Tu Aime Le Datavision?

Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, David McCandless, InfoBeautiful, infodesign, infographic, infographics, Information Design, information graphics, Information Is Beautiful, McCandless, My Book, The Visual Miscellaneum, visual miscellaneum Comments Off

Nov 082011

The French edition of our book – Datavision – is out. Très excitant!

You can have a interactive leaf through some of the book’s pages here.

And then pop over to Amazon to snag a copy.

Apparently French kids are already calling it “archifrais” (“super-fresh!”).

Information Is Beautiful French version

Win A Copy

We’re so excited about this, we’re going to give a copy to five of you, our beautiful readers.

Just fill in this form to enter our little competition.

We’ll pick five entries at random from everyone who responds by 6pm GMT (1pm EST) on Monday, 14th November, 2011. (That’s next week.)

Millard Euro-O-Gram

Millard Euro-o-Gram
In the meantime, whet your Datavision appetites with this Francophilic Billion Euro-o-Gram we created recently for Le Monde.

It’s available in Francophonic format too. (sorry it looks a bit ropey – French words are longer – see a higher rez version here (browse to page 20)

DESIGN & RESEARCH: David McCandless
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH: Alex Lemon
ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Derek Gueo
SOURCES: Le Monde, BBC, Forbes and other media reports
DATA: bit.ly/bndollar2

What are the Wall St Protestors So Angry About?

Data Visualisation, dataviz, David McCandless, Economics, Government, InfoBeautiful, infographic, infographics, Information Design, information graphics, Information Is Beautiful, InfoVisualisation, McCandless, statistics, The Visual Miscellaneum, visual miscellaneum Comments Off

Oct 222011

Loads of people have emailed asking if we can improve the graphs on the What The Wall Street Protestors Are So Angry About megapost.

Sure!

Here’s our first stab. A visual about income equality in the USA.

More to follow.

(Check out our Debtris video too)

DESIGN: David McCandless | IDEA: Business Insider | SOURCE: CIA FactBook | DATA: http://bit.ly/wallstdata
RESEARCH: Alex Lemon | ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Piero Zagami

Taste Buds

Data Visualisation, David McCandless, Food, InfoBeautiful, infodesign, infographics, Information Design, information graphics, Information Is Beautiful, McCandless, The Visual Miscellaneum, visual miscellaneum Comments Off

Oct 032011

A visualization of complimentary flavours by David McCandless and Willow Tyrer.

All food tastes amazing, just sometimes not together.

So we roved around 1000 recipes for common flavour patterns and visualized the results.

A good way to build a meal, maybe, if you lack a chef’s intuitive buds. Less data visualization, more dinner visualization. An infoodgraphic, perhaps. Ok, we’ll stop now.

These were created back in 2009 for the Information Is Beautiful book. Willow, a swedish infographic designer, came up with an elegant, organic style. We thought it might be nice to release them into the wild.

Enjoy your meal.

Want to play with these in your kitchen? Buy a printable hi-res PDF from our store

Concept: David McCandless
Visualization design: Willow Tyrer
Research: Pearl Doughty-White
Source: BBC Food, Epicurious.com

Win $3000 in our first information design competition

Awards, Data Visualisation, dataviz, David McCandless, Environment, InfoBeautiful, infographia, infographics, Information Design, information graphics, Information Is Beautiful, McCandless, The Visual Miscellaneum Comments Off

Sep 232011

Information Is Beautiful Awards
Your design creativity could win you $3000. Even if you can’t design.

We’ve launched a series of monthly visualization competitions They’ll run alongside our shiny new annual Information is Beautiful Awards.

First challenge: visualize data on the world’s non-renewable resources. Specifically, how long they might last.

I had a page on this in my book. But I’ve never been entirely happy with it. Can you do better?

If so, you could bag $2,000 for a design. That’s chunky.

And don’t worry if you can’t design. If you’ve got a brain and a pencil but no design skillz, you can still submit a sketch of your idea. There’s $1,000 prize for such “napkin” entries.

Yeah. Everyone can make information beautiful.

The Information Is Beautiful Awards

Data Visualisation, David McCandless, InfoBeautiful, infodesign, infographics, information graphics, The Visual Miscellaneum Comments Off

Sep 102011

There’s so much incredible creativity and innovation in the field of data and information visualisation, we thought we might be cool to set up an awards.

The Information Is Beautiful Awards, in fact.

The idea is to reward practitioners, big and small, from anywhere in the world. And to celebrate, honour and generally trumpet great work and great contributions to this exciting and growing field.

Thanks to a generous sponsor, Kantar, we can run it as a non-profit venture and hand out decent-sized cash prizes to winners.

Also, excitingly, every month, we’ll be running visualisation challenges so everyone can have a chance to contribute.

Pop over and take a look. Tell us what you think.

Hierarchy of Digital Distractions @ MoMA

Data Visualisation, David McCandless, Facebook, Fun, infodesign, infographia, infographics, Information Design, information graphics, Information Is Beautiful, InfoVisualisation, McCandless, Social networks, The Visual Miscellaneum, Twitter, visual miscellaneum, visualisation Comments Off

Jul 262011

Very honoured that the Hierarchy of Digital Distractions features in the latest exhibition at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York.

“Talk To Me”, curated by the legendary Paola Antonelli, explores how innovations in communication design are transforming our lives. It features interactive objects, data visualizations, and brain-blending guerilla tech projects.

The Hierarchy Of Digital Distractions explores and visualizes the subtle, invisible structure I use to prioritize one digital distraction over another. Check out its page on MoMA and press some buttons. (if you tweet, use #ttmhierarchy).

limited edition prints

To celebrate, I’ve created a batch limited edition prints. Oh man – they’re gorgeous.

I thought it would be ironic to render such a technological-themed viz with the really old-school “risograph” print technique. It produces a really grainy, smudgy, soulful ‘old-school’ look. (Thanks to HatoPress in London for their awesomely detailed work).

Look at that!

(They’re also super eco-friendly: printed on recycled art paper with soy-based inks.)

You can order limited edition signed prints now in our store.

source: my tawdry life

Left vs Right v1.5

concept map, dataviz, David McCandless, Economics, Government, InfoBeautiful, infodesign, infographia, Information Design, Information Is Beautiful, InfoVisualisation, McCandless, Philosophy, The Visual Miscellaneum, visual miscellaneum Comments Off

Jul 222011

An update of our fabled Left vs Right concept map. Written and art-directed by David McCandless. Designed by Stefanie Posavec.

I’ve finally updated this image after lengthy (and sometimes heated) discussion with right wingers. The goal was to smooth out my biases, really. As a left-leaning journalistic type, I had subtly – and unconsciously – biased the diagram to make the Left seem better than than the Right. But taking in feedback – and no small-amount of fireballs in the comments – I’ve refined the wording and changed a few other subtle elements to hopefully rebalance the image.

If you’re curious and beady-eyed, I’ve set up a little spot-the-difference image. There are five differences.

The image is also on the Guardian Datablog today and printed in the paper. There, I’ve gone into a bit more detail about the process of making the image. Enjoy!

I love this diagram. And I’m really happy to offer you a fresh new gorgeous A2 print of it on FSC-certified Munken art paper. Check out the store. (All monies go back into the website, for paying our lovely contributors etc).

See the US version. See the Rest-of-the-World Version.

Writing & art-direction: David McCandless
Design: Stefanie Posavec
Sources: Encyclopedia Brittanica, Wikipedia, Conservative-Resources.com

Is The HPV Vaccine Safe? v 2.0

cancer, Data Visualisation, David McCandless, Health, infodesign, infographia, infographic, infographics, Information Design, information graphics, Information Is Beautiful, InfoVisualisation, McCandless, Science, The Visual Miscellaneum, visual miscellaneum, visualisation Comments Off

Jul 222011

Remember a couple years ago when there was a big kick-off about the safety of the HPV (Human Papillomavirus) Vaccine?

The virus causes 99.7% of all cases of cervical cancer – the second deadliest for women, after breast cancer.

But some concern sprang up around the safety of the jab. This was inflamed by the fact that it’s most effective when given to girls aged 12-13. Stories of girls fainting and other health scares snowballed the concern into full-on fear. Tabloids branded the jab “as deadly as the cancer”. Parents stone-walled the vaccine.

We did a graphic at the time to show the chances of a nasty or fatal outcome were miniscule (you had more chance being struck by lightning).

This week we noticed, via Dr Jen Gunter’s site, that detailed new data has appeared on the vaccine and its safety.

Inevitably, I’ve graphickised® the essence for easy injection into your mind.

As ever, all our data, sources and calculations: http://bit.ly/HPVsafety

Is the HPV vaccine safe? - Information is Beautiful - David McCandless

There’s that data link if you want to check our sources: http://bit.ly/HPVsafety

I’m refreshing and redesigning a selection of our diagrams over the next week. So stay tuned.

Design & research: David McCandless
Research: Miriam Quick
Via: Dr Gen Gunter
Data: http://bit.ly/HPVsafety
Sources: Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, MetaAnalysis by Lu et al (2011), Rambout et al (2007), SEER @ The National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society , Medeiros et al (2009).

The Sunscreen Smokescreen

Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, David McCandless, disease, Health, InfoBeautiful, infographia, infographic, Infographical Morsels, infographics, Information Design, information graphics, Information Is Beautiful, InfoVisualisation, McCandless, The Visual Miscellaneum, UVa, visual miscellaneum Comments Off

Jul 122011

It started with a question. It always does. This time, the question was simple: How much sunscreen should I wear?

I’m a pale geek who burns. I wanted to know the optimal. A simple question with a simple answer, right?

Wrong.

This simple question took me on a massive journey through the data, information myths and misinformation that surround our perception of sunscreen. I’m calling it the Sunscreen Smokescreen.

All our data, calculations and references here: http://www.bit.ly/sunscreensmoke

The Sunscreen SmokeScreen - Information Is Beautiful - David McCandless

See the Environmental Working Group’s assessment for health sunscreens: http://breakingnews.ewg.org/2011sunscreen/

All our data, calculations and references here:
http://www.bit.ly/sunscreensmoke

RESEARCH & DESIGN: David McCandless
RESEARCH: Miriam Quick
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH: James Key, Pearl Doughty-White
ADDITIONAL DESIGN: Piero Zagami, Derek Guo, Joe Swainson
SOURCES: The British Medical Journal, Cancer Research UK, World Health Organisation, PubMed, Norwegian Institute For Air Research, Health Canada, Skin Cancer Foundation, Nature, American Academy Of Dermatology, National Health Service, National Cancer Institute, Australian Institute of Health & Welfare, Journal Of Clinical Oncology, American Journal of Public Health, The Environmental Working Group, New York Times, Wikipedia.
DATA & RESEARCH: see it all here: http://www.bit.ly/sunscreensmoke

Which Fish Are Okay To Eat?

Data Journalism, Data Visualisation, David McCandless, Environment, InfoBeautiful, infodesign, infographic, information graphics, Information Is Beautiful, McCandless, The Visual Miscellaneum, visual miscellaneum Comments Off

Jun 252011

Over-exploitation. Destructive fishing techniques. Polluting fish farms. If you want to eat ethically, which fish are actually fine for your fork?

My latest image for The Guardian Datablog pools and visualises the latest research from the Marine Conservation Society (PDF), Greenpeace and the SeaFood Watch.

» See the graphic
» See the data: http://www.bit.ly/whichfish
» Instantly download an A4 hi-res print for £1.50 ($2.50) (all profits go to the Marine Conservation Society)
» Download a free, pocket infosheet of this data for handy reference.

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