Author: Brendan Barry

I am a graphic designer who focuses on information design. Most recently I worked for the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and prior to that I was Head of Design at Euromonitor International with my design team split between Chicago and London.

Reducing Postal Sort Capacity

For my non-American audience, the United States uses a federal system under which its constituent states retain the responsibility for organising and executing elections. And so we have 50 different electoral systems. A select few use the United States Post Office (USPS) to distribute blank ballots to voters and collect them when completed. Five states have used this system without issue for years (and infinitesimally small issues of fraud): Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

But with the United States having failed to adequately deal with its Covid-19 outbreak, see yesterday’s post, most US states will be expanding their mail-in ballots to help protect voters and keep them safe. But this all depends upon the USPS. The Trump administration fears losing the election and in a press conference Trump admitted aloud that he wants to withhold funding from the USPS to prevent people from voting.

What does that look like? Well, Trump appointed a new postmaster general to carry out his wishes and the Washington Post created this graphic to show where the USPS has reduced the sorting capacity, a critical part of the delivery of postal ballots.

Is this why my mail is taking longer than usual?

Often I will write about how I don’t like the use of circles and their measurement by area.

First, the advantage of the circles here is that they are tied to specific geographic sites, and they do not refer to geographic areas like counties, states, or regions. So in this case, this is a plus.

Second, the circles appear to not be sized by area, but maybe by diameter. I would need more time to investigate this, but the areas look off. But I should add I do like how the largest postal facility impacts are called out by labels, and those in heavily clustered areas are numbered and placed off the southeast seaboard.

Third, I’m not really sure why the colours are necessary, or rather, what changing the colours adds given that the sizes of the circles is already changing.

So while I have some issues with what’s going on here, the content itself is critically important for people to see. Note that a number of the largest postal facilities by impact are located in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Texas. And Florida has a lot of medium-sized circles. And while Texas is likely still a Republican state in the electoral college, Biden is currently polling within a good night’s results’ reach of Trump there. The other states are all solidly swing states up for grabs or with Biden leading by some degree in the current polling.

Credit for the piece goes to the Washington Post graphics department.

Is Covid-19 Surging in New Zealand?

Yesterday, President Trump claimed that Covid-19 was “surging” in New Zealand, a country widely lauded as having successfully contained and suppressed their outbreak. That has allowed Wellington to reopen large swathes of their economy without incident.

Until this surge.

And by surge we mean something like 30 cases in 3 days. So, let’s compare that surge to the numbers of new cases in the United States.

Now, to be fair, New Zealand has a population of nearly 5 million, the United States has nearly 335 million. So a direct number-to-number comparison of the number of new cases per day isn’t fair.

So let’s look at the number of new cases per million people, which equalises the data for population.

So yeah, New Zealand is not “surging”. The data shows that even with the more limited testing per capita conducted in the United States, we are nowhere near the point of bending the curve anywhere close to zero.

Credit for the piece is mine.

Covid-19 Update: 16 August

So here are the charts from the last week of Covid data in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois.

When we compare last week’s update to today’s, we can see that Pennsylvania did indeed bottom out and is back on the rise and the same can probably be said for Delaware. Although a fair amount of the one-day spikes in those numbers we see today are from an outbreak in a correctional system.

Whilst Virginia did go up, by week’s end, it had settled back down to a point not dissimilar to last week. So nothing really changed and time stood still in Virginia. The same can also be loosely said for New Jersey, where it was more about fluctuations than determined rises or falls.

In Illinois, however, we finally saw a plateauing of the new cases numbers and with the slightest of declines .

New cases in PA, NJ, DE, VA, and IL.
New cases curve in PA, NJ, DE, VA, and IL.

Then in deaths we have not much to say as they remain low in New Jersey and Delaware and stable and moderate in Illinois.

Virginia’s recent spike appears to have subsided, as it’s back to nearly 10 deaths per day from the virus.

But most concerning is Pennsylvania. Here, while the numbers are still relatively low, they are on a slow and gradual rise. At this point the seven-day average is beginning to rise above 20 deaths per day.

Deaths in PA, NJ, DE, VA, and IL
Death curve in PA, NJ, DE, VA, and IL

Credit for the piece is mine.

Space Force Logo Pt. II

Happy Friday, everyone. We’ve made it to the end of the week. Yesterday, I departed from the usual data visualisation discourse and delved into some branding/identity work. Spoilers, that’s a good part of my career as well.

But I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how the armed forces branch could be represented through some different typographic choices.

Like I discussed yesterday, the designers behind the new logo made some interesting choices. But the idea of setting the words in a geometric sans serif makes a lot of sense.

But a space force is really just the beginning of the American Empire. In Spacceeee. And so a typeface that evokes the expansion of an empire might work. So why not Trajan, inspired by the carved letters in Trajan’s column, a monument to Emperor Trajan and his victory over the Dacians.

On the other hand, this administration isn’t the best with design. And so instead of a lovely but imperial face, they would probably just choose something safe like a Garamond.

Not as grand, and a bit bookish, this doesn’t work really well for an armed forces branch. In Spacceeee. Plus, we also know that President Trump likes to brand everything with himself. And several years ago, Buzzfeed paid a type designer to create a typeface from some handwritten notes they had from Trump. They put it out for the public and of course I downloaded it. So it wouldn’t be surprising to see Space Force in Trump’s own hand.

Little difficult to read, but there is an interesting blend of upper and lower case letters in Trump’s handwriting. Maybe that could work with bringing big space to the little people of planet Earth?

Nah, who am I kidding? We’re all here for what it really should be:

So Cutting Edge

Space Force.

Yep, that’s still a thing. I’ll spare you all the long history of Space Force, because we’ve all pointed and laughed at that enough. So much so there is a Netflix show about it. There was an old logo for Space Force, which basically was the logo for Starfleet Command. You know, the fictional Space Force of Star Trek.

Well, now there’s a new Space Force logo.

And, well, it’s still Star Trek-y. But at least they dropped the most obvious bits. But I want to point out that typography. I get it, geommetric sans serif representing science, technology, the future. Safe pick, easily defensible. But look at those slices in the stems and the crossbars.

I can understand those in the E and F perhaps. But the slices to the stems of the P, F, and R make those letters feel unsteady, as if you had managed to just axe a good chunk out of a tree trunk but somehow the rest of the tree was still upright.

And I would argue further that there’s way too much angling going on, or at least it’s all inconsistent. They have this nice delta shape with its angles. Those could be reflected in the typography. The C comes closest, but in a close examination, it’s also not a match.

And so if you pretend the C is correct, with some less severe slices to the E and F perhaps, you can begin to see how a more refined Space Force logo could emerge. I used the blue lines, pulling off the strong angle in the delta shape, to slice the ends of the Es and F. (I don’t have a match for the original typeface, so I subbed in Avenir Next.)

I think that the quick exercise above, if paired with the original typeface, could work a bit better.

Credit for the original goes to somebody, no idea whom.

When Is an Opener Game in Baseball Really Just a Bullpen Game?

Whenever someone not named Eovaldi or Perez starts a Red Sox game in 2020, that’s when.

We all know the Red Sox are the worst team in the American League. They have only two starters, maybe sometimes a third. And then the last two days of the regular five-day rotation cycle, manager Ron Roenicke throws some relievers at the wall and sees which ones stick that night. Spoiler: Few do.

But as much as I enjoy listening to the three-man broadcasting booth (Remy and Eck make the games fun to at least listen to) the games are unwatchable. And then to hear them try and dress a game up as having an opener? Well, what is the opener?

For the non-baseball fans, most are probably aware enough that some guy goes out to a small hill and throws (pitches) a ball at a batter for most of the night. Then towards the end, when the guy’s energy wanes, he is replaced by some guy who throws really fast. That’s over simplified, but that’s a normal ballgame. A starting pitcher records five, but ideally at least six, innings of work before handing the ball over to an eighth-inning setup man and then a ninth-inning closer. Sometimes a really good seventh-inning reliever sets up the setup man.

A bullpen game, by contrast, is when a bunch of those relief pitchers handle the entire game. Usually this would be after a game went into extra innings (since baseball cannot end in a tie, unless you’re in an All Star game), and the next day’s starting pitcher had to finish the long game by pitching several innings. With nobody available to throw six innings, a bunch of relievers come in and try to cover that by pitching one, two, or three innings each.

The opener game is relatively new. The idea is in addition to the really good closer, a really good opener records the first inning or two (3–6 outs) to deal with the opposing team’s best hitters. He then hands the ball over to a mediocre starting pitcher who throws the next four or five innings, who then hands the ball over to the late-inning relief specialists. Doing it this way, the starter avoids one set of at-bats or plate appearances by the opposition’s best hitters.

But when is an opener just a bullpen game? Well, it’s when that mediocre starting pitcher isn’t really a starting pitcher. And when he doesn’t even throw four or five innings. Basically all the Red Sox games this year.

I made a graphic this morning to contrast those different types of games and compare them to a game I watched two nights ago between the Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays. The game was teed up as an opener with a good relief pitcher by the name of Ryan Brasier starting the first inning. But then instead of a mediocre starter pitching four or five innings, we got a mediocre reliever pitching three innings. He handed it over to a guy who was supposed to go maybe two, but couldn’t get through his second inning. He handed it over to another guy, who handed it over to another guy, who handed it over to a final guy. And none of those last guys were the good relievers you would typically expect to see. (Though, to be fair, the Sox weren’t winning, so why use your best relievers?)

What is an opener and how does it compare to a bullpen game?
Different game types compared

Credit for the piece is mine.

Credit for the Red Sox dumpster fire of a season goes to John Henry and ownership.

Sweet Summer Air of Subway Cars

For those of my readers who live in a city where the subway or underground is a great means of getting around the city, you know you really miss that late Saturday night/early Sunday morning bouquet in the air. Though as this New York Times piece explains, sure it smells bad, but that air is probably safer than you dining indoors at a restaurant or even a child attending class in person.

The piece focuses on New York City subway cars, but they are very similar to the rest of the stock used in the United States. It uses a scrolling reveal to show how the air circulation and filtration systems work. Then it concludes with a model of how a person sneezing appears, both with and without a mask. (Spoiler, wear a mask.)

It’s a really nicely done and informative piece. It compares the rate of air recycled in a subway car to that of several other locations, and the results were a bit surprising to me. Of course, early on in the pandemic before we began to fully understand it, the threat was thought to be from contaminated surfaces—and let’s be honest, there are a lot of contaminated surfaces in a New York City subway car—but we now know the real risk is particles breathed/coughed/sneezed out from one’s mouth and nose. And we can now see just how efficient subways are at cycling and filtering that air.

Credit for the piece goes to Mika Gröndahl, Christina Goldbaum, and Jeremy White.

Covid-19 Update: 9 August

Weekend data means, usually, lower numbers than weekdays. And with the exception of Delaware that’s what we have today. Some drops, like Illinois, are more dramatic than others, like New Jersey. And so we look at the seven-day trend.

And that tells a slightly different story. On the one hand we have states like Virginia and Illinois that appear to be continuing upward. The rise in Illinois has been slow and steady, but the average is approaching nearly 2000 new cases per day. In Virgina, the rise was more abrupt and the question is whether this peak has crested in recent days or if come the middle of next week it will resume rising.

In New Jersey and Delaware we see two states with does declines after some sudden spurts of new cases. Jersey had risen to nearly 500 new cases less than two weeks ago, but that’s now back down to fewer than 350. And in Delaware, while today’s number is greater than yesterday’s, the trend is still downard after being at over 100 new cases per day two weeks ago.

New cases curves for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois.
New cases curves for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois.

Then we have Pennsylvania. At one point doing it had done so well in controlling the outbreak to bend the curve to fewer than 500 new cases per day at one point. Then as the state began to reopen, cases began to rise again in the west and now the east. But over the last week that statewide average began to fall. But in the last two days that fall appears to have potentially bottomed out. So come the middle of next week, the question will be does the downward trend continue or has the state hit a new valley before another rise?

Finally, in terms of new deaths, with the exception of Virgina, we have yet to see any rise in deaths that might correlate with the recent rises in new cases. And so nothing new there. But it’s worth pointing out that New Jersey has now reached the high single digits in terms of daily deaths from Covid-19. That’s remarkable for a state that back in April saw nearly 300 people dying every single day.

New death curves for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois.
New death curves for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois.

Credit for the graphics is mine.

Rating Scale

This week is almost over and so instead of a graphic about unemployment numbers, let’s look at a piece from xkcd that provides us all with a new rating scale.

Because, let’s be honest, we all at some point are going to need to rate 2020 come December. And while we still have almost five months remaining, what are you thinking?

Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.