer spend some time designing icons for each symptom.

This design works very well as an informative piece, and is clear to the reader to understand.  This one will probably have a long online lifespan.

Found on Visual News.

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!

Britain's Changing High Street Businesses

From SimplyBusiness.co.uk comes the Our Changing Highstreet: The Rise and Fall of High Street Shops infographic.

A third of independent High Street shops are now cafes, pubs, restaurants, and takeaways, a major new survey from Simply Business has found.

The survey, which looked at some 75,000 businesses quoted by Simply Business between 2008 and 2010, also found that hairdressers and beauty salons are beginning to thrive – with the former now the most common type of non-hospitality establishment on the High Street.

But retailers have fared worse, with clothes shops and newsagents showing a marked decline during the period.

Unsurprisingly London remains the country’s foodie heaven – with restaurants now making up 11 per cent of the capital’s High Street businesses.

I like the different ways to look at the data, and the connecting lines in the changing ranking visualization are really well done.  I like the ones that connect to additional listings below the visuals, presumably to the actual location on the listing.

I don’t understand some of the ranking change visuals off to the right.  Computer shops fell from #12 to #14 in the list, but the change visual shows “New Entry” instead of Down 2?

Apparently I should go drinking in Wales though!

Thanks to Mark for sending in the link!

Caffè Italiano: 50 Types of Italian Coffee

Caffè Italiano is another mouth-watering infographic from CharmingItaly.com.  I love how they took what could have been a standard drink ingredients visualization one step further and designed it as a menu board for an Italian coffee bar.

For Italians, coffee break is a sort of ritual in which the conviviality is a key point. Around a good coffee you can have a chat, take a few minutes for yourself and relax. It’s not just about inserting something into the stomach.

For Italians, drinking a good coffee is a pleasure: it is something to be sipped and not to be swallowed down; it is something to relish in the fullness of its flavour.

This is why a bad coffee gets Italians in a bad mood, while a good coffee can make their day!

When you enter an Italian Bar, around the clock, pay attention on what’s around you: we bet you won’t find 10 people ordering the same type of coffee!

The types of coffee in the Infographic are written in Italian, so you will be able to order them in the right way at the Bar!

The only problem is that there isn’t any guide or legend for the reader to understand the meaning behind the different colored portions of each drink.  They look carefully designed to be accurate to the how the drinks are mixed, but that effort is lost without an explanation.

Thanks to Paolo for sending in the link!