Examining How We Measure Our Lives

Commentary, critiques, and observations on information design and data visualisation

  • Massimo Vignelli died yesterday at the age of 83. Fastco has a much better article than I think I could read, this image is from their piece but is of Vignelli’s transit map for New York. I wrote about an interactive piece several years back that allowed you to compare Vignelli’s map to the new system map for the MTA.…

    Read on…: Massimo Vignelli Dies

  • Sunday (and a few days preceding it) was election day in the European Union for the European Parliament. Unfortunately it was also a banner day for the far-right parties. In France the National Front (FN) took the top slot and in the United Kingdom that went to the UK Independence Party (UKIP). This graphic from the Economist looks at the…

    Read on…: Europe Votes

  • Happy Friday. Happy Memorial Day Weekend. Happy Summer. Just about all of those things mean a drink of some kind. And thanks to Time, we can look at ourselves and find out what drinking culture each of us best reflects. The data comes from the WHO and looks at both total consumption and then share of consumption. So last week…

    Read on…: Which Countries Do You Drink Like?

  • Over the last few weeks, tensions have been rising in the South China Sea. While most of the world has been focused on violence in Ukraine and Nigeria, fishing boats and other maritime vessels in the South China Sea have been clashing—thankfully without the use of guns or missiles. These clashes contribute to a growing fear that one day, one…

    Read on…: The South China Sea

  • While I hate coffee, I do like sankey charts. And this piece from Quartz makes use of one when discussing the exports of coffee. In particular, the article focuses on the value that coffee manufactures, e.g. Nestle, add to Swiss imports of un-roasted beans before exporting them roasted. (Increasingly in little pods.) Overall, the piece is of a digestible length…

    Read on…: Swiss Coffee Exports

  • Today’s piece is hit and miss. It comes from the World Economic Forum and the subject matter is the use of Twitter across Africa. I think the subject matter is interesting; mobile communication technology is changing Africa drastically. The regional trends shown in the map at the core of the piece are also fascinating. Naturally I am left wondering about…

    Read on…: How Africa Tweets

  • Racism is a long-standing problem for humanity. But in the wake of the Donald Sterling scandal in the NBA, the New York Times put together a graphic looking at white attitudes towards blacks in the United States. The data reveals that while racist views are down from highs decades past, there is still a substantial amount. From a design standpoint,…

    Read on…: White Racism in America

  • Last Friday, we looked at how one individual defined the state of Florida. Today, we look at how FiveThirtyEight attempted to get lots of people to define the Midwest. Personally, as someone from Philadelphia I tend to side with the author of the article, Walter Hickey. He writes he’s “from New York, and [he] generally consider[s] anything west of Philadelphia…

    Read on…: Defining the Midwest

  • Time for some sports. Okay, I’m admittedly thinking of it because company softball started up again. And for some reason, the teams have a horrible habit of horrendous injuries. So what better way to commemorate (a week late, whatever) the start of the season than a nice illustration of Tommy John surgery. For those of you unfamiliar with it, in…

    Read on…: Tommy John Surgery

  • In the votes held this past weekend, the separatists in Donestk and Luhansk claim they received a mandate for independent states. However, according to polls conducted by Pew a few weeks back, most of Ukraine, with the notable exception of Crimea, wants to remain united as a single country. In fairness, this poll was conducted after Russia annexed Crimea but…

    Read on…: Ukrainian Unity