We’re inventors - we’re creators. And that’s the most important thing about what we do. And I think we should welcome failure every once in a while.
Hannah Fairfield - NYT Graphics Editor, Malofiej 18, March 2010

Last year at Malofiej, one of the major awards ceremonies for infographics in journalism, The New York Times took home 'Best in Show' for their work on box office receipts from 1986 to 2008. I'm sure most of you saw it. It was non-traditional. It was an adaptation of Lee Byron's streamgraph, which he had previously applied to last.fm music listening habits - a smoothed stacked area chart at the core.

What followed was a lot of back chatter among the infographic community. Many didn't like the interactive at all, despite winning an award voted on by peers. Some called it one of the worst graphics NYT had ever published, that it was too complicated for readers, and that it was too hard to read.

This surprised me.

It's something I've come to expect from academics and the stat crowd but not from graphic departments that report the news. I had the impression that they were more open-minded, but I guess not all of them are.

This, from Hannah Fairfield, a New York Times graphics editor, is no doubt a response to the haters at this year's Malofiej.

I obviously strongly agree. Although Hannah sort of implies that the streamgraph was a failure. I'd argue that it was a success. Hundreds of thousands of people, millions maybe, engaged with the box office data and there's no obscene misrepresentations. Were the patterns too complex to understand for some people? Yeah, probably, but how else is the general public supposed to learn? They'll get there eventually.

Your turn. Does the box office streamgraph work?

[via VisualJournalism]

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Yesterday was the Interactive Infographics panel at South by Southwest, and if Twitter is any indication of how it went, I'd say the panel had a captivated audience. I wouldn't expect anything less from the four panelists, Ben Fry (Processing), Shan Carter (NYT), Casey Caplowe (Good), and Eric Rodenbeck (Stamen)

Unfortunately, I didn't get to attend, but luckily I was able to follow the play-by-play on Livefyre (sort of a cross between chat and forum) along with some excellent notes from @jpmarcum and @bryanconnor. Here are the important bits I was able to glean.

The bulk of the time was spent showcasing the work from the four groups. I think you can find most of the projects through FlowingData. Just use the search form on the bottom right of this page. The good stuff came towards the end during the Q&A.

The following answers are in note-form, not actual quotes from the panelists.

What’s next?

Shan Carter: Biggest question is what technology to use next.

Ben Fry: Getting beyond the screen. Interesting stuff is happening on the tiny screens we have in our pockets.

Eric Rodenbeck: Brands could use these things to express who they are. The literacy is rising.

What’s beyond Flash? HTML 5? Processing?

SC: Looking but don't have one answer.

BF: Mentions Canvas. Mozilla has taken an interest in Processing. Idea of no plug-ins is really exciting. Issue of access is really nice. As Java trails off looking to Canvas to pick up.

Where can you find data?

CC: Call people and say you're from The New York Times. ← So true, actually.

How do you balance data richness with design and beauty?

SC: Charting is a language and room all different voices. Feels like they’re all valid if they communicate something.

BF: Everything tends to be thrown in the same bucket as people are talking about it more. Always make sure it’s appropriate for the audience.

ER: It’s a medium more than a toolset. There’s going to be a Beyonce of data visualization. There’ll be jazz fans, different genres. There’s going to be the Steve McQueen of data visualization.

CC: It’s still very early on. Everyone brings their own style to it.

Evolution of information graphics...

ER: When people were first presented with Google maps no one knew how to use it. The idea that you can do stuff with charts and graphs is still pretty new.

Did I miss any other tidbits? Let us know in the comments below.

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[via BiofusionDesign]

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Like everyone, I've been watching the Olympics, and it continues to amaze me how hundredths of a second can make up the difference between a gold medal and nothing at all. Amanda Cox of The New York Times visualizes and audiolizes(?) these tiny differences. She got creative with this one.

Each row is an event and going from left to right, the first dot is the gold medal winner. The amount of space between the first dot and the dots that follow is how many seconds athletes finished after the winner.

Visually, this only sort of works, but click on play to hear how these differences sound, and it puts everything in perspective.

See the rest of NYT interactive Olympic coverage here. You know, just in case NBC coverage doesn't cut it for you.

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Every Olympics since 1936 has had a series of pictograms (i.e. icons that look like restroom signs) that represents the events. Here are pictograms for the Vancouver games, and here they are for the Beijing Olympics. Some series are distinct while others clearly sucked it up. Designer Steven Heller discusses the evolution of these Olympic pictograms in this video for The New York Times. Which set do you like best?

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This graphic from designer Stephen Taubman is entertaining in so many ways. It is based on the amazing story of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, one of the greatest movies ever made. I've never seen it, but after you watch the clip below, you'll be running to find a copy.

Don't even try to convince me that couldn't happen. That could happen. I don't think I can fly ever again, at least not ones that fly over water.

[via Forest and the Trees]

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Add another book to the growing library of guides on how to make information graphics the right way. Dona M. Wong, former graphics director of The Wall Street Journal and now strategy director for information Design at Siegel+Gale, provides the dos and don'ts of data presentation in The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics.

First Impressions

Given Wong's background, you can make a pretty good guess about the examples used. They're not graphics from The Journal but they do look a lot like them. The book description also makes a point of highlighting that Wong was a student of Edward Tufte, which was a big hint on what the book is like.

The guide is on the smaller side at about 150 pages of content, but it's mostly a visual book. There is about as much text as there are graphic examples, which I like.

Data Presentation

Going a little deeper, the type of examples provided are a lot like what you see in newspapers. There are lots of time series plots, bar charts, and a little bit of mapping along with some other graphic types that you'll find in The Journal (e.g. org chart, timeline). Wong covers a lot of the details like axes, proportions, and proper math. Common pitfalls and misconceptions are also covered.

It was particularly interesting for me, because a lot of the stuff in the book I've just learned from experience. I don't really think about these things much and do a lot of eyeballing, so it was kind of weird for me (in a good way) to see specific directions on what to do. I can easily see how this would be useful to beginners, especially for those who have to make a lot of charts and graphs for reports and presentations. Not so much for data exploration.

Straightforward Guide

The best thing about the guide is that it's essentially a whole bunch of straightforward examples. It doesn't go deep into theory or get sidetracked by the history of information graphics. It's page after page of dos and don'ts and really direct statements about what to do and what not to do.

Here's a page to give you an idea:

Bottom Line

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics is all about fundamentals. So if you're new to data and information graphics, this is a good book to learn from. You have to learn the basics before you get into more advanced graphics.

I have one piece of advice though. There are a lot of bullet point rules in this book, which I think are great when starting out. The rules aren't set in stone though. Just like when you learn grammar in grade school, graphs will vary case-by-case, and once you got the fundamentals down, you'll learn what rules you can break.

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The Olympics are in full swing, so of course Twitter is abuzz with every big event. Want to keep track of the trends in real-time? Watch the Olympic pulse, by Stamen Design, on the NBC site.

It's a self-updating, browsable treemap with deeper keyword breakdowns when you click. For example, as I write this, Apolo Anton Ohno just won silver after a crazy finish in the 1500. Click on the related rectangle, and see the related tags and recent tweets. Use the scroll up top to move through time.

Slick work from Stamen. With the MTV VMA tracker last year, one for Hope for Haiti recently, and now this, I suspect Stamen is in a nice place to start streamlining a lot of this stuff (if they haven't already).

I have a feeling we're going to be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing this year. Not just in the public domain, but also for internal use with businesses. Something tells me there are a lot of companies who are interested in hearing what people are saying about them on Twitter and other social media sites. Just a hunch.

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NPR shows projected employment changes from 2008 to 2018. Large circles represent major employment sectors and are sized by current employment numbers. Smaller circles are areas in the respective category.

Oddities

Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me, but the sizes of the large sectors look funky. For example, is the bubble for Education, health, and social services really ten times the size of the bubble for Information? I don't think so (and it should be).

It'd probably aslo be worth distinguishing between negative and positive growth. You know something simple like making the 0% line solid or color-coding the declining sectors.

What do you think?

[via The Big Picture | Thanks, Barry]

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