Today’s post is hosted on Brain Pickings. It’s diagrams made by Kurt Vonnegut that describe how basic plot lines work along two axes. There is a short video you can watch that goes over a few of them. But my favourite is, of course, not there. You have to read a bit further along to find it. Or just look below. But if you don’t read it, you’ll miss the written context.
Credit for the piece goes to Kurt Vonnegut.
Today’s post is not news-related for a change. (Don’t worry, I’ll likely get back to that next week.) Instead, we have a new collection of mobile data visualisations curated by Sebastian Sadowski. You can choose to see either smartphone or tablet visualisations and then filter by visual form.
Credit for the site goes to Sebastian Sadowski, to the various works to the various designers.
As I noted in my Friday post, I spent last week in Lithuania for work. That same Friday night, I had a conversation with a few coworkers over dinner and a beer about credit cards. They teased me that for all of America’s technological advances and advantages, even in Lithuania they were using more secure forms of bank card payment: chipped cards. And that story seems a perfect segue into today’s post from the Washington Post.
Through a combination of charts, maps, and illustrations—a cropping of which is shown below—the Post details the advantages of using microchipped cards in preventing certain types of fraud. Additionally, because of the integration of the visuals with the written explanations, text can be used to provide longer anecdotes to explain exceptions and outliers when and where necessary.
Credit for the piece goes to Todd Lindeman.
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.
Credit for the piece goes to Adolfo Arranz.
Another from xkcd, this time on television ownership. If you are among those trending towards the embarrassed. Well, it’s Christmas season. So get ready to go buy one.
Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.
Your author graduated from art school. That means my college sports consisted of…a fencing team. And dancers. And some of them were cheerleaders for the Eagles I heard. Does that count? I did, however, attend Penn State for a year. So in this interactive graphic from the New York Times that tracks conference membership for various college football teams, I clicked Penn State.
Colour is effective in this piece. The use of purple to highlight key stories off the grey background becomes even more important when they are offset from the selected schools in orange. If you cannot find your particular line of interest, a drop-down menu makes for an easy selection.
Bonus points—not shown here—for using spark lines in the introductory paragraph. A solid piece overall.
Credit for the piece goes to Mike Bostock, Shan Carter, and Kevin Quealy.
On Sunday night the Denver Broncos played the New England Patriots. The contest sported two of the game’s best quarterbacks: Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. This interactive graphic by the Guardian detailed how, in this season alone, Manning is putting up record numbers.
Credit for the graphic goes to the Guardian US interactive team.
The Washington Post had an interesting story on how, in South Korea, Internet Explorer dominates the internet. I won’t spoil the story, it is kind of fascinating and worth a short read, but the accompanying graphics show just how dominant the browser has been in a leading technology country in Asia.
Credit for the piece goes to Richard Johnson.
Last week the Washington Post published a piece that looked at demographic trends and their impact on the world’s different geographies. None of the graphics in the piece are revolutionary, nor are they mind-blowing fantasticness. They are, however, clear and concise and show the story. In fact the overall piece is well done because while the graphics show the trends and trajectories, the written word above and below the graphics explains some of the underlying causes and potential effects. In short, a solid piece that is worth the read.
Credit for the piece goes to Max Fisher.
Happy Friday, everybody.
Now go wash your eyes out.
Credit for the piece goes to Jewel Loree.
