Randy Krum's Blog, page 8

Visualizing the Social Media Universe in 2020

The team at Visual Capitalist has visualized the Social Media Universe in 2020 using circular planets to represent the sizes of the different social platforms. They did a lot of things right with this design, and one major design choice I question.

From Visual Capitalist:

Social media has seeped into virtually all aspects of modern life. The vast social media universe collectively now holds  3.8 billion  users, representing roughly  50%  of the global population.

With an additional billion internet users projected to come online in the coming years, it’s possible that the social media universe could expand even further.

Let’s take a look at how social networks compare in terms of monthly active users (MAUs)—an industry metric widely used to gauge the success of these platforms.

Here’s what I think they did really well:

Circle sizes! So many people get circle sizes wrong, but they got it right. You have to size circles so the areas are proportional to the data. I even created a reference sheet to teach people Sizing Circles for Data Visualization that you can download as a PDF.

Brand colors. The colors of the planets in the infographic are based on the brand colors of each platform. That helps associate each planet.

White logos and text: There’s so much other color noise in this design, keeping the logos, data values and text in white helps make it more readable.

Defining MAUs (Monthly Active Users) early. You should always define your acronyms at their first use within your design (infographic, report, presentation, etc.) so anyone not familiar with it will understand them from the start.

Zero baseline bar charts. There are a couple small bar charts that provide additional data about Facebook and TikTok. Both of them are simple, clean, one-color designs based on a zero baseline so readers can easily understand them. That also allows for the removal of the axis labels and the data labels on the bars to be enough information for the readers.

Short, simple text descriptions about each service. Keep the infographic simple, and longer explanations are in the article posted along with the infographic.

Here’s the one design choice I question:

Visualizing them as 3D planets. I get the visual metaphor for the “Social Media Universe” but as soon as you visualize them as 3D planets, they really should be sized as proportional 3D spheres instead of 2D circles. That math is a little more complicated. As it is currently designed, the sizes don’t match spheres.

A few other design improvements for infographics:

Don’t obscure your data sources. Don’t just list the top level domain or company where your data came from in the infographic. Readers should be able to easily review and access your data sources. Don’t make people search or hunt for your data.

Missing copyright or Creative Commons. I’m an advocate that Creative Commons is an easier licensing model for publishing infographics, but this infographic doesn’t list any type of copyright at all.

Missing infographic URL. Most people share the infographic JPG image file and tend to neglect linking back to the original. The best thing designers can do is to include the URL for the Infographic Landing Page in the infographic image file itself, so readers from other sites can find their way back to the original.

Meet the New "Snake Chart"

The team at FiveThirtyEight have created a new data visualization they are calling the “Snake Chart” to help show which U.S. states are key to the Presidential election, and how they are currently predicted to swing.

From FiveThirtyEight:

We call this the

Everything You Need to Know About TikTok as a Business

The Everything You Need to Know About TikTok as a Business infographic from VizionOnline is meant as a primer for businesses to understand how they can leverage this new, popular social platform in their marketing.

Here is a useful infographic that we have designed that provides lots of information for businesses about the video sharing social networking service called TikTok. The piece includes some general facts about TikTok and the popularity of the app as well as plenty of TikTok marketing tips that will help you with things including paid advertisements, fun and unique content, influencer marketing and viral hashtag challenges.

This design is a little text-heavy, but I understand that’s important as a guide to help businesses understand the platform.

Know Your Risk During COVID-19

The Know Your Risk During COVID-19 infographic from the Texas Medical Association is one of many new infographics helping people understand their level of risk when leaving home during the pandemic. They published the low resolution image on social media, but you can also download the high resolution PDF.

Be informed. Know your risk. Stay safe.

Ranked by physician experts from the TMA COVID-19 Task Force and the TMA Committee on Infectious Diseases.

It’s a good design; however, they really struggled with how to publish and promote their infographic. They published the infographic on social media (Facebook and Twitter), but didn’t post it on their website. So there was no place for people to link to, find the original or download a high resolution version. They ended up posting links in the comments to the PDF on their website for people that were asking. Very sloppy.

I have an entire chapter about this in the Cool Infographics book, and I teach this as part of the data visualization and infographics courses I teach at SMU. How you publish and promote your infographic is just as important as your design!

Thanks to Erica for sharing!

The United Fonts of America

Andy Murdock (Co-Founder of The Statesider) set out to create The United Fonts of America map of all the fonts named after actual locations in the U.S.

Just how many fonts are named for American places?

The answer is 222. That’s not actually the answer, it’s just where I had to stop, because the more I looked the more I found. What started as a quirky challenge to make a US font map during COVID-19 quarantine days started to edge into obsessive-compulsive territory. I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking, “Did I check to see if there’s a Boise font?” (I did. There isn’t.) I finally found the limit to how many fonts I could use in one place.

Andy’s full post about his design journey is a good read, including the challenges of multiple fonts using the same name over the years. He also has links to all of the fonts included, some free and some paid.

Found on

COVID-19 #Coronavirus Infographic Data Pack

COVID-19 (aka Coronavirus) has obviously been a hot topic recently, especially within the media. But how dangerous is this new virus?

The Covid-19 #Coronavirus Infographic Data Pack on Information is Beautiful gathers the current data around the world (version above is from March 31, 2020) and makes the virus more tangible to understand. The infographic makes comparisons to other diseases when it comes to incubation times and number of deaths, as well as reporting who is dying from it.

Created by David McCandless, Omid Kashan, Fabio Bergamaschi, Dr Stephanie Starling, Univers Labs

From Information Is Beautiful:

We made an infographic of the best COVID-19 / Coronavirus charts floating around, plus some of our own – all with the latest data

We’ll plan to keep it updated every few days.

They have also made all of their data accessible with a Google Sheet link: bit.ly/COVID19-DATA

With so many good and bad COVID-19 charts being published at a frantic pace, I can appreciate the design and effort here to gather some of the best data and the best visualizations together in one place.

9 Ways To Focus A Wandering Mind

As everyone has made the temporary shift to WFH (work from home), many are surrounded by distractions. The 9 ways to focus a wandering mind infographic originally from On Stride Financial in the UK and now published on Headway Capital, offers simple ways to help you refocus.

It’s probably no surprise that the human mind has a tendency to wander. Scientific research has discovered that this trait is almost ubiquitous among humans, and most of us experience it regularly..

Constant mind wandering is a source of frustration for many people. In their study “ A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind ,” researchers found that that experiencing a regular lack of concentration has a negative impact on overall mood and state of mind. In short, people were less happy when their minds wandered.

Luckily, research into ways of combating this phenomenon is also plentiful. And while we may never be able to eliminate our mind’s propensity for wandering, there are lots of simple techniques that can help improve concentration and focus.

Next time you’re feeling a little distracted, try out some of these techniques and see if you can bring your mind back on task.

A little text-heavy design, but the illustrations help with each section. The comprehensive sources help establish the credibility of the information, and the infographic landing page includes clickable links to all of the source material. Nice touch!

Found on Creative Bloq

10 Things To Do Before Any Video Interview

We’re all working from home, and that include job interviews, news interviews, class lectures, webinars, presentations to customers and even just business meetings. The 10 Things to Do Before Any Video Interview infographic from Kickresume is a great last-minute checklist before you turn on your webcam!

In the end, you can take this infographic as a checklist. You can use it to prepare for your job interview or any other video conference call.

And, oh boy, are we going to make many more of those. Sure, it took a global pandemic for companies to recognize the value of working from home but now there’s no going back. Video conference calls are here to stay. (I personally hate it but even I should probably get used to it. Damn.)

Anyway, good luck at your job interview!

I would have preferred more visual elements, but I like that this is a tightly focused infographic with a clear, useful message to a broad audience. This is one of the best uses for an infographic: an informative topic, related to the industry of the publishing company, with a popular, trending topic. This design checks all the boxes.

Designers have to remember that the infographic image file will often be shared by itself, so it always helps to include a few more thins in the footer:

The Infographic Landing Page URL (not just the company home page). This will help readers find the full infographic and the article that went along with it. Don’t make people search for it on your website.

A copyright or Creative Commons statement is always a good idea when you publishing an infographic

DataViz Community COVID-19 Resources

Not an infographic today.

Free online classes, discounts on software, extended trial periods, free online data sources, etc. as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the Organizer for the DFW Data Visualization Meetup Group, I've started this publicly viewable Google Sheet for the local DataViz community listing various resources that companies are making available during the pandemic. Turns out, these are valuable to DataViz designers everywhere, not just DFW, so I'm sharing the link with all of you.

I’ll continue to update this list as I learn about new resources during the pandemic. Please use the submission link in the spreadsheet if you know of any DataViz-related offers or deals I should add!

-Randy

Get to Know COVID-19

Made withVisme Infographic Maker

Get To Know COVID-19 is an interactive infographic build on the Visme platform that allows for the inclusion of animation, URL links, interactive content and playable videos.

Of course it’s timely information, but this is also an experiment with embedding the fully interactive infographic here in the blog post. A designer can go overboard, but good use of animation can attract the reader’s attention to important information or better demonstrate data. Below is the static JPG image of the infographic.

I am disappointed that the data included in the infographic isn’t visualized. It’s just shown as text numbers. That doesn’t give the reader any context or visual cues on how to perceive those data values.

What is Coronavirus/COVID-19?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by a newly discovered type of coronavirus.

This new strain of virus, also known as SARS-CoV-2, has not been previously identified in humans. It can be transmitted from person to person via respiratory droplets, such as when an infected person coughs or sneezes within 6 feet of contact.

The WHO has declared the virus as a global pandemic and a crisis unlike any other in the 75-year history of the UN.