Randy Krum's Blog, page 62

Slather on the Sunscreen: What You Should Know About Skin Cancer

After this infographic, you’ll never think the same of tanning. Slather on the Sunscreen: What You Should Know About Skin Cancer infographic from fourpointsdermatology.com starts with comparing skin cancer to the other types of cancers, educates you on what the symptoms are to look for, then points out the causes of skin cancer, and finally the possible treatments.

“Slather On That Sunscreen: What You Should Know About Skin Cancer” exposes the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer, explaining the three main types of skin cancer and revealing characteristics and statistics for each. Visually explained in the graphic are the symptoms, causes, prevention, and treatment options for skin cancer. With “Slather on That Sunscreen: What You Should Know About Skin Cancer”, Four Points Dermatology is educating viewers that skin cancer prevention can be nearly effortless, and knowing what signs to look for can be life-saving.

Skin cancer incidence has increased 300% since 1994, and shows no sign of slowing down. This infographic was created to educate and encourage people to seek treatment quickly if suspecting of a skin cancer growth. By creating awareness of what symptoms people should be looking for, Four Points Dermatology hopes that the steadily increasing number in cases of skin cancer can be minimized.

Great visuals. Everything from what the symptoms look like, to the causes and preventions are illustrated in a very comprehensible way.

The pie charts with slices that each have a different radius is pretty, but creates a false visualization that doesn’t match the data.  Readers see the area of objects when comparing them, and changing the radius, changes the area of each pie slice.  By reducing the radius of the smaller values, the area is actually reduced much lower than the actual values.

Thanks to Ramsay for sending in the link!

Information is Beautiful Awards Deadline Friday Sep 13th

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The deadline for submitting design entries to the Information is Beautiful Awards is this Friday, September 13th.  Anyone can enter and the available categories are:

Data journalism
Data visualization
Infographic/information design
Interactive visualization
Motion infographic
Website

The Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards celebrate excellence and beauty in data visualizations, infographics and information art.

Last year we awarded 26 prizes across 6 categories and 8 special awards with entries from more than 20 different countries. The standard was exceptionally high and we really appreciate the effort people put into entering the awards.

The Awards were set up in 2012 by David McCandless, journalist and datavisualizer,  in collaboration with Aziz Kami, Creative Director, Kantar.

The Awards are non-profit and community-driven – that means you don’t need to shell out a big wedge of cash to enter your work, and if you’re successful, you won’t need to shell out again for a fancy sit down dinner awards night.

 

 

Our World Ski Calendar – Seasonal Ski Resorts around the World

Avid Skier? Want to know where to go at anytime during the year? Our World Ski Calendar – Seasonal Ski Resorts around the World infographic from Monarch has all the financial and event information that you need to know to plan a ski trip during any month out of the year!

To celebrate our new ski flights we produced a world ski calendar so you can ski all year round across the world. For each destination we have provided some interesting stats plus individual piste information. Let us know your favourite ski destination by commenting below!

Thanks to Sam for sending in the link!

Visualizing the Microsoft-Nokia Deal

Good data visualization uses visuals to put data into context for the readers, making the information easier to understand.  This simple infographic takes a couple charts previously published by Nielsen, and uses them to provide context to the news story of Microsoft acquiring Nokia’s handset devices unit for $7.2 Billion.

Combining data visualization with text and images should make the information easier and faster to understand, and this design does a great job.

Designer unknown.  Thanks to Mike Elgan for posting on Google+ and Luke Millar (@ltm) for posting on Twitter.

The Monstrous Cost of Work Failure

The Monstrous Cost of Work Failure infographic from AtTask looks closely at the cost of failure within companies.  How many at-bat attempts does your company take before hitting a homerun?

Projects fail, budgets blow up, fire drills reign and chaos abounds

Work failure plagues all types of teams – from marketers working on a campaign to IT teams deploying a major software system. The root of the problem – impacting 70% of teams – is work chaos. And it can be conquered. Click on the image below to view or download the full graphic and learn more about work failure and how to avoid it.

Fun design with monster characters to help tell the story to readers.  The design does a good job telling a 3-part story to the audience:

Introduction - What is the problem?
The Main Event - How big is the impact?  How can this effect me?
Call To Action - How do I fix the problem? 

Big fonts are not data visualizations, and in this design I would liked to see more of the statistics visualized.  Visualization would help put the data into context for the audience.  The footer of the design should also include the copyright information and the URL to the original infographic landing page so readers can see the full-size infographic.

Thanks to Matt for sending in the link!

The Guide to Star Trek Uniforms

The Gude to Star Trek Uniforms infographic from Costume Supercenter. Make sure you know what uniform your wearing!

When the original Star Trek television series started, male and female officers wore similar outfits. The male Star Trek uniforms consisted of black pants, black boots and a velour shirt with the symbol on the left side. Females wore the same type of shirt, with black boots and tights, and a black skirt, although in some cases they wore black pants. The color of shirt worn identified the branch the crew member belonged to. Those in green shirts worked for command personnel, while beige stood for operations, and blue was for medical personnel only. The velour shirts were changed to nylon shirts starting in the third season. You can find many of the Star Trek Costumes here.

Don’t be the red-shirted ensign!

The footer of the design should include the copyright information and the URL to the original infographic landing page so readers can see the full-size infographic.  The Costume Supercenter logo should also be somewhere on the design to connect the infographic to the publishing company.

Found on Visual.ly

The Racial Dot Map

The Racial Dot Map visualizes the 2010 U.S. Census data, where every individual person is represented by a single, color-coded dot.  The color coding shows the racial groupings gathered by the census.

This map is an American snapshot; it provides an accessible visualization of geographic distribution, population density, and racial diversity of the American people in every neighborhood in the entire country. The map displays 308,745,538 dots, one for each person residing in the United States at the location they were counted during the 2010 Census. Each dot is color-coded by the individual’s race and ethnicity. The map is presented in both black and white and full color versions.

The map was created by Dustin Cable, a demographic researcher at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Brandon Martin-Anderson from the MIT Media Lab deserves credit for the original inspiration for the project. This map builds on his work by adding the Census Bureau’s racial data, and by correcting for mapping errors.

Each of the 308 million dots are smaller than a pixel on your computer screen at most zoom levels. Therefore, the “smudges” you see at the national and regional levels are actually aggregations of many individual dots. The dots themselves are only resolvable at the city and neighborhood zoom levels.

Each dot on the map is also color-coded by race and ethnicity. Whites are coded as blue; African-Americans, green; Asians, red; Hispanics, orange; and all other racial categories are coded as brown.

The map is an interactive, zoomable map online of the entire country, and allows you to explore any U.S. locations.  Chicago is show above.

Since the dots are smaller that screen resolutions where the viewer zooms out, the data is aggregated to pixels at each level of zoom.   The Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area is highlighted on the site as an example of the aggregation.  You can see the more detailed dot pattern on the right at the higher zoom level.

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I would love to see this added as a layer in Google Earth!  Wouldn’t that be cool?

Thanks to Renee for sending in the link!  Also, found on Wired.

Atlanta:

 

Dallas-Fort Worth:

 

The entire U.S.

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Infographic Cookbook - Picture Cook

A new way to take directions for cooking, the Picture Cookbook infographic from Katie Shelly. It is an easy step by step visual explanation design that will get you to the desired tasty product, with very little use of words!

The following recipes are not intended as precise culinary blueprints. Instead they are meant to inspire experimentation, improvisation and play in the kitchen.

Great design work by Katie to create recipes as visual explanations.  The hand-drawn style also helps reinforce the flexible methods.  They aren’t strict, rigid recipes with sharp images and corners, but instead are more casual which allows for interpretation and change.  I love the color-coding for easy navigation within the book too.

Found on Fast Company

Available soon for purchase in print in October 2013.  I’ve already pre-ordered my copy.

Comic Tribute to Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes)

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Calvin & Hobbes is easily my all-time favorite comic, and Bill Watterson was able to beautifully offer thousands of life lessons through the 10 years of C&H comic strips.  Freelance cartoonist Gavin Aung Than has designed this fantastic Comic Tribute to Bill Watterson, and posted it on his site, Zen Pencils.

The quote used in the comic is taken from a graduation speech Watterson gave at his alma mater, Kenyon College, in 1990. Brain Pickings has a nice article about it. The comic is basically the story of my life, except I’m a stay-at-home-dad to two dogs. My ex-boss even asked me if I wanted to return to my old job.

My style is already influenced by Watterson, but this is the first time I’ve intentionally tried to mimic his work. It’s been fun poring through Calvin and Hobbes strips the past week while working on this comic and it was a humbling reminder that I still have a long way to go.

The quotes I’ve used in the write-up above are taken from the introduction to The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection, which sits proudly on my desk.

So, why am I posting this on Cool Infographics?  I want to pose the question: Should we consider this to be an infographic?

There’s no numeric data.  No charts.  No data visualizations.  No call to action.

However, there is information.  The information source is Bill Watterson’s speech from 1990, and the illustrations do a great job of communicating the message visually.  The image layout follows the tall infographic style that is easy to share online.

My own opinion is that “Yes” this is an infographic.  What do you think?

Found on LifeHacker

 

 

  I miss Calvin & Hobbes…

Consumer Attitudes to SMS Marketing and Texts Alerts

The Consumer Attitudes to SMS Marketing and Texts Alerts infographic is the results of a survey done by Text Marketer. The survey was conducted to find out the consumers’ view on receiving text alerts from companies. 

The infographic is based on an exclusive survey of over 1,350 consumers in to their attitudes to SMS marketing. 

The results highlight that 84% of customers want to receive appointment reminders, 61% want order confirmations and 89% would like delivery notifications via text; showing there are a lot of ways to market through this channel that customers love. 

48% of consumers are also likely to respond to a text from a company they have previously purchased from. Consumers love special offers by text and like to be able to ask questions to companies via text messages.

Since the data is from their own survey research, there are no additional data sources cited.  The purpose of the first section is to establish the credibility of the data, but the total number of respondents alone isn’t enough.  Surveys like this target specific consumers, and use screener questions to target a specific portion of the population.  What type of consumers were surveyed for this report?

The visualizations of the data are clear, and the iPhone illustrations for the results of each question break apart the data nicely.  It’s a little hard for readers to understand that the lineup of iPhones is meant to add up to the total of 100% of respondents for each question.

The footer should include a copyright notice, and the URL back to the original infographic landing page so readers can find the full-size version if a link is not available.  A link to the source data would increase the credibility of the data too.  Instead, the landing page has a link to the home page of Text Marketer as the data source link, which means public access to the numeric data is not available.

Thanks to Mike for sending in the link!