Posts tagged infographics

The backwardness of political cartoons is especially evident when you compare them to the bounty of new forms of graphical political commentary on the Web. My Facebook and Twitter feeds brim with a wide variety of political art — biting infographics, hilarious image macros, irresistible Tumblrs (e.g., Kim Jong-il Looking at Things), clever Web comics, and even poignant listicles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a traditional political cartoon appear on my various social-media channels…

…This isn’t surprising. Editorial cartoons were born in the era of newspapers, and while they now regularly appear on the Web—including in Slate—they remain stuck in the static, space-constrained, caricaturist mind-set of newsprint. The Pulitzers began awarding a prize for cartoons in 1922, and other than a few notable exceptions — Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury in 1975, Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County in 1987, and Mark Fiore’s animated cartoons in 2010 — the overwhelming majority of its awards have gone to traditional, single-panel cartoonists. It’s time for the Pulitzers to look past this old-fashioned medium and include graphics that are better attuned to this century.

My first suggestion would be for the committee to recognize infographics and interactive visualizations. Like most political cartoons, infographics are rarely funny. Unlike most political cartoons, the best infographics tend to pack a wallop.

Farhad Manjoo, Slate. Editorial Cartoons Are Stale, Simplistic, and Just Not Funny: The Pulitzer committee should honor slide shows, infographics, and listicles instead.

I don’t think the Pulitzer’s should abandon the editorial cartoon but absolutely agree there should be a new category for graphical stories. — Michael

What Happens in an Internet Minute Via Intel: In just one minute, more than 204 million emails are sent. Amazon rings up about $83,000 in sales. Around 20 million photos are viewed and 3,000 uploaded on Flickr. At least 6 million Facebook pages are viewed around the world. And more than 61,000 hours of music are played on Pandora while more than 1.3 million video clips are watched on YouTube. All in all, that’s 625 terabytes of information sloshing about the tubes each minute. If we do some math that’s 878.9 petabytes per day which is a bit difficult to wrap our mind around. But if we convert that to the universal measurement of the MP3, we get the equivalent of about 235.9 billion songs passing through the internet and mobile networks each day.

What Happens in an Internet Minute

Via Intel:

In just one minute, more than 204 million emails are sent. Amazon rings up about $83,000 in sales. Around 20 million photos are viewed and 3,000 uploaded on Flickr. At least 6 million Facebook pages are viewed around the world. And more than 61,000 hours of music are played on Pandora while more than 1.3 million video clips are watched on YouTube.

All in all, that’s 625 terabytes of information sloshing about the tubes each minute.

If we do some math that’s 878.9 petabytes per day which is a bit difficult to wrap our mind around.

But if we convert that to the universal measurement of the MP3, we get the equivalent of about 235.9 billion songs passing through the internet and mobile networks each day.

Fans of the husband and wife designer team Charles and Ray Eames who were or were not around to see their original 50 foot long, 1961 infographic chronicling the history of mathematics can now download an app version of the huge idea. Very mathy!

Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace), 1926, Fritz Kahn Image from Information Graphics, a new book by Julius Wiedemann, that explores the history of data and visualization. The Guardian has a few more images from the book.

Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace), 1926, Fritz Kahn

Image from Information Graphics, a new book by Julius Wiedemann, that explores the history of data and visualization.

The Guardian has a few more images from the book.

What Are Your Social Media Skills Worth? Image: Detail from a larger infographic, via ReadWriteWeb. Salary ranges represent the 25% and 75% percentile for each job title  in each city as obtained from Indeed.com

What Are Your Social Media Skills Worth?

Image: Detail from a larger infographic, via ReadWriteWeb. Salary ranges represent the 25% and 75% percentile for each job title  in each city as obtained from Indeed.com

Comparing the Fundraising Performance of the US Presidential Candidates The NYTimes released a competitive dashboard of sorts, titled “The 2012 Money Race: Compare the Candidates” [nytimes.com]. Basically, the interactive graphic allows readers to contrast the various performance parameters in terms of fundraising from 2 presidential candidates next to each other. Another recent graphic [nytimes.com] lists the hundreds of organizations and people that fund the so-called Super PACs that are officially not controlled by those very candidates. Via sunfoundation.

Comparing the Fundraising Performance of the US Presidential Candidates

The NYTimes released a competitive dashboard of sorts, titled “The 2012 Money Race: Compare the Candidates” [nytimes.com]. Basically, the interactive graphic allows readers to contrast the various performance parameters in terms of fundraising from 2 presidential candidates next to each other. Another recent graphic [nytimes.com] lists the hundreds of organizations and people that fund the so-called Super PACs that are officially not controlled by those very candidates.

Via sunfoundation.

infosthetics.com

A feature length movie is an amazing dataset. You just need to know how to look at it, and you need the right tools.

For his senior project at the Royal Academy of Arts, Den Haag, Frederic Brodbeck created his own software programs that dissembled video files into their constituent parts. In this way he was able to identify elements such as video, audio, subtitles, as well as gathering information average shot length, motion measuring, color palettes and more. 

cinemetrics is about measuring and visualizing movie data, in order to reveal the characteristics of films and to create a visual “fingerprint” for them. Information such as the editing structure, color, speech or motion are extracted, analyzed and transformed into graphic representations so that movies can be seen as a whole and easily interpreted or compared side by side.

Brilliant, my fine friend. Brilliant.

h/t Motionographer

cinemetrics.fredericbrodbeck.de

Kevin Marks, co-founder of Microformats, argues that Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are causing an “infographic plague” because they won’t support HTML. The rise of so-called infographics has been out of control this year, though the term was unknown a couple of years ago. I attribute this to the favourable presentation that image links get within Facebook, followed by Twitter and Google plus, and of course though other referral sites like Reddit. By showing a preview of the image, the item is given extra weight over a textual link; indeed even for a url link, Facebook and G+ will show an image preview by default. Over at The Atlantic, Megan McArdle also tackles the infographic plague, showing how marketers are using them simply to drive traffic to whatever it is they’re selling, without regard for the actual data in them.  Image: Y U No Like HTML, Just PIX? by Kevin Marks.

Kevin Marks, co-founder of Microformats, argues that Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are causing an “infographic plague” because they won’t support HTML.

The rise of so-called infographics has been out of control this year, though the term was unknown a couple of years ago. I attribute this to the favourable presentation that image links get within Facebook, followed by Twitter and Google plus, and of course though other referral sites like Reddit. By showing a preview of the image, the item is given extra weight over a textual link; indeed even for a url link, Facebook and G+ will show an image preview by default.

Over at The Atlantic, Megan McArdle also tackles the infographic plague, showing how marketers are using them simply to drive traffic to whatever it is they’re selling, without regard for the actual data in them. 

Image: Y U No Like HTML, Just PIX? by Kevin Marks.

Do You Need a Social Media Detox? Sometimes I say yes, absolutely yes. And then four hours later I still find myself staring at screens. — Michael Image: Detail from Do You Need a Social Media Detox by Column Five Media.

Do You Need a Social Media Detox?

Sometimes I say yes, absolutely yes. And then four hours later I still find myself staring at screens. — Michael

Image: Detail from Do You Need a Social Media Detox by Column Five Media.

Visualizing Everything Facebook Knows about You A couple of months ago, 24-year-old Austrian law student Max Schrems requested Facebook for all his personal data. The European arm of Facebook, based in Dublin, Ireland, was obliged to turn over this information, as they had to follow an European law that requires any entity to provide full access to data about an individual, should this individual personally request for it. Accordingly, Max received a CD containing about 1,222 pages (PDF files), including chats he had deleted more than a year ago, “pokes” dating back to 2008, invitations, and hundreds of other details. Via sunfoundation.

Visualizing Everything Facebook Knows about You

A couple of months ago, 24-year-old Austrian law student Max Schrems requested Facebook for all his personal data. The European arm of Facebook, based in Dublin, Ireland, was obliged to turn over this information, as they had to follow an European law that requires any entity to provide full access to data about an individual, should this individual personally request for it. Accordingly, Max received a CD containing about 1,222 pages (PDF files), including chats he had deleted more than a year ago, “pokes” dating back to 2008, invitations, and hundreds of other details.

Via sunfoundation.

infosthetics.com

700 Billion Videos Watched and Counting

Video Infographs produced this 2:45 video on what happened in 2011 in the world of Web-based and mobile social media.

The numbers, of course, are staggering. The question, of course, remains the same: What does it all mean?

Death and Taxes, 2012 Via Jess Bachman Hi. I’m Jess Bachman. Every year I spend two months researching and creating this visual record of our tax dollars at work… …”Death and Taxes” is more than just numbers. It is a uniquely revealing look at our national priorities, that fluctuate yearly, according to the wishes of the President, the power of Congress, and the will of the people. Thousands of pages of raw data have been boiled down to one poster that provides the most open and accessible record of our nations’ spending you will ever find. If you pay taxes, then you have paid for a small part of everything in the poster. “Death and Taxes” is an essential poster for any responsible citizen or information junkie. Death and Taxes is available as a poster. When printed, it’s six square feet. Image: A very small detail from Jess Bachman’s Death and Taxes 2012. H/T: ChartPorn.

Death and Taxes, 2012

Via Jess Bachman

Hi. I’m Jess Bachman. Every year I spend two months researching and creating this visual record of our tax dollars at work…

…”Death and Taxes” is more than just numbers. It is a uniquely revealing look at our national priorities, that fluctuate yearly, according to the wishes of the President, the power of Congress, and the will of the people. Thousands of pages of raw data have been boiled down to one poster that provides the most open and accessible record of our nations’ spending you will ever find. If you pay taxes, then you have paid for a small part of everything in the poster. “Death and Taxes” is an essential poster for any responsible citizen or information junkie.

Death and Taxes is available as a poster. When printed, it’s six square feet.

Image: A very small detail from Jess Bachman’s Death and Taxes 2012.

H/T: ChartPorn.

A History of Spices Image: Detail from Turn Up The Heat: Worldwide History of Spice via Recipe-Finder.com. H/T: Cool Infographics

A History of Spices

Image: Detail from Turn Up The Heat: Worldwide History of Spice via Recipe-Finder.com.

H/T: Cool Infographics

Read About Infographics Then Have A Nap I love info graphics of the week from NowSourcing! All the pics this time have very inspirational color palettes.  I especially love the one about the history of beer.  I love history-related infographics! If you have some favorite ones, leave us a comment and we’ll check it out! 

Read About Infographics Then Have A Nap

I love info graphics of the week from NowSourcing! All the pics this time have very inspirational color palettes.  I especially love the one about the history of beer.  I love history-related infographics! If you have some favorite ones, leave us a comment and we’ll check it out! 

nowsourcing.com