Category: Data visualization

The infographic family

VISUAL EXPLANATIONS FROM 5W INFOGRAPHICS.

The Velasco brothers (Juan, Samuel, Pedro and Martín) combine their talents to make clear and engaging infographics and data visualizations. Here’s some examples of their work. See more at: http://www.5wgraphics.com 
Their blog: https://5wvelascoblog.com 

Above, American Museum of Natural History. Below, Science & Vie magazine.

Nuclear Energy Encyclopedia. (The Emirates Nuclear Power Corporation.)

Reader’s Digest magazine.

Nature magazine. Click on the image for a larger version.

From a Scientific American book: The Zoomable Universe. https://bit.ly/2EfkySK

The New York Times.

Sukle Advertising & Design, for Esteem Hearing.

AARP The Magazine.

This space exploration timeline for National Geographic appeared in an earlier post about timelines: https://wp.me/s7LiLW-timeline
Click on the image for a larger version.
(By Sean McNaughton, Samuel Velasco (5W Infographics), Matthew Twombly, Jane Vessels and Amanda Hobbs.)

Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

UNICEF.

Juan and Samuel produced this superb book of cutaways for Gestalten: https://wp.me/p7LiLW-qF

Learning experience
Juan has led three excellent workshops for Ohio University students. I highly recommend the 5W professional workshops: http://www.5w-consulting.com

Infographic therapy

VISUALIZING OUR CREATIVE HANGUPS.

I’m a procrastinator, so this map by makes so much sense to me. (Now, why don’t I finish this post tomorrow?)
Below, the angst of being creative, by Christoph Niemann.

Wendy MacNaughton’s working day.

Jeremy Nguyen’s imagined a set of freelancer stickers (for the New Yorker). Anyone who has done freelance work can identify with these.

Portfolio dilemma, and font overload by Mitch Goldstein. See more designer and design-student insights at: http://www.ahelpfuldiagram.com

Karl Gude highlights our tendency to define ourselves as under-achievers because of one super-successful outlier. Remove it, and suddenly we’ve been more successful than we imagined.

Mid-century 3D data viz

SOPHISTICATED CHART-MAKING FROM 1954.

This set of 675 hand-cut cards shows the demand for electricity between October 1951 and April 1954. The cards are held by metal uprights on a wooden base, and were once enclosed in glass. Dimensions: 26.5 x 12 x 14 inches (67 x 31 x 36 cm).

Each card plots demand in megawatts over the course of one day in 30-minute increments.


Photographs: Museum of Science and Industry.

This kind of load model is not unique. Here are some examples from other countries.


Image: The British Library.

Two hundred

THIS BLOG, SO FAR.

This is my 200th post, so I’m in a reflective mood. For nearly two years, I have held forth, but it’s only one viewpoint.
That’s all. And no more important than anyone else’s.
Typeface by Sawdust: http://www.madebysawdust.co.uk

As this is a milestone of such super-high importance to mankind, it’s time to examine the WordPress data. (As of July 22.)

TOTAL VIEWS: 62,340

TOP TEN BY VIEWS
I’ve left out these two from the list.
Home page: 18,598 (Obviously, this could be divided up amongst all the posts.)
About me: 1,596 (For anyone remotely interested.)

1. Tools of the trade: 3,443  https://wp.me/p7LiLW-EI

2. Size comparison: 2,213  https://wp.me/p7LiLW-181

3. Notebooks: 1,519  https://wp.me/p7LiLW-2i0

4. Sketching infographics: 823  https://wp.me/p7LiLW-14Q

5. The incredible Bollmann map workshop (Part 1): 682  https://wp.me/p7LiLW-Ak

6. Nigel Holmes on humor: 678  https://wp.me/p7LiLW-iZ

7. Archeological pictograms: 626  https://wp.me/p7LiLW-V0

8. Cutaway magic: 611 https://wp.me/p7LiLW-qF

9. Infographics made easy: 601  https://wp.me/p7LiLW-Ic

10. When infographic dinosaurs roamed the Earth: 580  https://wp.me/p7LiLW-h0

VIEWS: TOP FIVE COUNTRIES

USA: 21,292

UK: 4,718

Germany: 4,716

 Russia: 2,973

Spain: 2,631

GOING FORWARD
I’ve posted twice a week up to now, but I’ll only be posting occasionally in the future. Why? Here’s one reason: I took a look at my ideas page last week. I think it says it all.

Seriously, thank you all for following over the last two years. And for sending ideas and encouraging emails. I really appreciate it.

Timepieces

NEW IDEAS FOR DISPLAYING TIME.

Levitated
“Story” has a small chrome sphere that levitates around a wooden base. The rotation can be set to take one hour, day, month, or even one year (or more) to complete a revolution. Or it will display any time period, like the time to your next vacation. It also has a timer mode.

To show the time in numerals, there’s a LED display that can shine through the surface of the wood.

Other things like moon phases, sunset/sunrise, and temperature are displayed by using backlighting. An app controls all the settings.

The company that makes this unconventional clock, “Flyte,” also produces a levitating light and a levitating planter.
https://flyte.se

Dots
“Order” is a project from Anicorn Watches that’s inspired by the New York City transport system.

It was designed by Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth, who founded “Standards Manual,” which has republished some iconic graphic design manuals, like those from the New York City Transit Authority (1970), and NASA (1975).

Also from Anicorn Watches, comes “Hidden Time,” which uses a rotating color gradient to focus attention on the hour. The overall idea is to suggest the passing of time.
https://www.anicorn-watches.com

Modernizing the cuckoo clock
Guido Zimmermann replaced the traditional German architecture with stark modern buildings.
https://www.guidozimmermann-art.com

Nendo have their own rethink of the genre in three new designs. 

And there’s even a watch that fits inside a cuckoo clock case.

I’m a big fan of many of Nendo’s designs. I’ve shown a few before, in these posts:

Globe: https://wp.me/s7LiLW-global
Chocolates: https://wp.me/p7LiLW-17S

Their website: http://www.nendo.jp

Old style
Just for comparison, this is the type of cuckoo clock we’re more used to.

Weather graphics

METEOROLOGICAL VISUALIZATION.

Many male weather presenters wore an infographic tie on the summer solstice (June 21). It’s a data visualization of the change in global temperature from 1850 to 2017, by Ed Hawkings. http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2018/warming-stripes/

Jeff Berardelli at WPEC CBS 12 in West Palm Beach led this initiative of the #MetsUnite movement. The color scale represents the change in global temperatures covering 2.43° F. (1.35° C.) Blue indicates annual average temperatures below normal, and red shows average annual temperatures above normal.

Merchandise for meteorologists
Below, Lauren Olesky (also a presenter at CBS 12) with her morning coffee. The chart is available in a range of items from earrings to mousepads. https://www.zazzle.com/climate_change

Outfit confusion
I wish the producers of weather broadcasts would persuade presenters to dress in more neutral outfits. For obvious informational reasons.

Augmented reality
The Weather Channel recently started using “Max Reality” to add impact to weather explainers. The Future Group’s technology is the driving force behind this. Click on the image below to see Jim Cantore describe the dangers that accompany a tornado. Check out the crashing utility pole at 1:50, and the flying car at 4:00.

Technical issues
We all have our problems. Cave Creek’s evening temperature is hotter than molten steel at 2,960° F. (1,627 C.)

Cranking it up
TV weather forecast graphics tend to be in the showbiz end of information design. They’re often very colorful, but don’t promote a feeling of reliability. (Well, not to me.) I guess it’s the result of a battle for viewers. Information graphic critique: There’s no key to the colors, and this is a problem. We assume (correctly) that the graphic goes from cool to hot in terms of temperature, but green has also been used to show rainfall. Two additional blues show a front and the jet stream. The visualization is not wrong, but it could be clearer.

Inconsistency
There’s a standard color scale to use for storm prediction in the U.S. (below). However, various outlets interpret it in different ways. These three forecasts are for the same severe weather pattern, in our area, earlier this year.

More accurate hurricane forecast maps
I’ll finish on a more positive note (for a change). This year, the National Hurricane Center is shrinking the “cone of uncertainty” that predicts the possible track of the center of a hurricane, by analyzing the previous five hurricane seasons.

Thank you to two former Ohio University students for help with elements of this post: Alex Hurley, M.S. Environmental Studies, and Ethan Emery, B.S. Meteorology.

Above

TWO DIFFERENT WAYS OF LOOKING AT OUR PLANET.

Composite
For his project “Exodus,” Marcus Lyon assembles multiple photographs to make large, richly-detailed visions of extreme mass transit. There are around 1,000 photographs of Dubai’s Sheikh Zayed Road in this image. They were taken from the roof of a hotel. The 750 vehicles represent the 750,000 miles that the average motorist drives in a lifetime. Click on the image for a larger version.
See more of “Exodus,” and other projects at http://www.marcuslyon.com

Air traffic over London.

Containers in Hong Kong.

Ships in the South China Sea.

Images © Marcus Lyons.

Oblique reality
Planet Labs (https://www.planet.com) uses more than 190 Dove, RapidEye and SkySat satellites to capture comprehensive real-time imagery of the Earth. The miniature Doves (which Planet Labs manufactures) make a satellite constellation that once a day makes a complete image of the globe at 3 meter resolution.
Dove dimensions: 3.9 x 3.9 x 11.8 inches (10 x 10 x 30 cm).

They capture not only the kind of satellite views we’re used to seeing, from directly above, but also can give us views from oblique angles.
Below, Cape Town.

Monte Fitz Roy in Patagonia.

Riyadh.

Bora Bora.

Houston.


Images © Planet Labs, Inc.

Previous posts about aerial views

Plan view: https://wp.me/p7LiLW-21v

Aerial visions: https://wp.me/p7LiLW-1UM

Unmanned and overhead: https://wp.me/p7LiLW-Rb

The color of space

COMBINING THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE.

I’m following a “looking upwards” theme this week. Monday’s post was about the sky: https://wp.me/s7LiLW-sky

Above is a Hubble Space telescope image of the Carina Nebula (which is between 6,500 and 10,000 light years from Earth). This is termed a “visible light image,” but several colors (gathered in separate black and white images using different filters) were combined to make it. Yes, the colors are all individually visible to the human eye, but would the Carina Nebula look exactly like this from the Starship Enterprise? Well… no.

Infrared reveals stars inside the column of gas and dust.

Cassiopeia A (approximately 11,000 light years away) is a remnant of an exploded star. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory produced these images. Isolating the X-rays of different elements reveals what’s been left behind.

So contrary to some ideas circulating online, astronomers don’t assign colors to ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays to make the images more appealing to the public. Colors are informational, and visualize the information that is reaching us from space. A fortunate by-product is the stunning images that we’re used to seeing.

A broadband image of galaxy NGC 1512 using seven filters from ultraviolet to infrared.

The Andomeda galaxy in ultraviolet. Blue is far-ultraviolet light, yellow is near-ultraviolet.

Another image of Andromeda taken with a hydrogen-Alpha filter. Photograph by Adam Evans.

A Hertsprung-Russell diagram is a scatter plot where the vertical axis is brightness and the horizontal axis is surface temperature (color). Stars are categorized by letters that indicate decreasing temperature: O,B,A,F,G,K, and M, and then subdivided within each type by numbers where 0 is hottest and 9 is coldest. Our Sun is classified G2V. The V means it is a main-sequence star, which is the most common type of star in the universe. Click on the image for a larger version.

Looking back at the Earth
NASA’s iconic Blue Marble (the one that was on the first iPhone’s lock screen) is a composite image that was created by Robert Simmon in 2002. Four months of data from the Terra satellite were combined and wrapped onto a digital sphere in a 3D program. Various other effects were applied in Photoshop to create what Simmon has described as a “hyper-realistic” image of the Earth.

Some of the Photoshop layers.

A complete unadjusted image from the Deep Space Climate Observatory spacecraft taken in 2015.

Adviser for this post: Ahmad Shamloumehr, a graduate student in Physics and Astronomy, here at Ohio University.

All images are NASA or ESA, except where noted.

X-ray

THE UNDERLYING STRUCTURE REVEALED.

Nick Veasey makes X-rays of various objects in his custom-built studio, which has thick concrete walls and a heavy lead and steel door. Because of the limits of the size of X-ray film, Nick assembles the images of larger objects from separate scans. He also takes the items apart to scan each piece and get a level of internal detail that would otherwise be impossible. For the Boeing 777 shown above, he made approximately 500 scans of individual components. Click on the image for a larger version.
A skeleton that was used for training radiologists, is the source of the human elements. Some Photoshop composition and manipulation is part of the process. http://www.nickveasey.com

Kent Krugh X-rayed cameras for “Speciation,” a photography project. http://www.kentkrugh.com/portfolios/speciation/