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.

The Art and Science of S'mores

I love this cool infographic from REI, The Art and Science of S’mores. 

 A group of REI sweet tooths has put together what is perhaps the definitive infographic on s’mores. Check it out, and share it with your camping buddies. We’re betting The Art and Science of S’mores will make your next campground outing just that much more interesting.

This is a fantastic example of designing an infographic to be informative about a fun, interesting subject related to your brand.  Very shareable in social media channels, and it doesn’t feel like an REI ad.  You don’t have to be an outdoor enthusiast to enjoy the topic either, so the audience is a very wide array of people.  Even my 11 year old son loved it!

Found on Visual News.

The Power of Data Visualization: iPhone Tracking

Inofrmation is power.  Data visualization has the power to change the world!  Change our habits, our laws, our business strategies and what we understand about the world around us.  Our understanding of data forms the foundation of how we make choices, form opinions, and at least one study claims that up to 80% of the human brain is wired just to interpret and remember visual data.

Anyone reading this blog has a basic understanding that data visualization makes things easier to understand.  It puts data into context and allows the viewer to see large data sets summarized in a much smaller space.  I’ve avoided updating to the latest iOS on my iPhone until I could put together this post since it’s such a great example of how visualizing data turns it into information that people can use.

Earlier this year, Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden announced at the Where 2.0 conference that Apple’s iPhones were tracking all of your location data in an open, accessbile file on your computer.  ALL of the location data since the phone was first turned on, which could be years of data.  Heavily covered by the press, you can see their announcement here.  The reason I bring this up on Cool Infographics, is that I believe the visualization itself is what caused this to become a major media event sometimes referred to as “Locationgate.”

Some industry and forensic experts knew about this data already, and many others had tried to to make the public aware of it without any success.  Just telling people that your cell phone is storing location data doesn’t make it real and personal enogh to get the press and the public to care.  In fact, there have been other stories that Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 also gather this tracking data, but only Apple’s data was turned into a visualization and captured attention.

Alasdair and Pete wrote a simple application that anyone could download and use to see their own location data visualized on a map.  This not only made the story more understandable but it made it personal because I could see my own data.

We’d been discussing doing a visualization of mobile data, and while he was researching into what was available, Alasdair discovered this file. At first we weren’t sure how much data was there, but after we dug further and visualized the extracted data, it became clear that there was a scary amount of detail on our movements. It also became obvious that at least some other people knew about it, but it wasn’t being publicized.

iPhoneTracker is an open-source project that visualizes the location data that your iOS device is recording.

Created by Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden using the OpenStreetMap and OpenHeatMap frameworks.

As you can see above, they were even nice with data, and aggregated it into a simple grid that isn’t the actual GPS locations or location of the cell towers.  (This shows my trip to DisneyWorld in Florida)  The size of the circles shows the frequency of data points within that specific location.  So the visual shows an approximate location, but the actual data file on the iPhone was much more detailed.  Of course, the application was open source, so others started playing with the code and created much more detailed versions of the software.  Here’s that same data using the Creepy Edition of iPhoneTracker:

I believe that this use of data visualization to communicate the story was the primary factor that caused a media furor, lawsuits, press releases, interviews, government hearings and proposals to change our laws.

Apple posted an official press release responding to all of the attention and released a software update that deletes most of the historical data.  Sadly, the next time I update my iPhone, the historical data will all be erased.  Personally, I wish I had the option to continue to gather my own data because I’m into this sort of thing.  This file is now also encrypted if you turn on “Encrypt iPhone Backup” so it’s no longer easily accessible.

What’s the point?  Data visualization can be used to make your information relevant to your audience and get their attention.  Don’t just tell people your story, show them.

Update on Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 3:15PM by Randy

Since posting this, I have found the OpenPaths project from the NYTimes. 

OpenPaths is an anonymous, user-contributed database for the personal location data files recorded by iOS devices. Users securely store, explore, and manage their personal location data, and grant researchers access to portions of that data as they choose.

Even though I can’t continue to let my iPhone track my location, I did donate my data and can use the interactive map whenever I want.  At least I haven’t lost the data.

The Crayon-Bow, Crayola Color Chart updated

I’m not sure how I missed this, but the designer know as Velociraptor has updated his original Crayola Color Timeline that I posted about last year, into the the new Crayon-Bow (half rainbow - half rising sun).

The original was a square, straightforward representation, but the colors in the later years were shown in very small slices are hard to see.

A number of other visual layouts were tried, but the arc style visual not only allowed the colors from the later years to be easier to see, but the original eight colors pointing inwards look like the tips of brand new crayons as well.

I love the new version.  Found on Twitter: @printmag, @wired, @awaaza

Client Infographic: A Solar Innovation Story

Solar Savings: A Solar Innovation Story from ExtraSpace.com is a new infographic by InfoNewt and designer Jeremy Yingling.  This one tells the story of how the company is adding solar panels to the roof space on some of it’s self storage facilities all across the country.  The environmental, financial and community benefits are huge, and this was only the first year of a multi-year plan.

Extra Space Storage is on a mission to produce solar powered clean energy and reduce the carbon footprint of our 850+ self storage facilities. We aim to install 20,000 solar panels this year, and increase the pace of panel installation every year. Energy efficient clean power is good for our customers and our neighborhoods, our planet, and our investors. By the end of 2011 this program will save 2,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 100 acres of fir trees.

An infographic is a fantastic way for Extra Space to tell their story to customers, investors and anyone interested in alternative energy solutions.  It puts their efforts into context and shows the potential of how large their cumulative environmental impact could become.

You can follow Extra Space Storage on Facebook and Twitter (@extraspace)

Visualizing the U.S. Debt

The U.S. Debt Visualized is a great visualization of scale, and can be found at usdebt.kleptocracy.us, where you start with a single $100 bill, and start stacking them in orders of magnitude.  Stack them on pallets, start stacking the pallets and show them in comparison to other real-world items.

$114,500,000,000,000. - US unfunded liabilities
To the right you can see the pillar of cold hard $100 bills that dwarfs the
WTC & Empire State Building - both at one point world’s tallest buildings.
If you look carefully you can see the Statue of Liberty.

Numbers this large become too big to truly comprehend to many people, and I love visualizations like this one that put the unbelievable high numbers into context and scale.  Here’s one trillion dollars:

A visualization like this has a natural bias.  Whatever object the designer chooses to show in relation to the stack of bills can make the pile appear large or small in comparison.  In this example, the piles of money are truly staggering, but that’s all the reader can walk away with.  In it’s defense, this visualization isn’t trying to propose a solution, it’s just trying to make the viewer understand how big the number is.

Found on SeeWhatYouMean, VizWorld, Business Insider and Information Aesthetics.

What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley?

What Can You Expect to Earn in the Valley?, from Column Five Media for Focus.com, takes a look at the Silicon Valley salary levels.

Silicon Valley earns its famous reputation not just from the fortunes that entrepreneurs create, but also from the high-paying careers available to tech-savvy employees. However, the area is also known for its incredibly high cost of living. Is working in the Valley really worth it? And how much can you expect to make in the nation’s most celebrated tech scene?

This one uses some simple visualizations, but it does a good job of putting the data and the company logos right into the charts. I would have liked to see one more visualization showing a conclusion that the higher salaries do cover the higher cost of living or not.

Thanks to Jarred for sending in the link!

The VIZoSPHERE - Visualizing DataViz People on Twitter

From Moritz Stefaner on Visualizing.org, comes the VIZoSPHERE project (Click the image to see the high-resolution image viewer).  Using GePhi, Moritz started with 18 seed accounts on Twitter, and then mapped 1,645 of the connected, networked accounts that relate to data visualization.  Bubble size in this visualization shows how many followers each account has from within this DataViz pool of users.

This map shows 1645 twitter accounts related to the topic of information visualization. The accounts were determined as follows: For a subjective selection of “seed accounts”[1], the twitter API was queried for followers and friends. In order to be included into the map, a user account needed to have at least 5 links (i.e. follow or being followed) to one of these accounts. The size of the network nodes indicates the number of followers within this network.

[1] The seed accounts were; @moritz_stefaner, @datavis, @infosthetics, @wiederkehr, @FILWD, @janwillemtulp, @visualisingdata, @jcukier, @mccandelish, @flowingdata, @mslima, @blprnt, @pitchinteractiv, @bestiario140, @eagereyes, @feltron, @stamen, @thewhyaxis

The zooming interface is crucial to view such a highly-detailed visualization and be able to read any of the nodes.  I was about to find my own Twitter account (@rtkrum), but it would be nice if Moritz would also provide a listing of the Twitter accounts or some way to search the map.

Great job Moritz!

Found on FlowingData and Robin Richards (@ripetungi) on Twitter.

Client Infographic: Making an Organic Choice

Making an Organic Choice from So Nice is a new infographic by InfoNewt and designer Jeremy Yingling.  This one tells the story in numbers of how organic food processing is better for you and the environment compared to conventional food processing.

We are what we eat, goes the old adage.

So Nice is committed to your health and that of the environment, which is why we use only certified organic, non-genetically modified organism (GMO) whole soybeans grown from environmentally responsible farming operations.  Below, we’ve contrasted only some of the data surrounding conventional and organic farming to help you learn about your food and beverages.

Without being preachy, using an infographic presents the data in a way that their potential customers can easily understand and use to make informed decisions.  They not only posted it online, but So Nice is also using it as a printed, informational poster at trade shows as a conversation piece with visitors to the booth.

You can follow So Nice on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/So-Nice/77766940782

35 Years of Apple Products - Visual History

From Mashable come The Apple Tree, a visual, iconic timeline 35 years of Apple product releases.  Designed by Mike Vasilev (@mvasilev on Twitter).

When it comes to industrial design, few consumer electronics or computer makers have the legacy or influence of Apple, Inc. In the last 35 years, Apple has introduced a myriad of products and devices, some very successful, some, not so much.

Artist Mike Vasilev created this infographic for Mashable, highlighting the major Apple product releases and design changes from 1976 through 2011.

I love how recognizeable all of the product illustrations are.  I’ve owned way too many of these products over the years.

Found on Social Media Graphics.