visual data

From the big bang all the way to Usain Bolt’s 9.58 second hundred- meter dash record in 2009, French graphic designer René Mambembé takes us on a minimalist journey through history. 

With clean, simple designs to represent each major event, looking through his work is almost like taking a history quiz to see how many key moments you can identify. After the dinosaurs and the Ice Age, Mambembé starts with Cubism in the 1900′s and goes decade by decade highlighting the most memorable occasions, ending with some likely predictions for the 2010′s. Brush up on your history by trying to label each minimalist design as you scroll through!

Facebook is the only major social network in decline. Saudis share more online than anyone. You check your phone 150 times a day. And more.

Every year, Mary Meeker and the team from KPCB unleash upon the world the mother of all slideshows, which aims to sum up The State of the Internet. This year's behemoth was born this morning, weighing in at 117 pages. Here are the 12 most interesting pages.

Check out the full report here.

The proliferation of data is impacting businesses whether they are ready or not...

Do you know what this data deluge is costing organzations across the US?

Londoner Marcus Kirby was bored with traditional maps and pastel-colored countries, so he started a company to revive the age-old business of cartography. 

The Future Mapping Company uses traditional map-making techniques (lithographic instead of digital) to create colorful, intricate city representations. Most recently, the company has created a map of New York City, to be released later this month.

We’re deep in the midst of a data viz heyday. Infographics are ubiquitous, presenting facts and data sets in straightforward ways that are, by design, easy to understand.

Willem Besselink takes a different approach by translating directed sets of information into physical forms. What’s not explicit, however, are the complex stats that inspire each work.

Each new installation is dictated by its own unique guidelines and rules, which themselves are based on a number of dependent variables, including site-specifics, materials, color scheme, and budget. “Setting these up and following them all through the project allows--or forces--me to do what needs to be done,” he says, in part following the lead of “hero” Sol Lewitt’s Sentences on Conceptual Art.

It is no great revelation that architects tend to look up when exploring a city. It’s the best way to guage size, scale, placement, composition and detail – all the information required to process the qualities of a space or place.

Having spent the last few days looking up and considering the architectural impact of the New York City grid-plan layout, this article takes a particular interest in the domestic scale elements that help to service the city and punctuate the rigidity.

At first the brain identifies the rhythm of the brick formation and the window layouts, it is this assumption of regularity that leaves many with this very valid conclusion based on the verticality of the grid. But in identifying this pattern – the eye becomes more accustomed, searching for further geometries or perhaps more importantly, exceptions to the rule.

Typography is a key element of any graphic design.

Any computer contains hundreds of pre-installed fonts to choose from and there are dozens of websites with thousands of free fonts, just some minimal knowledge and aesthetic taste.

The use of visual design elements can simplify complex information and make it easier to digest.

This collection of infographics for designers covers topics from SEO tips to logo evolution and a Serif vs. Sans battle.

'We took a look at the world’s top 100 brands to determine which fonts, colors and formats were the most popular choices. Our infographic provides some good food for thought if you’ve hit a road block on your latest logo design.'

A picture is worth a thousand words, and Californian digital marketing agency, Bixa Media, have illustrated (pun intended) by creating an infographic about the importance of… well, infographics.

Based on the company’s research and insights, they found that visual data is absorbed 60,000x faster than text and people will only read about 20% of the text on a page.

It’s easy to admire Matthew Picton’s paper sculpted maps simply for their fine craftsmanship and close resemblance to the famous cities they represent – but you’d be missing so much hidden in the details. 

Beyond the exquisitely folded ribbons of paper forming the delicate maps are tales from each city’s storied past: floods, fires, wars. Each element has been carefully researched and woven into the final sculpture, from the paper used to create it, to the destruction Picton often revisits on the cities.

These data visualizations, caricatures, and images capture the internet in all it's wiry glory.

Though we use it every day in countless ways, the Internet remains mostly faceless to us. Like a faint memory, we feel we know it intimately but have no sense of its size, its scale, or its design.

To give form to what we too prevalently consider a formless entity, we've rounded up some impressive attempts at capturing its likeness--from data visualization to caricature--to better answer the question: What is the Internet, anyway?

With 150,000 or so old print maps to his name, David Rumsey has earned his reputed place among the world's "finest private collectors." He continues to expand his personal trove as well as the digitized sub-collection he makes open to the public online — some 38,000 strong, and growing.

He's created a series of interactive maps that layer old prints onto the Google Earth and Google Maps platforms, and this summer he plans to launch a geo-referencing tool (similar to one recently introduced by the British Library) that lets users get involved in the digital mapping process themselves.

While preparing for this next expansion of his online map empire, Rumsey remains fascinated by "the power of putting these images up and letting them go," he says.

"Maps have a way of speaking to people very straightforward," he says. "You don't have to have a lot of knowledge of map history or history in general. To me they're perfect tools for teaching history to the public."

Belgian studio Coming Soon is all about making it big. Their Hand Lettering creations filled a giant chalkboard with letters in a variety of fonts and styles. And with Infographics XXXL, they’ve taken actual graphs and blown them up to a huge size for a client that specializes in the research of nanobodies.

The result is that, instead of casually glancing at the same old pie chart or bar graph, shareholders have something to keep their gaze on the numbers, like a blurry scientist walking by human-size bars or holding up a literal piece of the pie.

See a selection of Coming Soon’s giant infographics at the article link.