What are the Wall St Protestors So Angry About?

October 21, 2011

What Are The Wall Street Protestors So Angry About?Loads of people have emailed asking if we can improve the graphs on the What The Wall Street Protestors Are So Angry About megapost.

Sure!

Here’s our first stab. A visual about income equality in the USA.

More to follow.

(Check out our Debtris video too)

DESIGN: David McCandless | IDEA: Business Insider | SOURCE: CIA FactBook | DATA: http://bit.ly/wallstdata
RESEARCH: Alex Lemon | ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Piero Zagami

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24 Comments

Final Call: What Does Your Soul Look Like?

October 13, 2011

What Does Your Soul Look Like?
Way back, way back in time (er 2009), we asked you to draw your souls. Just a five-minute sketch as part of a piece of interactive art.

We were curious about how people perceive their ‘souls’. Hell, we could even maybe visualize a taxonomy of souls?

Anyway, we’ve had loads of entries. Loads. Such lovely ones, too. And in this case, more is more.

So feel free to send us your hand-drawn soul. Which can mean your self, your personality, your insides, however you see your you. Just follow the instructions below and be part of the mass.

DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS

Read More »

Posted in collaborations, Goings-on | Tagged , , |
13 Comments

Taste Buds

October 3, 2011

A visualization of complementary flavours by David McCandless and Willow Tyrer.

All food tastes amazing, just sometimes not together.

So we roved around 1000 recipes for common flavour patterns and visualized the results.

A good way to build a meal, maybe, if you lack a chef’s intuitive buds. Less data visualization, more dinner visualization. An infoodgraphic, perhaps. Ok, we’ll stop now.

These were created back in 2009 for the Information Is Beautiful book. Willow, a Swedish infographic designer, came up with an elegant, organic style. We thought it might be nice to release them into the wild.

Enjoy your meal.

Want to play with these in your kitchen? Buy a printable hi-res PDF from our store

Concept: David McCandless
Visualization design: Willow Tyrer
Research: Pearl Doughty-White
Source: BBC Food, Epicurious.com
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27 Comments

Win $3000 in our first information design competition

September 23, 2011

Information Is Beautiful Awards
Your design creativity could win you $3000. Even if you can’t design.

We’ve launched a series of monthly visualization competitions They’ll run alongside our shiny new annual Information is Beautiful Awards.

First challenge: visualize data on the world’s non-renewable resources. Specifically, how long they might last.

I had a page on this in my book. But I’ve never been entirely happy with it. Can you do better?

If so, you could bag $2,000 for a design. That’s chunky.

And don’t worry if you can’t design. If you’ve got a brain and a pencil but no design skillz, you can still submit a sketch of your idea. There’s $1,000 prize for such “napkin” entries.

Yeah. Everyone can make information beautiful.

Posted in Goings-on, IiB awards | Tagged , , , |
16 Comments

The Information Is Beautiful Awards

September 9, 2011


There’s so much incredible creativity and innovation in the field of data and information visualisation, we thought we might be cool to set up an awards.

The Information Is Beautiful Awards, in fact.

The idea is to reward practitioners, big and small, from anywhere in the world. And to celebrate, honour and generally trumpet great work and great contributions to this exciting and growing field.

Thanks to a generous sponsor, Kantar, we can run it as a non-profit venture and hand out decent-sized cash prizes to winners.

Also, excitingly, every month, we’ll be running visualisation challenges so everyone can have a chance to contribute.

Pop over and take a look. Tell us what you think.

You can follow our awards on Twitter, too.

Posted in Goings-on, IiB awards | Tagged , , , |
4 Comments

Hierarchy of Digital Distractions @ MoMA

July 25, 2011

The Hierarchy of Digital Distraction - Information Is Beautiful - David McCandlessVery honoured that the Hierarchy of Digital Distractions features in the latest exhibition at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York.

“Talk To Me”, curated by the legendary Paola Antonelli, explores how innovations in communication design are transforming our lives. It features interactive objects, data visualizations, and brain-blending guerilla tech projects.

The Hierarchy Of Digital Distractions explores and visualizes the subtle, invisible structure I use to prioritize one digital distraction over another. Check out its page on MoMA and press some buttons. (if you tweet, use #ttmhierarchy).

limited edition prints

To celebrate, I’ve created a batch limited edition prints. Oh man – they’re gorgeous.

I thought it would be ironic to render such a technological-themed viz with the really old-school “risograph” print technique. It produces a really grainy, smudgy, soulful ‘old-school’ look. (Thanks to HatoPress in London for their awesomely detailed work).

Look at that!
Hierarchy Of Digital Distractions - David McCandless - Limited edition prints
(They’re also super eco-friendly: printed on recycled art paper with soy-based inks.)

You can order limited edition signed prints now in our store.

source: my tawdry life

Posted in events, Goings-on | Tagged , , , |
8 Comments

Left vs Right v1.5

July 22, 2011

Left vs Right v 1.5 - Information is Beautiful - David McCandless
An update of our fabled Left vs Right concept map. Written and art-directed by David McCandless. Designed by Stefanie Posavec.

I’ve finally updated this image after lengthy (and sometimes heated) discussion with right wingers. The goal was to smooth out my biases, really. As a left-leaning journalistic type, I had subtly – and unconsciously – biased the diagram to make the Left seem better than than the Right. But taking in feedback – and no small-amount of fireballs in the comments – I’ve refined the wording and changed a few other subtle elements to hopefully rebalance the image.

If you’re curious and beady-eyed, I’ve set up a little spot-the-difference image. There are five differences.

The image is also on the Guardian Datablog today and printed in the paper. There, I’ve gone into a bit more detail about the process of making the image. Enjoy!

I love this diagram. And I’m really happy to offer you a fresh new gorgeous A2 print of it on FSC-certified Munken art paper. Check out the store. (All monies go back into the website, for paying our lovely contributors etc).

See the US version. See the Rest-of-the-World Version.

Writing & art-direction: David McCandless
Design: Stefanie Posavec
Sources: Encyclopedia Brittanica, Wikipedia, Conservative-Resources.com

Posted in Originals, updated | Tagged , , , |
61 Comments

Is The HPV Vaccine Safe? v 2.0

July 21, 2011

Remember a couple years ago when there was a big kick-off about the safety of the HPV (Human Papillomavirus) Vaccine?

The virus causes 99.7% of all cases of cervical cancer – the second deadliest for women, after breast cancer.

But some concern sprang up around the safety of the jab. This was inflamed by the fact that it’s most effective when given to girls aged 12-13. Stories of girls fainting and other health scares snowballed the concern into full-on fear. Tabloids branded the jab “as deadly as the cancer”. Parents stone-walled the vaccine.

We did a graphic at the time to show the chances of a nasty or fatal outcome were miniscule (you had more chance being struck by lightning).

This week we noticed, via Dr Jen Gunter’s site, that detailed new data has appeared on the vaccine and its safety.

Inevitably, I’ve graphickised® the essence for easy injection into your mind.

As ever, all our data, sources and calculations: http://bit.ly/HPVsafety

Is the HPV vaccine safe? - Information is Beautiful - David McCandless

There’s that data link if you want to check our sources: http://bit.ly/HPVsafety

I’m refreshing and redesigning a selection of our diagrams over the next week. So stay tuned.

Design & research: David McCandless
Research: Miriam Quick
Via: Dr Gen Gunter
Data: http://bit.ly/HPVsafety
Sources: Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, MetaAnalysis by Lu et al (2011), Rambout et al (2007), SEER @ The National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society , Medeiros et al (2009).

Posted in Originals, updated | Tagged , , , |
77 Comments

The Sunscreen Smokescreen

July 11, 2011

It started with a question. It always does. This time, the question was simple: How much sunscreen should I wear?

I’m a pale geek who burns. I wanted to know the optimal. A simple question with a simple answer, right?

Wrong.

This simple question took me on a massive journey through the data, information myths and misinformation that surround our perception of sunscreen. I’m calling it the Sunscreen Smokescreen.

All our data, calculations and references here: http://www.bit.ly/sunscreensmoke

The Sunscreen SmokeScreen - Information Is Beautiful - David McCandless

Buy a instantly-download hi-res printable PDF of this graphic
from our store or via this paypal link: http://pul.ly/b/18601
(n.b. purchased PDFs are emailed to your paypal registered email address)

All our data, calculations and references here:
http://www.bit.ly/sunscreensmoke

RESEARCH & DESIGN: David McCandless
RESEARCH: Miriam Quick
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH: James Key, Pearl Doughty-White
ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Piero Zagami, Derek Guo, Joe Swainson
SOURCES: The British Medical Journal, Cancer Research UK, World Health Organisation, PubMed, Norwegian Institute For Air Research, Health Canada, Skin Cancer Foundation, Nature, American Academy Of Dermatology, National Health Service, National Cancer Institute, Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, Journal Of Clinical Oncology, American Journal of Public Health, The Environmental Working Group, New York Times, Wikipedia.
DATA & RESEARCH: see it all here: http://www.bit.ly/sunscreensmoke
Posted in Originals, static | Tagged , , , |
108 Comments

Which Fish Are Okay To Eat?

June 24, 2011

Which Fish Are Okay To Eat?
Over-exploitation. Destructive fishing techniques. Polluting fish farms. If you want to eat ethically, which fish are actually fine for your fork?

My latest image for The Guardian Datablog pools and visualises the latest research from the Marine Conservation Society (PDF), Greenpeace and the SeaFood Watch. 

» See the graphic
» See the data: http://www.bit.ly/whichfish
» Instantly download an A4 hi-res print for £1.50 ($2.50) (all profits go to the Marine Conservation Society)
» Download a free, pocket infosheet of this data for handy reference.

Posted in Originals, static | Tagged , , , |
10 Comments


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