Wealth Inequality in America

The Wealth Inequality in America infographic video was posted on YouTube back in November 2012.  The video is a good example of what the best infographic designs accomplish: Make the complex understandable.  

Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.

The data visualization in the video is very powerful and effective.  It takes the huge numbers that our brains have trouble processing, and visualizes them in a way that we can understand.  Comparing numbers puts them into context for the viewer, and comparing the different fifths of the population works very well in this instance.

The data sources are clearly listed at the end of the video, and they are even made available as clickable links in the video description on YouTube (which is very helpful).  This helps the credibility of the video tremendously.  Not many viewers (4,336,254 views as of the day I post this) will click to the links to view the source data, but they’re there.  Transparency creates credibility.

However, it’s not clear who created and is publishing the video, and this hurts the credibility a little bit, at least to a skeptic like me.  The video was uploaded by the user politizane, whose account was created just to upload this video.  No history of other videos, and no links to a company or website.  The author/designer obviously has an agenda, and spent a lot of time or money creating the video.  It would enhance the credibility even more if the viewer knew who was publishing and promoting the video.

Thanks to Doug for sending the link!

Shutterstock: Annual Design Trends 2013 Edition

Shutterstock has created their Shutterstock: Annual Design Trends 2013 Edition infographic. From the infographic, we learn what was hot in 2012, as well as expected trend for the coming year of 2013. Interesting fact: Infographic downloads from Shutterstock are up 525% from 2011! 

Here at Shutterstock, if there’s one thing we obsess over as much as inspiring imagery, it’s data. Add that to the fact that we license more images than anyone else, and you have a recipe for some pretty insightful trend forecasting.

We created our first design-trends infographic last year; this time, we took things up a notch, incorporating a lot more data, a lot more images, and a more in-depth look at what we see heating up in the year ahead.

Check out the full infographic, then read on for 10 of our own favorite takeaways.

The use of stock vectors, especially for data visualizations, is on a huge upward trend as more and more people are designing their own infographics and data visualizations.  I am very excited about this trend, as people are breaking away from the chart templates in MS Office to visualize their new data in new and different ways.

I would prefer to see all of the statistics visualized using the stock vector data visualizations from Shutterstock.  That would have been more in line with the growth trend they are showing.  Much better than just showing the numbers in text they way they have in this design.

The footer of the infographic is missing both a copyright statement (or Creative Commons license), and the URL directly to the blog post with the high-resolution infographic.  The URL they did include is just to the main blog page, and six months from now the infographic will be buried in the past blog posts.

Thanks to Danny for sending in the link!

3D Printing: How Long Till The Revolution?

I can’t wait!  3D Printing: How Long till the Revolution? from Neo Mammalian Studios takes a stab at predicting the rise of 3D printing.  Seriously, I want the day when I can print out my own coffee cup design, custom LEGO shapes and a new iPhone case!  Download the model, and print!  That flimsy plastic piece from the vacuum broke again?!?  Just print a new one!

3D printing has slowly started to get popular in use in the industry, by the hobbyists and ordinary individuals in their homes. If you can design it, the 3D printer can build it. However, we are still in the early stage of owning and using 3D printer. So, what is the length of time before it will become mainstream like the PC? The infographic will show when will every American own a 3D printer and how it affects the profit of those who are selling consumer objects and more.

The doughnut charts are colorful and unique in that hexagon shape.  The use of Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations line charts is actually very easy to understand.  The comparisons to the PC market and to music sales online are great analogies.

“3D printing is only gonna get more awesome.”

Found on Visual Loop!

The History of Prime Time Television

The History of Prime Time Television is a new infographic poster from HistoryShots co-founder and designer Larry Gormley.  Covering 70+ years of television history, the timeline plots out the most important/popular/trendsetting shows grouped by genre.

This graphic charts the history of prime time television from the origins of the industry in 1940s to the present day. More than 550 of the most important, popular, and trendsetting television shows are mapped into more than 20 genres. Shows selected have won critical acclaim according to recognized television critics or have wide audience appeal based on Nielsen ratings and awards won. The number of years each show has been aired is mapped allowing you to quickly see how long each show lasted.

This graphic was created by Larry Gormley. Reebee Garofalo’s Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music was a key inspiration for the design.

Compared to prior designs, it looks like this new project presented the additional challenge of visualizing multi-year television series, which were addressed with extended dotted lines showing the date range for each television show.

The design is available for purchase as a 41”x20” poster for $39.00 from the HistoryShots site.

Pairing Wine & Food

Pairing Wine & Food from Wine Folly is a simple, but incredibly useful infographic design.

Ever sink your teeth into a maple bar donut and follow it with a sip of straight black coffee? If you haven’t, you need to. The sweet and fat of a donut is the perfect compliment to bitter hot coffee. You’ll never want to add milk and sugar again.
 
Sommeliers use opposing taste profiles such as sweet and sour all the time to create perfect food and wine pairings. Follow the simple set of guidelines below to make the best wine and food pairings at home.

This is the kind of infographic design you just want to hang up in your kitchen, because you’ll be looking at it so often.  This design is deceptively simple.  The color-coded connection lines are easy to follow, and it’s clear to the reader that they have good choices to drink with different foods.  There isn’t one “right” answer.

Also available as a poster: http://shop.winefolly.com/collections/posters/products/basic-food-wine-pairing

Found on Infographics Showcase and  Best Infographics

SxSW 2013, an infographic

Rocksauce Studios has released SxSW 2013, an infographic looking at the basic statistics and demographic data around this year’s South By Southwest conference in Austin , TX.

The seven SXSW events — gaming expo, interactive, film, trade show, music, music gear expo and flatstock — attracted an audience of more than 300,000 last year (though only a sliver were badge holders). The PDF offers an attendance breakdown.

Demographics: the largest percentage of attendees are between the ages of 31 and 40; 86 percent of registrants are from the U.S.; 60 percent of attendees are male; and 29 percent of festival goers work in the creative industries.

Five companies to see success with SXSW include Foursquare, Twitter, Gamesalad, Phonebooth and Foodspotting.

The 2013 SXSW festival runs March 8-17.

300,000 attendees last year, and this year looks to be even bigger! Not sure why they released it as a huge, high-resolution PDF file, but the you can download it here.

Thanks to David for sending in the link, and also found on the Austin Business Journal

HEY!  I’m headed down to Austin on Friday for SxSW, so I would love to hear from anyone else headed down there as well.  Should we have an infographics meetup?  

2012 SEO Tactics

The 2012 SEO Tactics infographic from Response Mine Interactive breaks down the tactics they use to get the highest rankings for their clients in 2012, and expect them to stay the same for the majority of 2013. The four main tactics are on-site influences, off-site influences, reporting & analytics, and keywords.  

These are the components of a dominating SEO campaign. It’s a simple infographic listing and weighting every tactic we employ to gain top rankings for our clients and make them millions of dollars. Expect this chart to stay current through most of 2013.

A Little History

Since 2001, RMI has managed direct response digital marketing campaigns for world class companies like Rooms to Go, The Home Depot, Staples, Travelzoo and Hallmark. 

But does it come in a poster?!

Yes! If you would like a FREE 36x24 color poster simply email your name and address to deborah.fisher@responsemine.com and we will send it to you. 

Free Downloads

The poster and large format graphic was such a huge hit last year we’ve decided to take it a step further, Desktop Wallpaper. Simply choose the size that fits your monitor resolution. It should open in another tab/window then just right-click and save the file locally. Enjoy: 1024x768, 1280x800, 1280x1024, 1366x768, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1080, 1920x1200, 2560x1440.

Found on http://visualoop.tumblr.com

Ski Holidays 2013

If you like to ski, this is the infographic for you. Ski Holidays 2013 infographic from Home Away UK tells you where to find the best snow for skiing in Europe. Then as an added bonus, a few tips and facts to educate the reader about ski flags and types of snow.

Winter is here and the snow is starting to fall across the ski resorts of Europe and North America. Now is the time to start planning your next ski holiday, but before you do check out HomeAway’s fun guide to the slopes of Europe. We have also put together some interesting ski tips and advice including information provided by ski experts Nicola Iseard (Editor of Fall-Line Magazine) and Fraser Wilkin (Founder of Weathertoski.co.uk).

The information is well organized and the I like the simple, line-art illustrations.  By keeping the illustrations simple, they don’t pull attention away from the data.

Designed by This Is Visual, they provided a URL link to the data sources in the infographic instead of listing them out.  You can see the data sources at http://bit.ly/SpNJ1v, and the list extensive so I understand why they listed them separately.

The infographic should include both a copyright statement and the URL to the infographic landing page so readers can find the original when they see this infographic posted on other sites.

Thanks to Russell for sending in the link!

Manhattan Building Heights as Land Value

Manhattan Building Hieghts by radicalcartography.net is an indirect measure of land value based on building height. The infographic is shaped like Manhattan itself, and the actual building’s color darkness shows their heights in their correct locations.

You can also see an alternate design using assessed tax value as the data set, and how that maps out land value differently.  

Found on http://visual.ly

The Social Grammys

I missed posting this before the actual Grammys, but I really like the design.  The Social Grammys from Activ8Social looks at the online stats of the biggest names in music.

What is the only thing that could be more exciting than this year’s Grammy Awards? An infographic about the Grammy Awards, of course! Before we see them rock the red carpet, we wanted to see how the biggest names in music size up against each other in terms of their social reach.

To find out who would win the “Social Grammys,” we analyzed the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube accounts of the nominees for the Best New Artist, Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Album of the Year. There’s no question that the nominees all have a substantial and influential online presence but some are shockingly stronger in some areas than others. One surprising statistic is “Thinking About You” artist, Frank Ocean, has over 1 million more followers on Twitter than he has fans on Facebook. Another interesting statistic is the fact that only 42% of the nominees have Instagram accounts.

I thought the photos of the artists shown through the grids of squares representing the number of YouTube subscribers was really clever and well done.