Randy Krum's Blog, page 12
March 18, 2019
What Really Extends Lifespan?
David McCandless from InformationIsBeautiful.net has released his LIve Long: What Really Extends Lifespan? infographic design that explores how much impact different behaviors can have on your life, and how strong the scientific research is to back up the claims.
What’s the best method of life extension? Diet and exercise? Or polygamy and pets? The latest data visualized.
Most of David’s designs are fully transparent with the data, and this design follows that tradition. All of the data and sources used in this design is summarized in this Google spreadsheet.
This design is a good exercise in visualizing uncertainty. The number of years for each activity is not exact, so I think the couple of bars that fade into white are more appropriate. The angled cut at the end of most of the bars seems more artistic. I like the additional aspect the strength of the science behind each claim is color-coded into the bar chart.
This infographic was originally published in the Knowledge Is Beautiful book, available on Amazon, and should be included in every data visualization designer’s library.
March 14, 2019
The Beauty of Pi
In honor of Pi Day, March 14th (3/14) I wanted to share The Beauty of Pi.
Ken Flerlage has created a very cool series of visualizations of the first 5,000 digits of the mathematical constant Pi using Tableau. All of them are available in this interactive Tableau Public visual called The Beauty of Pi that allows you to download the different visualizations as a Tableau workbook or in different file formats. These downloads are high-resolution and sized nicely if you wanted to print one as a poster.
Ken also published a full blog post about his inspiration and experience creating the visualizations.
Ancient History Family Trees Poster
Matt Baker from UsefulCharts has launched a KickStarter campaign to release the fourth poster in his family tree series. The newest poster is the Ancient History Family Trees poster and focuses on the time period between 1600 BCE and 100 CE. It includes historical dynasties (shown in color) as well as a few sections based on legend and/or religious traditions (shown in grey).
Help support Matt launch the new poster on KickStarter by Friday, March 29, 2019!
The full list is as follows:
Armenia (Artaxiad dynasty)
Assyria (Middle and New kingdoms)
Babylon (Chaldean dynasty)
Carthage (Barcid dynasty & its Phoenician roots)
China (Legendary origins; Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Early Han dynasties)
Egypt (Dynasties 18-31; Ptolemaic dynasty)
Greeks (The Iliad; Sparta & Athens; Alexander the Great & the Diadochi)
Hittites (New Kingdom)
India (Ramayana & Mahabharata legends; the Buddha; Nanda & Maurya dynasties)
Palestine (Selected bible characters, Israel & Judah, Maccabees, Herod the Great)
Persia (Median, Achaemenid, and Arsacid dynasties)
Rome (Generals of the republic; Julio-Claudian dynasty)
Syria (Seleucid dynasty)
You can see the new chart up close in Matt’s YouTube video:
You can see the rest of Matt’s posters from UsefulCharts on the Cool Infographics Infographic Posters page where I have links to over 100 posters from designers all over the world! Once this poster is released and available, I’ll add the link to it on the Posters page as well.
March 12, 2019
A Guide to Responsible Drinks in the Workplace
Some companies outright ban alcohol in the office, and others have beer, wine and alcohol stocked in the office for their employees and at company events. ZeroCater has tackled the complicated issues with their infographic, Toasting at The Office: A Guide to Responsible Drinks in the Workplace.
Yes, work events in the office can safely and responsibly include alcohol. In fact, many HR professionals acknowledge that alcohol can have a place at workplace functions. When employees manage their intake and employers set the right tone and company alcohol policy, wine, beer, cider, or cocktails can be a fun inclusion at holiday parties, team-building exercises, and more.
Planning and policy can help alcohol safely be part of workplace events. From holiday parties and team-building events to celebrations and other important occasions, there are times when alcohol is a great addition to a milestone in the workplace. Combine proper planning, solid policy, and responsible employees and management, and alcohol can safely be part of a company function. Put these tips to work in your workplace, and your team can enjoy a tasty beer, wine, or cocktail in the office.
This topic is perfect for an infographic! It’s complicated, and this infographic does a good job of clarifying the issues and recommendations.
This infographic design is mostly text, with a few hidden data points. They completely missed the opportunity to create data visualizations to highlight the statistics they cite in the infographic. I also don’t know where the data comes from. A few organization websites are listed at the bottom, but no reports, articles or research is specifically mentioned. Don’t make me search for your data!
I appreciate that most of the text is short, and balanced with relevant illustrations and icons.
The full infographic above was actually hard to find. The link to the full infographic image file was buried in their embed code for bloggers to repost the infographic. The original landing page on the ZeroCater site is a blog post that breaks the infographic apart into three image files as separate sections. The problem is that these separate image files will get shared by readers, and the designers didn’t include the source information or even the ZeroCater brand in the separate images. That information will be lost to anyone viewing the infographics share on another site.
March 11, 2019
13 Mistakes You’re Making When Cooking Eggs
13 Mistakes You’re Making When Cooking Eggs infographic fromBenjamin at TheEatDown.com helps solve some of the head scratching cooking issues to the staple breakfast food.
Ah, eggs. The breakfast staple that everyone has their own unique way of cooking up.
But despite their everyday use, they are also so easy to get wrong. We’ve taken the 13 biggest crimes against yolks that we see made all too often. Are you guilty of them too? Check out our infographic!
I appreciate an infographic design that shares valuable, useful information with the audience. It doesn’t have to be fancy graphics or complicated data visualizations. These are obviously some simple illustration, but they communicate the information very clearly. very well done!
Thanks to Benjamin for sending in the link!
March 5, 2019
The Evolution of Captain Marvel
The Evolution of Captain Marvel infographic from HalloweenCostumes.com is a great example of using a popular trending topic that’s also relevant to your business as content marketing. The Captain Marvel movie releases this week, and the evolution of Captain Marvel’s costume is perfect content for an online retailer of costumes!
Carol Danvers debuted in the pages of Marvel Comics more than 50 years ago. In that time she has gained and lost fantastic superpowers and fought alongside many of the iconic superhero teams. She’s also been known as Ms. Marvel, Binary, Warbird, and Captain Marvel. Her upcoming solo film, Captain Marvel, marks her first appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where she is one of the most powerful superheroes—if not the most powerful superhero. That’s because Captain Marvel has unbelievable strength, speed, and can fly. (Even in space!) Plus she can shoot energy from her hands and maybe even travel through time. So that’s pretty cool. How she got there is also pretty cool, so let’s look at how Carol Danvers evolved to become Captain Marvel!
Found on Infographic Journal
March 4, 2019
Design Thinking vs. Visual Thinking
The team at XPLANE has posted their own explanation of Design Thinking vs. Visual Thinking on their blog along with this great visual infographic explanation.
At XPLANE we pride ourselves on bringing clarity to complexity. We usually do this for clients, but sometimes the need strikes closer to home. This happened recently at a social event when I heard the terms “design thinking” and “visual thinking” used interchangeably (not for the first time—and definitely not for the last). Now, most people who work in business strategy, innovation, or problem-solving can tell you that design thinking and visual thinking are not the same, but not everyone can easily articulate the difference. So in the interest of clarity and some serious cred at your next post-work cocktail hour, here’s a quick explanation of the difference between the two.
Simply put, Design Thinking is a method for problem solving. Visual Thinking, on the other hand, is a set of tools for making intangible or complex ideas visible.
So the next time you hear the term “design thinking,” remember this is the method being used to solve the problem. And the next time you hear “visual thinking,” recall this as the tool kit you draw upon to make that method more effective and efficient. And maybe remember that XPLANE helped you understand the difference between the two.
Some of the best infographics don’t deal with a bunch of numeric data. Instead, they are clear visual explanations of concepts, processes or complex ideas. This is one of those types of infographic designs done really well. It explains one idea very clearly, the difference between Design Thinks and Visual Thinking.
The main thing that XPLANE missed with this design, is that it will be shared on the Internet without the rest of the original blog post text. Very often the image is shared by itself, and companies that are really good at social media will make sure the image includes all of the relevant information. This image is missing a bunch for sharaeability:
Title
Sources
Brand
Copyright
URL back to the blog post
March 1, 2019
Animated DataViz: Top 15 Best Global Brands Ranking (2000-2018)
The Top 15 Best Global Brands Ranking (2000-2018) is an animated data visualization video from TheRankings on YouTube.
Some animated data visualizations are just eye candy, and the better ones use animation to improve understanding or add context to the data. This is a good one where the animation over time helps the audience see the dramatic growth in brand value and how some of today’s top brands skyrocketed to the top of the list only in the last few years. All of the data is pulled from Interbrand.
The music in the video is distracting though, and completely unnecessary. I would just mute it.
I like the logos along the y-axis. The data values would be easier to read with a comma separator for thousands.
You find this shared in social media also as an animated GIF file.
February 27, 2019
US Population Projections by Age Through 2060
I really like this US Population Projections by Age Through 2060 posted on reddit by user mskm203. It was built in Tableau using U.S. Census Data projections. Each year is plotted, and then the sequence is recorded as a video and animated GIF file.
This was submitted as part of a Makeover Monday data visualization redesign challenge.
I would change the age group labels to white text for better readability.
Tableau isn’t the only tool that can create visualization like this. As a challenge, ZingChart took this design as inspirtation and redesigned it using their javascript charting tools and made a few tweaks to the design. You can see that here:
I appreciate the design tweaks from ZingChart like the lines showing the start and end distributions. Fewer stops on the y-axis help reduce the gridlines clutter. Also, shortening the text in the y-axis labels using the scale of Millions. However, I don’t like turning the text labels for each age group 90°, that makes it much harder for readability.
Especially when viewed as a static image, instead of the animation, the lines for the start and end distributions are very helpful.
February 26, 2019
Celebrate the Chinese New Year with 6 Lucky Foods
Celebrate the Chinese New Year with 6 Lucky Foods is an information-loaded infographic from ZeroCater, covering the basics of Chinese New Year, foods considered to bring you luck in the coming year, and a special focus on the lore behind dumplings.
The annual two-week festival of Chinese New Year is upon us! As the Year of the Dog (2018 to 2019) gives way to the Year of the Pig (2019 to 2020), it’s time for family and friends to come together in celebration and exchange wishes for luck, health, and prosperity. Read on to learn how you can celebrate the Chinese New Year with some traditional and delicious foods.
An integral part of the Chinese New Year? Food. Families come together for a special New Year’s Eve Dinner (年夜饭, Nián Yèfàn), also known as a Reunion Dinner (团年饭, Tuán Niánfàn). Special foods are an essential component of the Chinese New Year. They may have particular symbolic meanings in Chinese culture or could be considered lucky if the name of a food sounds similar to Chinese words for luck or wealth. However you share or observe Chinese New Year this year, here are six foods essential to the holiday. We break down what they are, why they’re significant, and how they’re made and served.
No matter where your Chinese New Year adventures take you, as we head into the Year of Pig, “xin nian kuai le” (Mandarin: “shin nee-an kwai le” or the formal “happy new year”), “xin nian hao” (Mandarin: “shin nee-an how” or “good new year”) and in Cantonese, “may you be prosperous in the year ahead,” “gong hei fat choy!”
They way that ZeroCater published this infographic actually makes it harder for readers to share. This is a really long infographic that has been broken apart into smaller images of the separate sections in the blog post. These separate image files will be shared as separate infographics by readers, so they need to include the footer information in each one: Sources, ZeroCater logo, URL, etc.
The full-size infographic is no where to be found in the blog post, it’s only linked to in the embed code.
Even the full infographic above doesn’t include the URL to the original infographic landing page, or any copyright license information.
