Month: October 2015

Tufte was a statistician and a pioneer in the field of data visualization. He is particularly an expert with information graphics like charts and diagrams. He is also known for criticising Powerpoint, saying it has poor typography and simplistic tables and charts. Tufte has written several books including ‘The Visual Display of Quantitive information’, ‘Envisioning Information’ and others.

Here are some of his infographics that I particularly like:

I really like the simple use of just red and blue in different shades to represent the statistics for Scarborough. This proves that you do not need to use loads of colours in order for your infographic to be successful.

This is my favourite of his infographics. The typeface really suits the theme, I like the choice of background and brown colour theme. The darker lines that connect the diagrams also make the poster easy to follow. In addition, the vector graphics work well on the poster with showing which coffee is which.

This reminds me of Josef Muller-Brockmann and Bauhaus designs. The jagged shapes and circular design all works very well together as it looks like a disc broken up. I also like the old paper look background – it just makes the page look a bit more interesting.

David McCandless is a London-based information designer who works across multiple platforms.  He has written several books including Knowledge is Beautiful, Information is Beautiful and the Visual Miscellaneum. The books all include countless statistics on everything from dog breeds to pop music using beautiful designs and illustrations. I think his work is incredibly eye catching and here are some of the pieces that I specifically like:

For what seems to be just a scattering of dogs on a page, this actually contains a lot of information. The intelligence, size, dog type and even more are on this poster. The colours all compliment themselves well and I like how he has separated out the grid with a middle area. It is easy to understand and not too serious which I also like.

I don’t juts like this because it is about coffee. I also like how each drink is described in the same way but with using different colours to separate the different elements. It also shows how they are all served, proving helpful to coffee drinkers and makers.

Although I don’t find the colour scheme particularly exciting on this infographic, I like how all of the elements are divided up into a grid and how easy it is to read, making it incredibly accessible. The main facts are also in bold, making it easy to pick out the information that you want.

Next I needed to explore more into infographics. Generally an infographic is a visual representation of information/data/knowledge.

Here are some infographics that I found and specifically liked:

Key points on these that I need to include:

• Grid system
• Adobe Kuler colour scheme
• Sophisticated vector graphics
• Other visual representations like pie charts and graphs
• Lines and colours to separate different sections

What I like about them is that where a paragraph or large chunk of text would generally be off-putting, an infographic is actually pleasing to the eye and draws you in to learn instead of boring you or pushing you away.

So I have already decided from this that my infographic also needs to be pleasing to the eye.

The only thing that I have created that is similar before is an infographic for coffee, where I was just simply playing around with Adobe Illustrator to get to know the tools a bit better. Here is what I created (not finished):

Before I can even start to think about making an infographic about the Theory of Relativity, I need to learn a bit more about Einstein and what he discovered.

Here are some facts about Einstein that I found interesting/relevant:

• Born in Ulm, Germany 1879
• He was a “lazy” student and dropped out of school (15)
• He graduated near the bottom of his class (21)
• Failed military physical tests because of his sweaty feet! (22)
• Everyday he would complete his job within 2 hours and then do his own science work (24)
• Discovered light is a particle and a wave (26)
• E=MC2 and special relativity (26)
• Becomes a professor (30)
• Discovers general relativity (32)
• Wins Nobel prize (43)
• Starts working on theory of everything (44)
• Moves to America (54)
• Rejects becoming president of Israel (74)
• Died wishing he knew more about math (76) 1955

For our brief we need to create an infographic specifically on the Theory of Relativity, so I researched that too:

There are 2 ideas that back up the theory: the laws of physics are the same for any inertial (resistance) reference frame and the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for everyone, regardless of their motion or motion from the source of light.

 Results of the theory:

A result of the theory is E=MC2

E is energy, m is mass and c is the constant speed of light. Energy and mass are related: change in an object’s energy is accompanied by a change in mass.(Important for nuclear energy)

Another result of relativity is length contraction:
Objects appear shorter the faster they are moving in relation to the observer (only occurs at high speeds)

Other notes:
Nothing is ever fully resting- the galaxy and universe and earth are always moving.