Afghanistan: The Information Is Not Beautiful

November 13, 2009

Afghanistan: Information Is Not Beautiful
I took a visual look at the casualty figures coming out of the Afghanistan war for The Guardian. It’s part of my effort to understand what’s going on there. It’s not easy reading. But I think it helps to give some context. See what you think.

You can explore the data and sources in this spreadsheet.

Posted in Data Journalism, Guardian Datablog, Infographic, War |
 6 Comments

2012: The End Of The World?

November 11, 2009

2012: The End Of The World? by David McCandless, InformationIsBeautiful.net

A piece exploring the myths around 2012, Mayan Prophecy, geomagnetic reversal, The Long Count, consciousness shifts, Hunab Ku, galactica alignment, the Precession Of The Equinoxes, rogue planet Nibiru, solar storms, pole shifts, timewave zero, the return of Quetzalcoatl and THE END OF THE WORLD December 21st 2012!

Make up your own mind


Skeptical Sources: Wikipedia, Associated Press, Astronomical Answers: University of Utrecht, The New York Times, John Hoopes on Tribe.Net, Skeptical Inquirer, GSA Bulletin, NASA, Nature

Believer sources: Timewave Zero, 2012: Dire Gnosis, RealitySandwich.com, 2012:TheBook, Calleman.com, Institute For Human Continuity (fake website for 2012 film).

Explore the sources In this Google doc

Posted in De-Hyping, Environment, Esoteria, Group MInd, Information Design, Media, Movies, Skeptics vs Believers, sci-fi |
 40 Comments

Interesting, Easy, Beautiful, True?

November 9, 2009

I’ve been doing a few interviews to promote my book, The Visual Miscellaneum, and a question keeps coming up. “What makes good information design?”

This is the point where I go a bit glassy. To be honest, I don’t know. I am unschooled in both information (I was a college dropout) and design (I am a self-taught designer). I’ve never really thought about it.

So, I made a nice cup of tea and had a think and came up with this.

What Makes Good Information Design v 1.0

To me, these seem like the key components of a good infographic / data visualisation / piece of information design.

  • Information needs to be interesting (meaningful & relevant) and have integrity (accuracy, consistency).
  • Design needs to have form (beauty & structure) and function (it has to work and be easy to use).

You may disagree. I welcome your input. I may not have got it right.

Something surprised me about doing this though.

In information design, it seems, if you have just two elements, you get something tolerable and cool. i.e.

  • integrity + form = eye candy
  • interestingness + function = experiment

(I’m not entirely sure about these combos)

But if you combine three elements without the fourth, things suddenly FAIL:

  • interesting subject, solid information, looks great, but is hard to use = useless.
  • amazing data, well designed, very easy to read but isn’t that interesting = boring

What do you think? This is a work in progress. Can you help me shape this a bit? Have I missed anything?

Posted in Graph, Group MInd, Information Design |
 49 Comments

Visualising the Guardian Datablog

November 6, 2009

I’m doing a regular weekly visualisation for the excellent Guardian Datablog, the front-end for an amazing library of statistics and data, lovingly hand-gathered by The Guardian.

My first post is about Deadly Drugs.

There’s been a furore over here in the UK about the dangers of illegal drugs. The Government has sacked its most senior drugs advisor, Dr Professor Nutt, after he claimed cannabis was no more harmful than alcohol. And that horse-riding, and specifically ‘equasy’ (Equine Addiction Syndrome) was riskier than taking ecstasy. (Statistically he’s correct. His study here.).

Anyway, digging at the numbers behind his statements and how drugs are reported in the popular press, I found some stuff I didn’t expect about drug harms.

Check out the article on The Guardian blog for detail and data. You want both right?

Posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, De-Hyping, Drugs, Health, Visual Journalism |
 58 Comments

Four Infographic Morsels 2

November 4, 2009

The Change In Carbon Emissions
Another beautiful viz from Good Magazine. This time by Spanish viz supremo Lamosca. Twinned with Kyoto Targets.

Carbon Emissions

Your pet’s CO2 pawprint
How much CO2 is that doggy in the window? [Via Good Magazine and NewScientist]

Your pet's CO2 pawprint

White fight or flight?
Here’s a little something I did, overlaying membership data from the racist British National Party and ethnic populations in the UK. See the full size image.

Racist Profiling: BNP membership vs Ethnic Populations

300 days of Swine Flu
Nice image from Michael Paulkner showing the death toll from Swine Flu after 300 days. Larger sizes here.

Blimey. Quite a lot of doom and gloom in those images. I’ll try to make the next one cheerier.

If you ‘re hungry for more infographical morsels, check out the last selection.

In the meantime, if you come across any visual delights, please send them through.

Posted in Climate, Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, Environment, Health |
 5 Comments

The Visual Miscellaneum

October 22, 2009

Would you consider pre-ordering my book? That way I can get it into more bookshops. And we can spread the good news about the amazing ALL-GRAPHIC FUTURE OF CIVILISATION THAT AWAITS US!

It’s out in the US 10th November. And in the UK on the 4th February.

Here’s a Visual Miscellaneum US pre-order link

Cover design by DesignWorksGroup

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Cover
I received my first copies this week – a joyful and agonising experience. Joyful because yay it’s my book! Agonising because, inevitably, I keep seeing things I want to change or tweak or improve.

Overall though, I think it’s pretty good. Ultimately, I wanted to explore a whole range of subjects as visually and beautifully as possible, with the minimum of text. I hope I managed it and I hope you enjoy it.

Here are some pictures to give you a sense of it.

(Sorry about the awful framing of some of these. I’m a designer, not a photographer yeah?)

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Inside Cover

Bubble contents. I think that’s the most text you’ll see on a page

The Visual MIscellaneum by David McCandless: Contents

Ah I love this page. See theonline version

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Mountains Out of Molehills

Excellent work from Laura Sullivan

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Colours

The old stand-by. Check out the online version

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: The Billion Dollar Gram

Great work from Jez Burrows

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Carbon Aware

THE SPIRAL!

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Spiral

This will be online soon

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Creationism

Awesome work from Always With Honor

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Creation

This is the visual index

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Index

The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless: Backcover

Here’s that Visual Miscellaneum US pre-order link again.

Enjoy! And let me know what you think. Thanks! david.

(p.s. if you want review copies, please email
USA: Meredith.Rusu@harpercollins.com | UK & EUROPE: Katherine.Patrick@harpercollins.co.uk)

Posted in Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, Fun, Great Visualizers, My Book, Visual Journalism |
 61 Comments

Left vs Right

October 20, 2009

A concept-map exploring the Left vs Right political spectrum. A collaboration between David McCandless and information artist Stefanie Posavec, taken from my book The Visual Miscellaneum (out Nov 10th).

Of course, the political spectrum is not quite so polarised. Actually, it’s more of a diamond shape, apparently. But this is how it’s mostly presented via the media – left wing vs. right wing, liberal vs. conservative, Labour vs Tory. And perhaps in our minds too…

Well, certainly in my mind. Researching this showed me that, despite my inevitable journalistic lean to the ‘left’, I am actually a bit more ‘right’ than I suspected.

This kind of visual approach to mapping concepts really excites me. I like the way it coaxes me to entertain two apparently contradictory value systems at the same time. Or, in other words, I like the way it f**ks with my head.

I’ve got a few more of these coming from my book. They do a similar act of mind-flossing. Stay tuned.

Oh and if there’s enough demand, we’re going to do a signed, limited edition poster run of this image before Christmas. Email informationisbeautiful [at] gmail [dot] com if you’re interested

design notes

The original design concept was “something like a rosette”. But Stefanie did an amazing job taking it way further.

(I’ll be doing a ‘Great Visualizers’ piece on her in the future. But you can see some of her work here: itsbeenreal.co.uk. My particular favourite are her literary organisms. Truly beautiful and very informational. Yum.)

There are two versions with different colours: a US and a World version. This is because the US and Switzerland are the only countries in the world where red = right wing and blue = left wing. Grrr!

Posted in Comparison Chart, Economics, Group MInd, Infographic, Knowledge Map, Political, concept map |
 104 Comments

How Safe is the HPV vaccine?

October 12, 2009

I’ve been reading a lot about the HPV (Human Papillomavirus) vaccine and the risk of serious side effects and even death. I thought I would seek out the numbers and put them in context. Especially given headlines claiming the HPV jab is “as deadly as the cancer” it seeks to prevent.

How Safe Is The HPV (Human Papillomavirus) Vaccine?

A note about the UK. These are the figures for Gardasil, the vaccine used in the US. In the UK, the dominant vaccine is Cervarix. For which I have no figures. Ben Goldacre explores some important points around Cervarix. Worth reading.

(You can explore my data here. I’ve put the data on three separate sheets inside the spreadsheet. Here are the original source documents from the US Centre Of Disease Control).

If you have any figures on Cervarix or any other facts and sources that can add to this diagram, please get in touch. Thanks!

If you’re looking for information on HPV, Cervical Cancer and immunisation, try these links
: The NHS page on the cervical cancer jab
: General info on immunisation, including HPV

Read More »

Posted in Data Journalism, De-Hyping, Disease, Health, Infographic |
 104 Comments

Who Rules The Social Web?

October 2, 2009

Who Rules The Social Web? Gender Balance on social networking sites

Thanks to data gathering by Brian Solis. My data here.

In passing, it’s interesting how Google Ad Planner gives detailed data on every big website online. But not on any of Google’s own sites.

Source: BrianSolis.com, Google Ad Planner.
Data: In this Google doc

Posted in Data Visualisation, Graph, Infographic, Media, Social Networks, Web, facebook, twitter |
 164 Comments

Kyoto: Who’s On Target?

October 2, 2009

There’s a lot of talk of a new world climate agreement in Copenhagen in December to succeed Kyoto. I wondered how the signatories of the first one were doing. Make up your own mind.

Kyoto: Who's On Target?

As ever, this was difficult to research. A lot of the important data was locked in a huge European Environment Agency report. And then summarised by a byzantine graph. In the end I had to trawl through individual country reports to get the figures I needed.

It was also tricky to visualise. I chose quite a designery approach which demands that you dig into the image a bit to get the understanding flowing. I hope the result isn’t too byzantine either.

The design took several versions to get right. If you’re interested, you can see some drafts here (or as a PDF).

Source: European Environment Agency. Explore the data In this Google doc
Process: See a image of early versions or download an editable PDF.

Posted in Climate, Data Visualisation, Environment, Infographic, News |
 49 Comments