Infographic of the day
Great piece showing the percent difference of purchases made online vs. instore in a variety of shopping categories.
First world, 8th place
Though my Canadian mother land has the honor of calling itself a first world nation, according to the Internet World Stats it looks as though we're trailing in the broadband world race. Yet another beautifully illustrated infographic I discovered demonstrates Canada huffing and puffing along at 8th place Canada in the world race of broadband average data speeds. To make matters worse we pay some of the highest costs (in USD) to achieve this ranking. We pay an average of $6.50 compared to first place holder Japan who pays a paltry $0.27. Currently, Japan, Korea and Finland hold first, second and third place respectively and by quite a margin too. They're also doing so at a significantly lower cost. That's pretty impressive. I knew we lagged behind somewhat but not this badly. The penetration rate is also fairly low in Canada.
To some it may be surprising that US lags even further behind, but I remember reading an article that indicates a lot of reasoning for this is that people in the US are still sticking with dial up. Especially in rural areas.
View it here.
Data Visualization
Just a quick post to demonstrate this great article put together by Smashing Magazine. Everything from mindmaps, displaying data, displaying news and more, Smashing explores the modern, brilliant and fascinating ways that data is being visualized today. I think this is such an important area of research if we're going to make sense of this ever growing age of information.
The Great Triad: food, photography and infographics
I know there's a turn of phrase that states "things always come in threes" - but do great things always come in threes?
We often associate food poisoning to the big contenders in our food world like poultry, pork or beef but there are lesser known culprits who have struck thousands of people ill. GOOD magazine has posted yet another amazing infographic focusing on this issue. In contrast to the typical infographic which uses digital illustration solely, this piece combines a nice dose of photography to make it really pop (visually and conceptually). I love how the illustration and photography both visualize the progressive increase in cases of poisoning.
Good Magazine and Good Infographics
First and foremost, I wanted point out the wonderful magainze that does GOOD. Good describes themselves as "...a collaboration of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits pushing the world forward. Since 2006 [they have] been making a magazine, videos, and events for people who give a damn." The succinct and blatant statement immediately caught my attention. I quickly scanned through some of their content and frequently found myself reading into tid bits of their articles which covered a variety of topics I'm interested in - environmentalism, politics, media, design etc. But what made this magazine join my long list of RSS feeds so quickly. Well, you can subscribe to the magazine for as little or as much as you want and 100% of the proceeds go to a charity of your choice. Good stuff.
Check it out. They do some great work.
One thing in particular I consistently love from GOOD is their infographics. Not only are their infographics well designed, but infographics are a invaluable way of communicating material in an informative and interesting that could otherwise be boring and dry.
Here are some of my favourite examples thus far:
A time line of state same sex marriage laws - here
Changes to 15 most popular public transit systems in the US - here
FlowingData – A new edition to my RSS feeds
Though this should be filed under "nerdy," due to the gleeful cheer that went off in my head when I found it, this data visualization-centric website will instead be going under my design feeds. Admittedly, the visions conjured up by a title like "data visualization" would make most people cringe but the fact remains that this practice is an absolute necessity and valuable part of design (especially in the future). As we push deeper and deeper into this information age data levels will have nowhere to go but up - and at an alarming rate. The sheer amount of information that is available at our finger tips now adays is both exciting and daunting. Without a way of simplifying and reforming data into digestible formats we'll quickly become overwhlemed; especially when were asked to design with it. I'm sure any designer can probably relate to the frustrating scenario where you've spent hours upon hours putting together a solution for some massive website, then after communitcating it to the client, only to be met with that forebounding silence or the inevitable "uhhhs". Sometimes designs make more sense in your head than they do on paper.
I'll be looking forward to some inspiration from this feed in the months to come.