Randy Krum's Blog, page 13

How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Art

Using Artificial Intelligence to create works of art is a very controversial topic, and Invaluable has tackled explaining the issue with the infographic How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing the Face of Art and a detailed blog post. This issue applies to fine arts, music, writing, dance and even the culinary arts! When can it truly be considered “art”? Who owns the final creative works?

Over the past 50 years, artists have been using computers to generate forms of digital art, but previously had to write the code that specified a set of rules to create the chosen aesthetics. Within the last couple of years, artists have taken AI art to a new level, using algorithms that learn these aesthetics themselves by analyzing thousands of images.

Though many artists fear that relying on machines will hinder the essence of art and could even lead to replacing humans as creators, AI artists feel that machine-generated art is a new opportunity and the process is becoming an art form in itself. Much like famous artists of the past whose work was informed by concurrent social and political issues, artificial intelligence, working in conjunction with humans, has the ability to create art through those experiences as well.

Within the last decade, machine learning has become a growing medium that has permeated a variety of industries and disciplines, including the fine, performing, literary and culinary arts. While some worry that AI will stifle creativity and take jobs away from humans, artists offer a different perspective. By working with the capabilities of artificial intelligence machines, artists can use the technology as a tool for the augmentation of human thought to create what has yet to be imagined.

They also created a good animated GIF infographic to explain how AI can learn to write:

Both infographics are missing some design elements to help with sharing online. When publishing infographics, you have to assume they will be shared without the rest of the longer article they were originally published with.

The URL address back to the original infographic landing page (the blog post) or even the company website

What’s the CTA (Call-To-Action)? What does Invaluable want the readers to do with this information? Even if it’s just “Learn More at Invaluable”.

Include a Copyright or Creative Commons license statement? Ironic that it’s missing since the topic is partially about who owns the creative works created by AI. Infographics are a creative work!

The data sources? The original blog post has links to a number of articles that were used as source material for the infographic (which is great!) but these need to be listed in the infographic itself. If I’m reading the infographic without the rest of the original blog post, why should I believe this information? Why is it credible?

Found on TechiExpert

Making America Smarter, Stronger, and Younger

A few years old, but just as relevant today as it was a few years ago. The Making America Smarter, Stronger, and Younger infographic sums up the statistics behind the argument for Immigration that the Deloitte University Press makes. Deloitte believes a thoughtful look at immigration reform will help the U.S. secure and maintain its competitive edge in a world where the most highly skilled have a choice when it comes to where they live and work. 

Immigration and immigration reform are perennial topics of debate in the United States. What do the data say about how immigration is shaping the country?

The United States cannot be complacent that the advantages conferred by past immigration will continue into the future as global competition for talent increases. It is clear that this more intense global competition will be fought on many fronts. A thoughtful look at immigration reform—one that balances family and workforce needs—may well hold one of the keys for the United States to gain and maintain a competitive advantage in a world where the most highly skilled have a choice as to where they will live and work.

This infographic serves as a summary and a shareable social media asset that coordinates with the longer article, How immigration is shaping the United States, Issues by the Numbers, May 2013. This is one of the best ways to use an infographic!

The layout is still a little busy with a lot of text, but the design can stand on its own without the supporting article. The URL to the original infographic landing page and the supporting article are missing in the infographic. These should be included so readers can find their way since more people won’t include those links when they share the infographic.

Partially filling shapes to represent percentage values is never a good idea for designers. Your eye sees the area of the filled shape, but designers are only calculating the height of the fill. It’s almost never an accurate visual representation of the data.

Thanks to Courtney for sending in the link!

Image File Types Decoded

So many choices when saving your images! The Image File Types Decoded infographic from tekRESCUE does a great job of clarifying the options in this handy infographic!

Information technology can get complicated very quickly, and digital image files are no exception to this rule. You’ve likely come across a few of the different types of image files such as JPEGs, GIFs, PNGs, and others. You’ve also likely wondered what the difference is between all of these different abbreviations. That’s why we’ve put together an infographic comparing some of the most common types of files you’re likely to encounter on and create for the web.

In the graphic, we take a play-by-play look at the different properties of digital images and how the properties relate to each file type. We hope you’ll find the information useful whether you’re an image newbie or a seasoned graphic designer. Skip below the infographic if you prefer to digest the information in text form.

Some of the topics, like Image Compression, are over-simplified for purposes of this infographic. JPG is the king of file compression, but the infographic implies that other file types don’t support compression. That’s not exactly true. They have compression, but it isn’t anywhere as effective as JPG.

Found on Infographic Journal

The Charted Sandwich Board

The Charted Sandwich Board is a new infographic poster print just released from the team at Pop Chart in New York City! You can order now, and the prints will begin shipping on March 6, 2019.

Now serving: A savory chart of sandwiches, featuring an internationally inspired menu of over 50 heroes, gyros, and more! From the basic BLT to the waistband-threatening food-pocalypse that is the Gatsby, this delectable, deconstructed diagram makes for delightful decor no matter how you slice it. Order up!

Each sandwich is visually built with an illustration and a numbered indicator for each ingredient referenced in the Ingredients legend.

You can can find this one and over 100 more infographic posters on the redesigned Infographics Posters page!

Picular: Google Search for Colors

Picular is a new search engine for colors, using Google Image Search to the exact hex color numbers most associated with the keyword you enter into the search.

Search engine for colors: Picular is a rocket fast primary color generator using Google's image search. If you ever needed the perfect yellow hex code from a banana, this is the tool for you.

Putting colors to words: Picular helps designers to easily extract the most relevant colors for a specific context or domain. It helps to understand perception, psychology and aesthetics of a color or tone you’re interested in.

According to Fast Company, “The tool is the brainchild of the Sweden-based digital design studio Future Memories, which now uses the tool on a daily basis. According to the studio, about 15,000 other creatives frequently use the tool to test whether search terms are strongly related to particular colors.”

Found on Boing Boing and Fast Company

Can I Use that Picture?

The internet grants us access to lots of images. But how do we know if we have legal or ethical use of the photo? Check out the Can I Use this Picture? flowchart from Curtis Newbold, The Visual Communication Guy before you make your next powerpoint slideshow.

Need to use an image but not sure if you have the legal and ethical right to do so? Understanding the laws for using images can be a bit tricky, especially because there is wiggle room within the laws. And, with the mass distribution of images on the internet, it’s no wonder we’re all asking the the same question over and over again: can I use that picture?

Whether for your business presentation, your school project, or your organization’s brochure, you’ve likely placed in images to make your designs more visually appealing. But did you use the images according to legal and ethical standards?

I created the guide below to help sift through the complexity of it all. The reality is, though, as long as you become familiar with four terms– copyright ,  fair use ,  creative commons , and  public domain –you’ll have a pretty good idea what you can and can’t do with images. If it’s all new to you, spend most of your time learning the fair use clauses. That’s where the ambiguity in copyright laws exist. As with most laws, the ambiguity is for our benefit, but it sure can make copyright laws fuzzy at times.

My rule above all else? Ask permission to use all images. If in doubt, don’t use the image!

Don’t steal images for use in your designs with Google image search! Make sure you have the appropriate rights to use the images.

If your school or organization is interested, you can buy a printed poster or a high-resolution digital version.

Found on lifehacker.com

Time & Space Visualiser

Time & Space Visualiser by Paul Smith from Wonderful Books is the first exploration of both the factual and fictional history of Doctor Who through a range of infographics, presenting information about the show.

As the famous TV series nears its 50th anniversary, this book takes a fresh perspective, visualising information from every aspect of the programme to show there are lots of options beyond lists and tables. Each chart is accompanied by detailed notes discussing the background and context of the areas under examination, how the data was compiled and what it reveals.

The results can therefore be appreciated by those interested in the possibilities of data visualisation while also presenting new angles to Doctor Who devotees who might think they know all there is to know about the show.

You can buy the book at Amazon or Amazon UK..

You can read reviews of this book from Starburst magazine, Kasterborous.com, SFX Magazine, Cathode Ray Tube, and Life, Dr. Who and Combom.

Thanks to Paul Smith for sending in the link to his book!

How The World is Getting Better in 6 Charts

The World as 100 People Over the Last Two Centuries is a good summary from Our World in Data, a website dedicated to capturing the story of human progress in the form of data visualizations, of their much longer article about the history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it.

For our history to be a source of encouragement we have to know our history. The story that we tell ourselves about our history and our time matters. Because our hopes and efforts for building a better future are inextricably linked to our perception of the past it is important to understand and communicate the global development up to now. A positive lookout on the efforts of ourselves and our fellow humans is a vital condition to the fruitfulness of our endeavors. Knowing that we have come a long way in improving living conditions and the notion that our work is worthwhile is to us all what self-respect is to individuals. It is a necessary condition for self-improvement.

Freedom is impossible without faith in free people. And if we are not aware of our history and falsely believe the opposite of what is true we risk losing faith in each other.

here  you can download the 200 year chart in high resolution to print it out.

Well designed charts can tell a very compelling story, and this one was recently shared by Bill Gates on his Twitter Feed and discussed during an interview on CNBC. It has also gained coverage from Forbes, Business Insider, Vox Media, and Marketwatch.

These data sets are shown with fairly simple 100% area charts, and are separate, interactive charts in the full article. The text labels on the left and right of each chart give the reader a clear comparison between life now and 200 years ago. I’m confused by all of the colors though. I would have kept a consistent color scheme for the good vs. bad portions, but the colors they chose don’t make sense to me.

I appreciate how this summary infographic was put together know that people would share it without the rest of the article. Data sources are cited, a Creative Commons license is included, and the URl to their website is easy to find.

How Do You Know When It's Time to Rebrand?

When companies change their logos, it can sometimes be confusing to consumers on why. The old one looked just fine. But there are good reasons to change a brand or logo. How Do You Know When It's Time to Rebrand infographic explains six different reasons why a company would decide to change. 

It’s a fact of life that sometimes things have to change. Logos and brands, just like people, also need makeovers. Some logos change after many years, while others change every 10 years or even less.

While some of the most common reasons for rebranding are mergers and acquisitions, other developments such as a change in staff, a new company vision or the need to repair a damaged image also play a role. We will look at all the signs that scream “time to rebrand!” and include recognizable examples for each.

By the end, you should be able to analyze your own situation to see if it is indeed time to consider a rebranding strategy.

I really like this use of an infographic to summarize the highlights of a longer article. Each of the seven different rebranding reasons are shown in the infographic with a visual example and short explanation, but the article on the infographic landing page goes into much more detail. This keep the infographic clean and quick to read.

More information can be found at .

Thanks to Payman for sending in the link!

Welcome to Cool Infographics 3.0!

I’m very excited to announce to launch of the Cool Infographics redesign 3.0! For 12 years Cool Infographics has been one of the most popular websites celebrating good infographics and data visualization designs and provides a resource for fans, students, and professionals of infographics and DataViz.

It took 3 months to migrate the all of the content (1,700 pages) from the prior platform to this new design, and we’re still working on making sure all of the resources are properly loaded. I originally launched Cool Infographics in 2007 on the Google’s Blogger platform, and after purchasing the coolinfographics.com URL I launched the first redesign as Cool Infographics 2.0 on the Squarespace 5 platform in 2010. Squarespace then completely rebuilt and relaunched their platform to provide modern web design capabilities, mobile responsiveness, SSL certificates, and much more that make this new design very exciting.

I invite you to check out our new site and let us know what you think on the Contact page.

The Grid 

Right away you'll see the new grid format for the home page. We chose this so users can quickly see multiple infographics without much scrolling, and easily click to discover more information and commentary. 

Search

Our search functionality is much more user friendly and is now always conveniently available at the top right corner of the page no matter where you find yourself on our site. Search by keywords, tag, topic or date.

Navigation

The main feature of Cool Infographics has always been the infographics, so the navigation on the new design is hidden out of the way in the pop-up hamburger menu in the top left corner. This keeps it out of the way until you need it!

Design Tools

A top destination within the Cool Infographics ecosystem has always been our Design Tools section. We have reorganized this resource by tool type, and we're still loading all of the links for the 200+ tools from our list. This page will be expanding into new categories in the future.

Infographic Posters

The Infographic Posters page is another very popular resource on Cool Infographics, and the new design is a beautiful thumbnail gallery organized by publisher. I've known some of the these infographic poster designers/publishers for years, and we've got over 75 poster links loaded on the page with more to come.

Jobs Board

The Cool Infographics Jobs Board is FREE for anyone to submit an open position for infographics designers or data visualization designers/developers/specialists to be included on the page. This is a great resource for any designers looking for a new role, so check back often!

Mobile Friendly

Our new format lends itself nicely to a mobile experience whether on your phone or tablet. 

More to come...

There's much more to come in 2019 and beyond, so stay tuned for more features and announcements!