I am a graphic designer who focuses on information design. My day job? Well, they asked me not to say. But to be clear, this blog is my something I do on my own time and does not represent the views of…my employers. I think what I can say is that given my interest in information design—be it in the shape of clear charts, maps, diagrams, or wayfinding systems—I am fortunate that my day job focuses on data visualisation. Outside of work, I try to stay busy with personal design work. Away from the world of design, I have become an amateur genealogist and family historian. You will sometimes see that area of work bleed into my posts.
I have spent this past week in Lithuania for work. And it was cold. But it was colder still in Chicago. Thankfully on a Friday we have xkcd to put all this cold into a bit more perspective. Although his example uses St. Louis, I presume it holds for most cities.
Today’s post comes via one of my coworkers. She sent me this graphic from Thomson Reuters that uses a Sankey diagram to show the movement of European Union citizens within the EU. As with my post yesterday, I feel this piece would benefit from even limited interactivity. Exploring individual countries or individual flows by touch or by mouse would be more useful than relying on annotations. But also as I said, that might not have been possible within the production constraints of this piece.
Today’s post looks at education across a set of 65 countries from a standardised test backed by the OECD, basically a group of wealthy countries. The test results found that some poor countries have surprisingly good education systems whereas some of the world’s wealthiest countries—here’s looking at you, United States—perform poorly. The Huffington Post created this graphic to plot the data.
I really enjoy this piece. It plots each income decile’s results, blocks the countries into OECD members versus their partners, and then each country’s average socioeconomic status is shown as being above or below the OECD average. This is the type of piece I see as a static image that I would want to see made interactively—though I fully understand how difficult and time-consuming that can be—so that I could begin to filter and re-arrange the data. Could discoveries be made by organising countries by geographic regions? Could one just look at the top or bottom deciles?
If you have been living under a rock, Sochi, Russia is hosting the winter Olympics this year. A year in which the Russian government passed legislation banning not same-sex relationships but advocacy for said relationships. Several countries, including the United States, take issue with the legislation. But this graphic from the National Journal hints that in order to reverse such barriers to same-sex marriages, the United States and like-minded societies have a long way to go to convince not just Russians, but many other societies across the world.
This past weekend I was having a discussion with some friends about the height of various Ferris wheels. Specifically we were wondering the height difference between the London Eye and the wheel at Chicago’s Navy Pier. Well, it turns out that Washington, D.C. is preparing to begin construction on its own wheel. Naturally, the Washington Post covered the story with a graphic to compare the Capital Wheel to the London Eye.
And for those wondering about Chicago’s wheel at Navy Pier, well it clocks in at 150 feet. That makes it 25 feet shorter than the Capital Wheel in D.C.
100 years ago we began to fly commercially. We moved beyond daredevil stunts and novelty and created air travel into a business. To commemorate the history, the Guardian commissioned this interactive graphic story to celebrate said history. It includes charts, narration, and near real-time data on actual flights mapped out as in the introductory element captured below.
The South China Morning Post had a fantastic infographic detailing the hunting of elephants for their ivory. Despite bans to make such hunting illegal, the problem continues and is worsening because of the Asian trade in ivory.
We all know of the Flying V, the great hockey plan developed in the 1990s—wait, no, wrong one. I meant to talk about birds flying in formation. Because science is finally allowing us to understand the mechanisms of how and why birds fly in these tight, v-shaped formations. In a BBC article reporting on the most recent findings, the graphics team included a diagram showing just how formation flying works.
Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.
Last week I was asked what was the population of Canada. I first said 30 million. I then figured that was too small so I said more like 50–60 million. Turns out I was closer to being correct the first time. A Google search that cites the World Bank among its sources listed the population as nearer to 35 million. But what does that mean?
Over at I Love Charts, the United States was broken down into units shaped by the size of the population of Canada. Roughly, the United States = 10 Canadas.
Credit for the piece goes to an unknown individual. If discovered, I would appreciate being informed.