Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom? Amanda Cox – New Media Days. Visual subjectivity (II) Time ago, I posted an infographic published on The New York Times, not ellaborated by its infographics team, but by a visual artist called Andrew Kuo, who explained the Lollapalooza Festival of 92 as he remembered it. It was something different, an application of infographics not using data or objective information, but feelings, opinions and ideas. Now I discover through Innovations In Newspapers that La Vanguardia gets into this new adventure with Shakira's concert. Well, it's something you can expect from a department with a chief as Jaime Serra, so involved in visual subjectivity. La Vanguardia example is not so artistic, is more attached to data and objective info (something I, personally, prefer).
What is Data Visualization? 10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics. Advertisement Who can resist a colourful, thoughtful venn diagram anyway? In terms of blogging success, infographics are far more likely to be shared than your average blog post. This means more eyeballs on your important information, more people rallying for your cause, more backlinks and more visits to your blog. In short, a quality infographic done well could be what your blog needs right now. Designing An Infographic Some great tips for designing infographics: Keep it simple! Ideas for infographic formats include: Timelines;Flow charts;Annotated maps;Graphs;Venn diagrams;Size comparisons;Showing familiar objects or similar size or value. Here are some great tutorials on infographic creation: Creating Your Infographic Plan and research.If required, use free software to create simple graphs and visualisations of data.Use vector graphic software to bring these visualisations into the one graphic.
Free Online Tools For Creating Infographics Stat Planet Hohli Creately New York Times Many Eyes Wordle. 5 Tools for Online Journalism, Exploration and Visualization - ReadWriteCloud. In our last post on data journalism, we ran across a number of tools that would be helpful for anyone who is interested in how to make sense of data. The tools represent a renaissance in how we make sense of our information culture. They provide context and meaning to the often baffling world of big data.
This is a snapshot of what is available. We are relying on the work done by Paul Bradshaw, whose blog is an excellent source about the new world of data journalism. Factual Factual provides simple APIs for building Web and mobile apps. How To Create a Table With Factual on Howcast Socrata Socrata is one of a handful of companies and organizations that are shaping the open data movement in government. Google Fusion Tables Google Fusion Tables is a Google Labs project.
Yahoo! Yahoo! OpenHeatMap OpenHeatMap is another example of how to turn data into maps. These are five tools that can be used for online journalism or any online research project. Clive Thompson on the Power of Visual Thinking | Magazine. Illustration: Posttypography When I went online to shop for a laptop this summer, I faced a blizzard of choices.
Was an ultralight worth the price, or would a heavier model do? Did I need a big screen, or would it make the computer a pain to lug around? As I flipped from page to page reading screenfuls of specs, the options baffled me. So I picked up a different thinking tool: a crayon. Using one of my son’s Crayolas, I drew doodles of all the laptops and covered them with little icons depicting the pros, cons, and cost of each. When I stood back and looked at the pictures, the answer leaped out. In essence, I used “visual thinking”—drawing pictures to solve a problem. My crayon experiment was inspired by Dan Roam, a visual-thinking guru and author of The Back of the Napkin. But dynamic, complicated problems—like global warming and economic reform—often can’t be boiled down to simple narratives.
Email clive@clivethompson.net. Adventures in information design, WSJ edition | Analysis & Opinion | Last week, Justin Lahart presented an interesting thesis in the WSJ: For American business, it has become a two-track economy.While global players like industrial conglomerate 3M Co. and burger giant McDonald’s Corp. are getting ever-bigger boosts from their operations in fast-growing economies like China and Brazil, companies dependent on the U.S. market are hemmed in by recession-scarred consumers who are hesitant to spend. The accompanying chart was one of the most incomprehensible things I’ve ever seen on newsprint: I doubt that one reader in 20 actually understood, on looking at this chart, the information it was ostensibly trying to get across. There are three axes here, and two colors, and all manner of confusion.
It took me a while to work it out, but I got there in the end: the height of the bars represents a healthy year-on-year increase in projected revenues. The amount of color in a bar represents the proportion of those revenues that come from outside the US. Jones. Topic Maps: From Information to Discourse Architecture. From Information to Discourse Architecture Abstract Topic Maps is a standards-based technology and model for organizing and integrating digital information in a range of applications and domains.
Drawing on notions adapted from current discourse theory, this article focuses on the communicative, or explanatory, potential of topic maps. It is demonstrated that topic maps may be structured in ways that are “text-like” in character and, therefore, conducive to more expository or discursive forms of machine-readable information architecture. More specifically, it is exemplified how a certain measure of “texture”, i.e. textual cohesion and coherence, may be built into topic maps. Topic Maps as Information Architecture Topic Maps (in upper case) is a standards-based technology for connecting knowledge structures to information resources.
These external descriptors, also known as subject indicators, are accessed through subject identifiers, usually URL’s. Topic Maps as Exposition Space. Colorful data | information design. Government Spending Visualization Misses The Mark. Wes at Pitch Interactive has left some comments with additional information on the data and visualization.
I don’t agree with his opinion on the issue of contract spending (Does the federal government spend a disproportionate amount of defense? I don’t think the data supports that, but it depends on what your opinion of “proportionate” and “appropriate” is.) , but you should definitely read his comments for a more complete understanding. He’s an excellent example of the government data transparency that we both endorse. In the recent Design For America competition , a tie for first place was this very attractive visualization of Federal Spending . When the image won the contest, it was listed as a visualization of all federal spending. After a back and forth, the author at Pitch Interactive changed the title to “Federal Contract Spending” and has stated that he will revisit the visualization so that it shows all federal spending as it is reported at USSpending.gov .