Points Of View

This is a new t-shirt from Despair.com.  If you're not familiar with Despair, they are the opposite of Successories, the company that produces motivational posters.  I'm a big fan of their humor, and I loved the new shirt design.

Sony Walkman advertising

This may cross the lines between infographics, advertising and art, but I really liked these advertising posters.  They're real subway maps of New York, London and Sydney, with a little artistic twist to add the ear buds.

 

 

I found these on Ad Goodness, and they were created by Saatchi & Saatchi.

VizThink Europe Discount Code!

I know many of my readers would really enjoy the conference VizThink Europe, and the conference is coming up quickly.  The Europe version is in Berlin, Germany this year on October 12-14 at Crown Plaza Berlin City Centre.

We'll have lots of opportunities for hands on experiences, learning from industry gurus, and networking with your visual thinking peers. We'll be bringing a few of your favorite facilitators from San Francisco with all new content, plus a whole lot of new facilitators from Europe.

The great guys at VizThink have created a discount code for readers of Cool Infographics.  Use the code BCRK01 when you register to get €50 ($75-$80 in U.S. dollars these days) off any regular attendance fee (not student, Government or non-profit rates).

If you can get to Berlin (and I have a lot of readers from Europe), you would really get a lot from attending.

Big thanks to the guys at VizThink!

Olympic Wrap-Up

To complete the week of Olympic Infographics from the NYTimes.com, they have created a page to summarize all of the infographics they created.  They've been adding to it every day, so it won't actually be complete until the Olympics are over.

Evolution of Olympic Torches

The group at the NY Times online has been working overtime to create a bunch of infographics as part of their coverage of the 2008 Olympics.  I'm going to highlight them this week with many of the graphics they've created.  Their graphics are coming our rapid-fire just like the events in China.

First up is an Olympic Torch History graphic, highlight the torch designs since 1936 for both the Summar and Winter Olympic Games.   Roll over each torch to see deatils behind the design.

National Debt and the Presidents

First, I'm not pushing any particular political agenda.  There's considerable debate around this chart, so I don't want to start any arguments.  The debate isn't around the validity of the data, but about how it's being presented.  The information is freely available from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Public Debt.

Second, I like that this chart takes a simple bar chart and adds a few more layers of information.  At its root, this is a timeline of the increase in the national debt based on the federal budget by year.  Then layered on top of that are the presidents in office that year, some color coding, the political party controlling the White House and highlights for record years.

Third, just to share the reasons for the debate.  This is a great example of data being visualized with a specific agenda in mind.  Obviously, this is a chart framed to make Republicans look bad, and Democrats look good.  The debate centers around a few issues like programs started by one President will carry into the term of another President and more importantly that the political party controlling Congress actually has more impact on the federal budget than the President does.

The Ropes at Disney

Found on CartoonBrew, this circular chart from 1943 shows the development process of an animated film through the different roles within the Disney organization.  Not exactly an org chart, this is more of a process map.

How do they make those drawings move?  This chart, an separate pull-out from the 1943 booklet, The Ropes At Disney’s (see below), explains the whole process.You’ll note that it all starts with “Walt”. And his main focus was “Story” and “Direction”.

Can you tell I’m going to Walt Disney World today?

The Art of Visual Thinking

Last week, Guy Kawasaki posted a good interview with Dan Roam on his blog.

Do you recognize this picture? It's how Southwest Airlines was pitched.

To provide more insight into the process of visual thinking, I tapped Dan Roam. He is the author of The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures . In this interview he explains why and how to use visual thinking in your business. Click here to read it. To learn even more about visual thinking, be sure to read his book.

Anatomy of a Balloon Animal

Now here's an odd poster by Jason Freeny depicting the internal anatomy of balloon animals.  Check it out along with his other works at Moist Productions.  I especially liked that he included visual instructions on how to create the balloon animal at the bottom.

Thank Torquil for sending in the link!

Visualizing the Design Process: Michael DiTullo

Over on Think>Map>Draw, Michael DiTullo, the Design Director for Converse, shared his thoughts about design and sketched this parallel design process between the intended design process and the actual design process.

Sketch image: 2008 copyrighted Michael DiTullo and released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.