This a great cross section of how design can be used to create transparent data. Taking a mass of complicated/boring data and turning it into something that can be interpreted easily.
I thought it better to provide a bit of text for each post to help give the visuals some context (hence the length), I have tried to provide link-backs for all the case studies but some of them I have lost so if I miss one feel free to fill me in! I also chucked in a few links to places that I drew inspiration from for this post.
Calender: Each month is assigned a colour according to its temperature. E.g. January = Freezing so it is assigned the colour light blue. Via Behance
Sentence Rhythms & Structures: This is one of my personal favorites the artists name is Stefanie Posavec and her maps capture regularities and patterns within the literary work ‘On the Road’ by Kerouac. Her maps visually represent the rhythm and structure of Kerouac’s literary space. For more info (and I strongly recommend the read) visit Stefanies website – its been real
One year in Iraq: An infographic that shows the loss of life in Iraq over a one year period. No lightbox for this image so that it is easier to read the details. Via NY Times
Hard Times: Less the visualisation of actual data, more the use of graphics to help people visualise information. Detailing the total amount of time innocent people have spent on death row. No lightbox for this image so that it is easier to read the details
Virtual Water: Based on the data gathered by Hoeckstra et al. in their study Water Footprint of Nations. German designer Timm Kekeritz visualizes the water footprint of selected nations, emphasizing the im- and export of virtual water. Via Traumkrieger
Obsessive Compulsive: This piece documents everything the designer owns, he has photographed, categorised and colour coded every item. Then quantified this information into charts.
A_B_ Peace & Terror: is a geopolitical survey of the 192 member states of the United Nations and their contribution to world peace/terror. It is a dual-sided poster where the A_ side displays measures of peace and the B_ side, measures of terror. For each of the A_B_ measures, the graph is divided into 3 rings (3 separate indexes for peace and 3 separate indexes for terror)… Via PlusMinus
Inspiration
- Good Magazine – A great resource people who driving data-visulasation and design transparency. It’s a cool website though and there’s a lot more too it than just that (worth a read for sure).
- Less than Helpful – How not to do it!
- Info-graphic viral video – This is a great example of visualising information with animation/video.
July 21st, 2008
9:58 pm
These visualizations are great – any more additional sources / examples would be great.
July 21st, 2008
11:51 pm
My personal favourite is the Year in Iraq visual.
It’d be interesting to see this combined into a design that also contains the Cost of War video you posted a litte while ago to show the human and monetary cost of the war…
July 22nd, 2008
9:37 am
@charlie yea would make a very interesting poster. Year in Iraq is a really powerful way of showing the true cost of life, I think the pictograms make the sheer scale of the subject easier to grasp… Would def combine well with the Cost of War video
July 23rd, 2008
7:16 pm
really nice
i found ur blog randomly from collectivehaus
i like this post a lot
my favorite would be the OCD dude and the calendar
but calendar doesn’t apply to ppl down under does it
July 23rd, 2008
7:34 pm
@emma yea collectivehaus is really cool! really nice project to be involved in. Thanks for interest in the post, I’ll scoot over to your blog and have a read a bit later
cheers