Author: Brendan Barry

  • Europe According to [Insert a Country Here]

    This comes via the blog The Map Room. Designer Yanko Tsvetkov created a series of maps that most wholly, completely, and accurately represent the cultures, peoples, and attitudes of various European countries towards, well, other European countries. Some of the usual suspects are in there, the Brits, the French, and the Germans. However, I find the Bulgarian perspective,…

  • It’s the Economy Stew-pot.

    Oh Cal Richards… But anyways, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research—the people who declare when recessions and such begin and end—the recession that began in December 2007 ended in June 2009. Good news of a sort. And so naturally the press covered it, including the Wall Street Journal. They included this image: One,…

  • Knots for the Weekend

    Courtesy of Feras, this is from the magazine Complex that was the light entertainment for the office this day. It is, of course, an advert for Las Vegas. But in a magazine apparently aimed at men, this felt like a good Friday evening, i.e. pre-bar or other, mixed-gender, social outing, information graphic to share.

  • Immaculately Conceived

    I normally do not comment on advertising and such, but I found this story, via the BBC, of interest. This British advertisement for Antonio Federici ice cream, with the tag line ‘immaculately conceived’, has been banned for mocking Catholics on the eve of the Pope’s visit to the United Kingdom. I found it funny and…

  • Delaware, Home of Tax Free Shopping and Political Upsets

    The big voting day in November is slowly—or rapidly—approaching. But before we get to the main fight, we have all the small-ring events to tease us. And to whet our appetite for magic walls and holographic projections and all the other technological wizardry that shall amaze and astound us all, we have nice graphics about…

  • Turkey Votes…Against Orange

    I like maps, I really do. And I also like politics. And that means I love election maps. Or just voting maps. This here comes from a Turkish news outlet, Today’s Zaman, via the Economist’s article on the election. A (very) brief background for those unfamiliar with the matter at hand: Turkey wants to be…

  • Thomas the Tank Engine, Meet Señor Jose AVE

    This comes from an older article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, but it is new to me. Anyway, it looks at a proposal for high-speed rail in the United States, specifically along the Northeast Corridor, the Washington to Boston route that includes Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, and New York. Anyway, go figure that we still have trains…

  • Clerks. And Not the Death Star Discussing Type.

    The New York Times has a story about the clerks supporting the Supreme Court justices. And how, surprisingly, the Supreme Court is polarised. Truly surprising considering how unpolarised—or would it be depolarised—the remaining two branches of government are these days. Sarcasm aside, the staff at the Times put together a diagram to explain the polarity.…

  • Show Me Some Love

    (Based on a news story, this is sort of a non-designy post. More of a ranty post. So I beg your leave for a couple of words or two.) I love Philadelphia. I wish I could say I was born and raised there, but I was born in the Lehigh Valley and raised in Chester…

  • If Kites Could Fly to the Future, What Would They Find?

    If only Benjamin could see this… These are photographs from a small series published by CNET that focuses on a power grid control room. As one can imagine, managing the flow of electrical energy across somewhere the size of New England could be a bit…complicated. And so one can see from some kind of network…