Randy Krum's Blog, page 2

The Quickest Route to Washington DC

The Quickest Route to Washington DC is a GIS visualization from @ArterialMapping (also known as MattMDL on reddit)

From @ArterialMapping :

How was this map completed? Well, using @Esri ArcGIS Pro Network Analysis toolset ! In general terms, there were 4 steps:

1. Created a dot grid for the whole of the continental U.S. This grid is what enables the routes to be created to D.C. A dot was also created for D.C.

2. Run Network Analysis to find the shortest route to D.C. from each dot.

3. Run a calculation for the number of overlapping routes (shown as the stronger strokes on the roadways)

4. Then, of the 4 main spokes I saw, I copied them over into their own layers and colored them accordingly.

Red generally follows I-70 to I-270, Green generally follows I-81 to I-66, Blue generally follows I-95 south of D.C., Orange generally follows I-95 north of D.C.

America’s Immigration Crisis sankey diagram

I really like this Sankey Diagram explanation of the numbers behind one of this year’s hottest political topics in the U.S.: How to Fix America’s Immigration Crisis. The original article adds a scrolly-telling element that makes it even better by slowly revealing each branch and explaining the data.

I know this article is hidden behind the NY Times paywall. If you’re not a NY Times subscriber you can try to view the original article with this LINK or try using reader mode on your browser. Let me know if this link doesn’t work, and I’ll try to post a new one.

The Problem with Plastics

This infographic shares the depressing small amount of plastic that gets recycled. Information is Beautiful created The Problem with Plastics infographic by visualizing data by Geyer et al, Science Advances, back in 2017. The infographic uses a Sankey Diagram to show the fate of all plastics that were ever made.

Why plastic recycling doesn’t work 🙁

“Most ‘recycled’ plastic still ends up being dumped or incinerated”

n.b. These numbers are from 2017. Humanity produces approx. 345 million tonnes of plastic a year. That means another ~1.7 billion tonnes since this study was released.

Found on Informationisbeautiful.net

Timeline of Reddit

Vizion Online created a Timeline of Reddit to give a better understanding of the platform.

Most of us have come across Reddit at some point but what do we really know about this hugely popular social networking platform?

It was conceived in America in 2005 as a news forum where it became popular with prominently a younger well educated profile, sharing topics, links and images, allowing users and communities to comment on each post.

Reddit has grown to be a prevalent news forum where members vote on content giving them ratings. Although Reddit is considered a social media platform it is a unique network centred around communities and subgroups known as subreddits.

Throughout its history, there has been a number of high-profile stories including activist protest and political coverage.

We have created this infographic to give a better understanding of the platform using a timeline of key events throughout the history of Reddit.

Personally, I don’t like timelines designed this way. I prefer to see the events spaced out chronologically to match an actual timeline instead of each event equally spaced. If three events happen in the same year, I would list them in the same box. Only one box per year.

Found on Vizion Online

How to Safety Thaw a Turkey

Addressing a common, annual problem, the U.S. Department of Agriculture put out this 3 Ways to Thaw a Turkey infographic in 2016.

While frozen, a turkey is safe indefinitely. As soon as it begins to thaw, bacteria that may have been present before freezing will begin to grow again. There are three safe ways to defrost a turkey: in the refrigerator, in cold water, and in a microwave oven.

Informative infographics that answer common questions are some of the most popular infographics.

In my book, I also talk about the Online Lifespan of an infographic, and this infographic has a fantastic Online Lifespan as it covers an evergreen topic and becomes popular every year.

10th Anniversary of the Cool Infographics Book (Part 1)

Ten years ago today, the Cool Infographics book was released on October 28, 2013. I frequently lament that it’s nice to have written a book, but the actual process of writing a book was pretty difficult.

I never set out to write a book. Wiley publishing approached me in 2011, and convinced me to turn the talk I was presenting at conferences into the outline for a new book. I had started my infographics design company, InfoNewt, in 2010, and was giving almost monthly presentations about my process to design, publish and promote infographics. Turns out that the talk outline did lend itself nicely to the structure of what became the Cool Infographics chapters.

Looking back, there were a number of unique challenges that I had to solve while putting together the book, and some were also new issues for Wiley.

Permissions to include infographics

I didn’t design most of the infographics I included in the book, because this wasn’t a book of self promotion. My goal was to share the best designs from the world of infographics as examples, and that meant including designs from some of the best designers in the world.

Here was my challenge. Most infographics are meant to be shared and reposted as much as possible online. “Going viral” was the ultimate achievement of an infographic. However, legally reprinting an infographic in a book required the explicit, signed permission of each infographic’s copyright holder. I ended up including over 100 infographic examples in the book, which was a lot of negotiation and legwork.

For every design I included, I had to track down the designer or publishing company, and get them to sign an official permission form that allowed me to include their design. I wasn’t able to include many of the designs I wanted to share because either I couldn’t track down the original designer, or they refused to sign the permission form.

Infographics are large

The online infographics that I was writing about were much larger that what could effectively be shown on the 7.3 x 9.2 inch pages of the book. They had to be reduced to fit on the pages, which made the text in many of them unreadable when sized to the book’s pages. Wiley didn’t want to publish a larger format book, so I had to come up with another idea.

My solution was that every design I included, also included a link to view the original infographic online. The downside was that readers can’t click a link in a printed book. That meant they would have to manually type in the URL, and many of the links were really long and complicated addresses. So, I created over 100 shortened links for the book, using my hosting platform from the coolinfographics.com website.

For example:

Link in the book: Coolinfographics.com/Figure-5-19

Forwards to the long original URL: http://create.mcgraw-hill.com/wordpress-mu/connectblog/files/2012/03/McGraw-Hill-Connect-Handout-WHITE-Small.jpg

See what I mean? No one was ever going to try to type in that long URL.

I also created an index web page for all of the Figures that had clickable links for every design in the book that is available to see online: coolinfographics.com/figures

Making the book navigation visual

Infographics is a very visual topic. Not only do readers want to see the visual examples of every concept I discuss in the book, but I wanted the book itself to be visual too. This took some negotiating with Wiley to make happen. Every chapter has its own color, and I included that color on every page in a small tab that prints all the way to what is called the “fore edge” of the page. This makes the color visible at the edges of the pages even when the book is closed. These tabs are staggered down the page to provide an easy navigation to find the color you see in the Table of Contents.

Marketing was my job

It turns out that most book publishing companies are very focused on publishing, printing and distributing a book, but not so much on marketing them once they get printed. Once a book is published they move on to publishing the next book, and the majority of promoting my book fell to me. This was something I didn’t expect. I am constantly teaching people that designing and publishing an infographic isn’t enough, and you have to promote it too. I wrote a whole chapter about in the Cool Infographics book! Similarly, I expected a big book publisher to be good at the promotion process for books. I was wrong. They printed a beautiful color book and got it into Amazon and onto the shelves at bookstores like Barnes & Noble, but that’s where their effort mostly ended.

Most of the promotion for the book has come from me. Whether it was one of my talks, a guest appearance on a podcast, an article that mentioned the book (like this one) or someone using Google to search for infographics and finding the Cool Infographics website.

Where to go from here?

The book has done really well for 10 years, and sales continue. The concepts I wrote about in the book are all just as relevant now, as they were 10 years ago. However, some of the example designs are out-of-date, and some of the design tools aren’t around anymore.

Where do you think we should from here? As readers of the Cool Infographics website and book, what would you like to see as ongoing content exploring the design, publishing and promotion of infographics? Videos, workshops, articles, tutorials, online courses, etc. Post a question, comment, or idea and let me know how Cool Infographics can be relevant to you in the future.

I’d love to hear from you. Either post a comment below or send me a note through the CONTACT page.

Annular Eclipse

Kennth Field used Nasa’s data to create this Annular Eclipse infographic. The graphic combines the information of where the eclipse had its highest coverage, as well as the time of day it was at its peak. It also shares the direct path of the moon and some basic information on what an eclipse is.

Overall, a beautiful summary with very little verbiage. In only a few seconds, you could tell how obscured the Sun was going to be in your part of the U.S.

Thanks for RJ Andrews for bringing this graphic to our attention!

Google Bard VS ChatGPT

Bard Vs ChatGPT infographic by Zealous System breaks down the specifics and differences between the two AI language models.

ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is based on GPT-3.5 architecture and has become a leading AI language model, renowned for its ability to generate human-like text and provide insightful responses. On the other hand, BARD, a language model equipped with advanced natural language understanding and generation capabilities, makes it a formidable competitor in the market.

ChatGPT is better at generating creative text formats, such as poems, code, scripts, musical pieces, email, letters, etc. It is also better at generating different responses to the same prompt, which can make it more engaging to interact with. However, ChatGPT is not as good at answering factual questions as Bard.

Bard is better at answering factual questions, summarizing text, and providing information from the real world. It is also better at following instructions and completing requests thoughtfully. However, Bard is not as good at generating creative text formats as ChatGPT.

This is a fairly general informative infographic design. No specific point, or push to use one over the other. Good information as a comparison infographic using the publicly available information about each tool (which there is very little specific data).

The footer should include some type of copyright (or Creative Commons) license and the URL to get to the infographic landing page (not just the company home page).

Thanks to Mary Logan for the submission!

Sankey Creation Tools Directory

Sankey and Alluvial Diagram Tools is a new directory page I just added to the growing library Cool Infographics Tools pages. The page has links to many free and paid tool to create your own diagrams. I’ve included online tools, programming code and downloadable apps.

This will be a growing list as more tools become available, so feel free to send me a note if you know of a tool that I should consider adding to the list!

2023 Flags of the Women's World Cup

The 2023 Women’s World Cup Flags infographic from UK Featherflags takes a currently popular topic in the news, and makes it relevant to the publishers business of making flags. This is the content they know about best.

From the publisher:

[This infographic] takes a look at the flags for the different countries in the 2023 FIFA women's world cup which is taking place from 20 July to 20 August 2023 and is jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand.

Check out this handy design to view the flags for the countries in the various groups of the tournament along with some interesting facts.

I like the simple infographics that tell one story really well. Not a lot fo text, and the flag images are the highlight of the infographic design. I love that they included the URL to the infographic landing page in the footer! Many people will share or repost an infographic without providing a link back to the original. This makes it easy for readers to track down the source and learn more if they were interested.

This design is missing a few things:

I prefer to include the publisher’s logo on the infographic somewhere (usually in the footer). This only mentions the publisher’s website in text as part of the subtitle. It’s easy to miss, and that loses the publisher’s benefit of releasing the infographic in the first place.

It’s missing some type of conclusion or call-to-action at the end. What should readers do after reading the infographic? It doesn’t have to be a hard sales pitch. Visit the website, sign up for our newsletter, learn more about flags on our site, etc. What action should the reader take after enjoying the infographic?

Copyright or Creative Commons license.

Thanks to David for submitting the infographic!