Category Archives: Group MInd

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

UPDATE 1 (8 Dec 09): There’s now a Portuguese version of 2012 (thanks Ricardo Vieira) and a French version DEUUUUXMIIIILLEDOUUUUZE (thanks to Olivier!)

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

Also posted in De-Hyping, Environment, Esoteria, Information Design, Media, Movies, Skeptics vs Believers, sci-fi |
 109 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?

Also posted in Graph, Information Design |
 87 Comments

Left vs Right

October 20, 2009

NEW: Limited edition signed prints of this image now available in our poster shop.

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!

Also posted in Comparison Chart, Economics, Infographic, Knowledge Map, Political, concept map |
 152 Comments

What Does Your Soul Look Like?

September 15, 2009

What Does Your Soul Look Like?
I’m trying to create a piece of interactive art. Can you help by drawing something? It should only take 5 minutes.

I’d like you to draw a picture of your soul. How you imagine it to look.

Nothing sinister intended. I’m curious about how different people perceive their ‘soul’.

If enough people do this, it could be really interesting. Because we’ll all be blind to other peoples’ drawings, there’s a chance here to spot patterns, commonalities and any interesting coincidences that might appear across all the souls.

Cooler, we may even be able to build a taxonomy of souls.

At the least, it should be a fascinating, crowd-sourced image…

(This idea was inspired by Waxy’s toyings with Mechanical Turk and The Sheep Market by Aaron Koblin.)

Read More »

Also posted in Crowd Sourcing, Fun, Self, Taxonomy |
 37 Comments

Patterns in the Group Mind

August 7, 2009

I’ve been playing with Google Insights. It’s a great toy. It measures ‘search intensity’. The number of searches being made for a certain term.

Off the back of the recent timeline of global media scare stories, I got curious about what searches actually look like.

For example, the search “violent video games” reveals a very distinct pattern.

Google Insights search:

Why that distinct pattern? If you add the dates, it clarifies things:

Google Insights search:

Every April and November the issue flares up. Why?

April 20th is the anniversary of the Columbine Massacre. Though dimishing, the echoes of that event still reverberate through the group mind.

Not sure about the November peak? Maybe because Christmas video games are announced?

Read More »

Also posted in Comparison Chart, Data Journalism, De-Hyping, Fun, Graph, Media, Timelines, Visual Journalism |
 34 Comments