Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts

Thursday, December 24, 2009

The Holiday Economy



Our Present Economy is a look at holiday spending from 1997-2007 with some specifics about 2007.  It doesn't say explicitly, but I believe this is for the U.S. only.  From GOOD Magazine, this Good Sheet was available at Starbucks during the holiday season in 2008.

I wonder how 2009 compares?

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The Origins and Paths of Epidemics



This world map shows the origins and spreading paths of Malaria, Leprosy and Small Pox. No legend, but the implication is that as the main arteries diminish in width down to small capillaries represents the number of infection cases.  Key dates and locations are also identified with event description.

There is no designer byline on the graphic, but map is credited to Haisam Hussein.  I don't see the map in the gallery on Haisam's website, but he is given credit for the map on Lapham's Quarterly.

Found on digg.com.

Monday, December 7, 2009

A Visual History of the Supreme Court - New Infographic Poster!



Today, I want to share the launch of Timeplots.com.  A new infographic site focused on designing visual timelines by Nathaniel Pearlman and Frank Hamilton.  The Timeplots.com site launched today highlighting their first project; a poster called "A Visual History of the Supreme Court of the United States".
This large-scale (48″x32″) print displays the full sweep of American federal judicial history from 1789 to 2009. It combines biographical information on every Supreme Court justice with a visualization of the influence of U.S. presidents and their political parties on the Court over time, and includes vote counts and summaries of landmark cases.
Months of work went into researching the history of the Supreme Court, and that effort really shows through in the level of detail in this poster.



It's a good thing they offer this as a large format poster, because the detail draws you closer to discover the events and landmark decisions that are the colorful history of the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States).





I love that even on their About page, they created small, infographic timelines as a visual of their individual experiences and career histories.  Here's Nathan's:



Timeplots has also started a new service, Timeplots on Demand:
Timeplots’ dedicated staff is ready to work directly with you to honor your own organization—your company, school, nonprofit, team, church, or family—with a custom Timeplot of your institution’s history. Let us help you collect data, create memorable images, and visualize the developments of your institution.
Congratulations to both Nathaniel and Frank!

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Florence Nightingale: Causes of Mortality infographic from 1858!



Yes, from that Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), and it's from 1858!  The polar area diagram is also known as the Nightingale Rose Graph.

From Wikipedia,
This "Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East" was published in Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army and sent to Queen Victoria in 1858.


This graphic indicates the number of deaths that occured from preventable diseases (in blue), those that were the results of wounds (in red), and those due to other causes (in black). 
The legend reads: 
The Areas of the blue, red, & black wedges are each measured from the centre as the common vertex. The blue wedges measured from the centre of the circle represent area for area the deaths from Preventable or Mitigable Zymotic diseases, the red wedges measured from the centre the deaths from wounds, & the black wedges measured from the centre the deaths from all other causes. The black line across the red triangle in Nov. 1854 marks the boundary of the deaths from all other causes during the month. In October 1854, & April 1855, the black area coincides with the red, in January & February 1855,(*) the blue coincides with the black. The entire areas may be compared by following the blue, the red, & the black lines enclosing them.
Also from Wikipedia:
Florence Nightingale had exhibited a gift for mathematics from an early age and excelled in the subject under the tutorship of her father. Later, Nightingale became a pioneer in the visual presentation of information and statistical graphics. Among other things she used the pie chart, which had first been developed by William Playfair in 1801.
Florence Nightingale is credited with developing a form of the pie chart now known as the polar area diagram, or occasionally the Nightingale rose diagram, equivalent to a modern circular histogram to illustrate seasonal sources of patient mortality in the military field hospital she managed. Nightingale called a compilation of such diagrams a "coxcomb", but later that term has frequently been used for the individual diagrams. She made extensive use of coxcombs to present reports on the nature and magnitude of the conditions of medical care in the Crimean War to Members of Parliament and civil servants who would have been unlikely to read or understand traditional statistical reports.
In her later life Nightingale made a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation in Indian rural life and was the leading figure in the introduction of improved medical care and public health service in India.
In 1859 Nightingale was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society and she later became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.
Found this while reading the great FlowingData post "9 Ways to Visualize Proportions – A Guide" by Nathan Yau.

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The Timeline of Michael Jordan



Created by Khoi Nguyen as a class project, The Timeline of Michael Jordan lays out the key events of his spectacular career with iconic images representative of each time period.  A little design work work makes what could be a simple timeline into a great infographic that draws the reader in.

Check out Khoi's blog/portfolio.



Great work Khoi!


Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation



From The Awl, this certainly isn't the prettiest infographic I've ever seen (it's basically just a line chart), but it tells it's story to the viewer very well.  Maybe there are times when a simple chart from Excel can do the job...NAH.   From a title that proclaims "A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation" we certainly expect much more visual information.

I'm sure many of the graphic designers reading this blog could turn this data into a significantly better infographic (hint, hint...).
Every six months, the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases data about newspapers and how many people subscribe to them. And then everyone writes a story about how some newspapers declined some amount over the year previous. Well, that's no way to look at data! It's confusing—and it obscures larger trends. So we've taken chunks of data for the major newspapers, going back to 1990, and graphed it, so you can see what's actually happened to newspaper circulation. (We excluded USA Today, because we don't care about it. If you're in a hotel? You're reading it now. That's nice.)
Some surprising trends: the New York Post has the same circulation it had two decades ago! Also, the once-captivating battle of the New York City tabloids has become completely moot.
Some unsurprising trends: the Los Angeles Times is an absolute horrorshow. Not shown: the Boston Globe disappearing off the bottom of this chart, in a two decade decline from 521,000 in 1990 to 264,105 this year.
Found on Daring Fireball.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

50 Years of Space Exploration - Visual Flight Map



National Geographic published this amazing flight map that shows the flight paths of all 200 space missions in the last 50 years.  A zoomable map is on the NG website, and a high-res image is available from Adam Crowe on Flickr.

Art by Sean McNaughton, National Geographic Staff, Samuel Velasco, 5W Infographics.

Found on Fast Company.

Friday, October 2, 2009

China's 60th Anniversary - Then and Now



From the October issue of Fast Company,
Don't get all worked up by the headline, Sinophiles. We're talking about the 60th birthday of the founding of the People's Republic, which Mao Zedong declared on October 1, 1949. Here's a look at China then and now.
Most people would have used a bar chart, but a little good design work makes this a compelling infographic.

Not easy to find the designer credit, but the infographic is from Nicholas Felton.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The History of Jack The Ripper (Infographic Poster)



Ryan Nussbaum is a recent graduate of the design program at Washington University in St. Louis, and he created this infographic poster mapping out the murders of Jack the Ripper.
In this exhibition panel, I mapped the possible escape routes of a chief suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders. Upon closer examination, one can see the different types of wounds and removed organs of each of the victims. The piece is meant to dispel the notion that the murders were random occurrences.
Psst...Ryan is looking for work in New York...I'm just saying.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Graphical History of the American Flag

 

A great infographic for America's Independence Day from Mike Wirth.  The graphical history of the American Flag shows a circular timeline of when changes were made over the years and when stars were added.  I love additional information Mike included like the official folding pattern and the state each star represents by showing them chronologically.  Makes a great poster!

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The Story (so far) of Twitter


Graphic designed for Manolith.com, by infoshot.  It's a reverse timeline of Twitter.
Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Seems every where you turn these days that little blue bird is staring you right in the face. But how did it all start? Where is it all going? Who’s to say really, except you I suppose, in 140 character bursts. In the meantime let’s take a look back on some milestones of microblogging.  Please do enjoy, The Story (so far) of Twitter. Start at the bottom and work your way up on this one.



Of course, I found this on Twitter!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

The Evolution of the Modern Skateboard


From The Odeus Skate Blog comes this timeline infographic showing the history of skateboard design.  I got my first skateboard in the 70's, so it already had the kicktail, but it was still really narrow.

 

Friday, April 24, 2009

The History of Beer infographic


The History of Beer was published on Manolith.com.  I like the twist on a timeline infographic.  First, it's vertical instead of horizontal.  Then, it's actually four timelines in one highlighting different events in Science, Religion, Literature and Facts using the four colored tracks.

Design and layout by 600 Series Design, illustrations by Dan Zettwoch.

Check out some of the original sketches and story on Dan's blog.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

The Browser Wars Infographic


Great timeline infographic depicting the rise and fall of different browsers portrayed as knights marching across a field.  The data set used is available here.

It took me a while to find any information about the author, but I found this description on the Wired.com blog.
Here's a creative look at the history of the browser wars from 2002 through mid-2008. The infographic was submitted to Reddit by a user named BovingdonBug. He says he created it as part of an application for a graphic design job on a newspaper.
 Thanks Alwyn for the link!

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Mapping the Growth of Target


Nathan Yau over on FlowingData.com has done a great job creating an animated map showing the growth of Target stores across the U.S.
Well, fortune was smiling on me last week, and I got a hold of data for Target opening dates and locations (thnx, Cole). So here it is - a map that shows the growth of Target from 1962 through 2008.
Nathan has promised to combine the data from this map with his previous work mapping The Growth of WalMart, into one map where you can see the differences.  So we'll keep our eyes out for that.

Friday, January 30, 2009

The Best Beer in America


Mike Wirth, The Beer Geek, created this map of award winning beers using 20 years of data of the Great American Beer Festival medal winners from 1987-2007. Originally created for the Lyke 2 Drink blog, it also shows the breweries with the most medals and the specific beers with the most awards.

Great work Mike!

UPDATE: Mike has put up an updated version of the Best Beer in America map.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The Ultimate Mammal Family Tree


This is very cool.  Going back 166 million years to see each of the branches where we share common mammalian ancestors.  The PDF is available for download, and is very detailed.  You need to zoom a long way to even see that there is text naming each of the known mammals in existence today.  It's a radial family tree that also represents a timeline as you move outwards from the center.  Here we are:

 
 

ABC TV in Australia did a short video on the family tree hosted by Dr. Paul Willis, and he literally walks around the infographic describing different parts.  Well done, and seemed very reminiscent of Carl Sagan in some of his shows.  The video credits Robin Beck, a Mammalian Systematist as the University of NSW, of creating the family tree.  Here's the link to the ABC page where you can watch the video, or you can click on the image below.


Thanks for the link Alwyn!  Great find!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Infographic Video: The Histoy of the Internet


History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

Cool video created by Melih Bilgil
"History of the internet" is an animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to file-sharing, from arpanet to internet.  The history is told with help of the PICOL icons, which are also a part of my diploma. The icons are soon available for free on picol.org
Found on Information Aesthetics, and thanks to Ethel for the Tweet.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

The Evolution of Game Controllers


Damien Lopez has hade two great images showing the evolution of game controller design over the last few decades.  He also created another one showing the evolution of portable game systems.  This was supposedly the link to Damien's page, but its not working for me.

Thanks Dániel for sending in the link.

Monday, December 29, 2008

25 Years of Mac: Timeline


From Wired.com.  I like that this History of Apple isn't your traditional timeline.  It does go from left to right, but the images are mixed and overlapping.  It show a clear progression from beige to colors to white to silver.  The style also invites the viewer in to explore the details hidden in the image and find the extra images that specifically tagged with a date across the top.