SPAM: More than an Annoyance?

The SPAM: More than an Annoyance? infographic asks the question “Are there actual physical effects of email spam that impact the environment?”  From WebpageFX.com, I like the simple, focused message in this design.

We discovered that a certain amount of Spam emails is actually the equivalent to the level of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions released from driving 3 feet.  Discover how far the number of 2010 spam emails can take you across the world!  You’ll be shocked!  We also highlight the nations most responsible for the furthered adverse impact of Spam’s GHG emissions on our environment.  Our hope is that awareness may create change.  And a great start to doing your part is by personally installing a spam filter on you’re own email account, forwarding spam emails to spam@uce.gov, as well as informing others!

There are a handful of statistics in the infographic that fall into the lazy-designer “large font” style of visualization.  These could have easy been visualized to make the design better.  I do like the shaped clouds to indicate countries and breaking down the different actions related to spam, and relating them to the total carbon footprint.

Although I like the overall design, it is missing some key items.  Data sources?  URL?  WebpageFX’s logo?  License information?

Thanks to Trevin for sending in the link!

Client Infographic: A Solar Innovation Story

Solar Savings: A Solar Innovation Story from ExtraSpace.com is a new infographic by InfoNewt and designer Jeremy Yingling.  This one tells the story of how the company is adding solar panels to the roof space on some of it’s self storage facilities all across the country.  The environmental, financial and community benefits are huge, and this was only the first year of a multi-year plan.

Extra Space Storage is on a mission to produce solar powered clean energy and reduce the carbon footprint of our 850+ self storage facilities. We aim to install 20,000 solar panels this year, and increase the pace of panel installation every year. Energy efficient clean power is good for our customers and our neighborhoods, our planet, and our investors. By the end of 2011 this program will save 2,000 tons of carbon dioxide and 100 acres of fir trees.

An infographic is a fantastic way for Extra Space to tell their story to customers, investors and anyone interested in alternative energy solutions.  It puts their efforts into context and shows the potential of how large their cumulative environmental impact could become.

You can follow Extra Space Storage on Facebook and Twitter (@extraspace)

Our Choice: Interactive, Infographic iPad book

Our Choice, is a new ebook for the iPad and iPhone by Al Gore that includes many infographics and interactive data visualizations that the readers can interact with.  Intended to be the sequel to his book and presentations, An Inconvinient Truth, Our Choice brings a lot of the global warming data to life.

Mike Matas presented the book design in the TED Talk video above, and he’s the co-founder of Push Pop Press, a new digital publishing company. This is the first book from Push Pop Press, but they are working to make the software tools used to make this ebook app available to produce more ebooks.

Ignoring the message and any controversy this book will inspire, the use of data visuals in a ebook format like this is a sign of many more data visualizations to come.

Al Gore’s Our Choice will change the way we read books. And quite possibly change the world. In this interactive app, Al Gore surveys the causes of global warming and presents groundbreaking insights and solutions already under study and underway that can help stop the unfolding disaster of global warming.

Our Choice melds the vice president’s narrative with photography, interactive graphics, animations, and more than an hour of engrossing documentary footage. A new, groundbreaking interface allows you to experience that content seamlessly. Pick up and explore anything you see in the book; zoom out to the visual table of contents and quickly browse though the chapters; reach in and explore data-rich interactive graphics.

More than 30 original interactive infographics and animations

100% of Al Gore’s earnings from Our Choice will be donated to the nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection.

The app is $4.99 in the iTunes Store, and if you purchase through this link, Our Choice ebook, a small portion will go to helping maintain the Cool Infographics site.  You can also buy the printed book from Amazon.

World GHG (Green House Gasses) Emissions Flow Chart

From the World Resources Institute, the World GHG Emissions Flow Chart needs a new name, but shows the composition of GHG (Green House Gasses) emissions and where they come from.

Sources & Notes: All data is for 2000. All calculations are based on CO2 equivalents, using 100-year global warming potentials from the IPCC (1996), based on a total global estimate of 41,755 MtCO2 equivalent. Land use change includes both emissions and absorptions; see Chapter 16. See Appendix 2 for detailed description of sector and end use/activity definitions, as well as data sources. Dotted lines represent flows of less than 0.1% percent of total GHG emissions.

They also have this one for just U.S. GHG emissions:

Found on Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media

GE Ecomagination Challenge “Powering the Grid” Visualized

From GE, this is a visual interface/tracking system of the Ecomagination Challenge: Powering The Grid.

This is a data-heavy visualization.  Each submitted idea is a dot, and the concentric rings are a timeline expanding outward from July 2010 to today.  The dot colors represent the idea categories (Create Power, Connect Power and Use Power).  The size of the dot represents how many votes each idea has received and the additional halo around a dot represents the number of comments left by others on that idea.  I can’t tell, but I hope they use the values to calculate the “area” of each dot and not it’s “diameter”!

“…our data visualization teams have put their design skills to work on GE’s new “ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid.” Backed by $200 million in venture capital funds from GE and its partners, the goal is to find the best ideas from researchers and entrepreneurs that will help accelerate the adoption of smart grid technologies. But it can be a daunting task plowing through the more than 1,400 submissions to-date (and growing). So, as you can see in the data visualization, the entries have been represented graphically, with the circles representing clickable ideas.”

I really like the Solar Roadways idea!

Thanks to Megan for sending the link!

How Wild is North America? (infographic)

How Wild is North America? is an infographic from TheBigWild.org.

Infographics really come in handy when you want to highlight fun facts and empirical  evidence as it relates to scale and impact.

The Big Wild infographic features biodiversity in North America and compares Canada to the United States and Mexico.

Thanks to Alain for sending in the link!

Ecological Footprint from Digital Eskimo

In their interactive 2009 Ecological Footprint infographic report, Digital Eskimo has used the analogy of the football field (soccer field in America) to visualize their impact because global hectares (the standard units of ecofootprint measurement) aren’t easy to conceptualize.

I love that the team at Digital Eskimo is not only using this infographic to share results and information within the company, but also sharing it publicly to demonstrate their commitment to working on projects that inspire positive social, organisational and environmental change.  Infographics are a VERY powerful tool for communicating clear messages within your company, even if you never share it with the outside world.

Digital Eskimo has always worked very hard to minimise our impact on the environment. In order to help us better understand these impacts, and develop more effective strategies to address them, we calculated our ecological footprint for the 2009 financial year.

Ecological footprinting is one way of measuring whether the way in which we operate is sustainable in a global context. We chose this method because it is widely used, it provides results in an understandable format while clearly showing relative impacts of different elements of our operations.

Thanks to Sally for the link and a description of how Digital Eskimo is walking the talk.

World Progress Report poster - Available for one week ONLY

Nathan Yau at FlowingPrints has released a new poster, the World Progress Report.  It’s available for one week ONLY, and then he’s going to release the printer to start printing them up.  Orders will only be taken until January 21st.  Each 24”x30” poster is signed and numbered, and one can be yours for $26 + shipping & handling.

Nathan is doing another great thing.  All proceeds go to UNICEF’s relief effort in Haiti!

One more thing…for the first 50 people who pre-order: a free copy of Atley’s “How America Learns” poster!

UNdata provides a catalog of 27 United Nations statistical databases and 60 million records about the past, present, and future state of the world. Topics include demographics, life expectancy, labor levels, poverty, and a lot more. What does all that data mean though? World Progress Report, the latest from FlowingPrints, offers a look into the expansive UN collection.

In whole, the report tells a story of how we live and die, and the stuff in between.

Check out some of the great details in the poster:

The Carbon Economy - Infographic Video

New infographic video from Xplane.com.  The Carbon Economy takes a look at the political landscape around climate issues and new, green markets are emerging.

Created with The Economist, the video conveys the state of global climate change and what steps must be taken to reach a positive outcome. The piece was shown at The Economist's recent Carbon Economy Summit in November 2009.

Timed with the publication of a special report in The Economist, The Carbon Economy summit examines how the political environment has changed since Kyoto and how committed regions and industries are to a sustainable carbon strategy.

Surface Area Required to Power the World with Solar Power

From LandArtGenerator.org, a world map visualizing the surface area required to power the world's electricity requirements using solar power alone in 2030, using current solar panel technology.  It's getting a lot of traffic on digg, reddit and Twitter too.

Also, check out the same idea, but for off shore wind power.