What Killed I.D. Magazine? The magazine's demise is a good example of why big challenges require full attention--and not half-measures.
Updated Wed Jan 25, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: All About The 2012 Facebook IPO If you haven't heard, all signs are pointing to a Facebook IPO in 2012. And if you have heard, I bet you know exactly two things about that fact: 1. Mark Zuckerberg will become very, very rich. 2. Facebook is HUGE!
Updated Fri Jan 20, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: China's Checkbook Diplomacy We hear incessantly about the rise of China. So much so that it's all a bit too abstract: What does it mean that China's has become a global force? And more importantly, how have they actually accomplished that?
The quick answer? Through business dealings rather than military alliances, and a superb infographic from the Heritage Foundation offers a rarely seen snapshot of that.
Updated Tue Jan 17, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: How Men And Women Differ When Making Big Sales We all know that men and women approach most everything in life slightly differently--and sometimes, wildly differently. How does this affect the way they each do business?
Rarely do you get a data set that reveals much about that question, but here's a remarkable one from the data-viz wizards over at Trulia, the real estate listings website. They took a look at the gender balance between real estate agents across the country, and the results are pretty remarkable.
Updated Tue Jan 17, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: What Do People Want From A Tablet Computer? The typical way to figure out what consumers want is to go out and do a survey. Or stay in and conduct focus groups. But Method, the design and branding agency, set out to do something a bit more interested when Dell commissioned them to research the tablet market. Instead of a survey, they mined Google to figure out what people were searching for.
Updated Tue Jan 17, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: Wall Street? Pfff. Protesters Should Be Occupying Congress Congress is supposed to represent the typical American voter. And they're supposed to do that, in part, by actually being like the average American voter. Just witness the number of Congressmen who can be found in ads tooling around in pick-up trucks or bouncing their grand kids on their knees. But Congress, if you look closely, doesn't much resemble the rest of America at all. Consider this wonderfully concise chart, by illustrator Chris Piascik:
Updated Tue Jan 17, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: The Incredible Power Of StumbleUpon Running a website is a nerve-wracking business, because traffic on the web is so fickle: At Co.Design, the difference between a superb month and an average one can be a single hit on StumbleUpon. So I knew the power that the social-bookmarking site has. But I had no idea that their influence was so unbelievably huge until I saw this infographic by Column Five. Simply put, StumbleUpon is a roaming traffic monster, able to make or break content all across the web.
Updated Tue Jan 17, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: Bloomberg And Frog Turn Raw Data Into Branding Bloomberg is a sprawling, billion-dollar enterprise, which creates a distinct problem if you're trying to explain what the company actually does. They do lots of things, ranging from law research to sports research for team managers to, of course, stock-market data crunching. "Many people have a single association with Bloomberg, as a wire service of a market-data provider," says Jen Walsh, Bloomberg's head of digital marketing. "We wanted our website to shine a light on other aspects of the business."
Updated Tue Jan 17, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: The Insane Choices You Face At The Drug Store Just 10 years ago, getting something for a headache or a cold at the drug store was a simple enough affair: Ibuprofen or Acetaminophen? No longer: Drug-store aisles are now an eye-melting maze of choices, with products advertising everything from time-release to gel-caps to flavors to different dosages. I half-expect to find tooth-whitening Tylenol, one day soon.
Updated Tue Jan 17, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: The Many Languages Of Twitter In the physical world, we tend to identify ourselves by nationality. But online, where you can reach across cyberspace and speak directly and instantaneously with someone 6,000 miles away without ever passing through customs, nationality isn't nearly as meaningful. The real borders are created by language: Language is what makes someone addressable no matter where he is. Language is what you share with strangers above all else. Language is your passport into a new community of people.
Updated Tue Jan 17, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: A Visual Guide To Fixing Your Home I'll bet that the last time you called a repairman to come fix something in your house, you were stuck with a bill in the ballpark of $250 and an annoying revelation: I could have done that. After all, the dude probably just pulled some tube from his truck and slotted in to your washing machine, taking all of five minutes to do so. (Note: This actually just happened to me.) The truth, of course, is that you probably could not have fixed the problem.
Updated Tue Jan 17, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: Is There A Nuclear Bomb In Your Backyard? I'll bet that unless you live with a nuclear power plant in your community, nuclear power is almost vanishingly abstract. You hear about it all the time, but you never see it. Well, Mother Jones is trying to fix that, with a map of the country's nuclear power plants, nuclear research facilities, and nuclear bombs. It's interesting stuff: Between the lines, you can read a few stories about national security and urban planning.
Updated Fri Jan 13, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: NYC Finally Builds A Better Subway Map Hardcore New Yorkers tend to shake their heads at tourists confusedly poring over the NYC Subway Map. After all, what could possibly be so confusing about that damn thing? A lot, actually.
But the map has been around so long and changed so little from its basic navigation that the problems tend to hide in plain sight. There is, however, a fascinating little suggestion at improvements buried on the MTA's website. Understanding what makes it great takes a bit of comparison though.
First, let's look at the current map:
Updated Fri Jan 13, 2012
Infographic: How Much Of The Earth Will We Eat By 2050? A funny thing has happened in the way well-meaning greenies talk about the earth. Call it the Al Gore effect: Faced with so many climate skeptics who deny the reality that 99% of scientists back global warming, the greenies typically resort to more and more wonkish sorts of communication. As if proving the climate skeptics wrong were simply about showing more and more data.
Updated Fri Jan 13, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: The Rebirth Of Apple's Product Strategy People often talk about Apple's rebirth under Steve Jobs as if it were purely a matter of design innovation and brilliant products. (I know: We're guilty of this too.) But the fact is that the Second Coming of Jobs owed a large part of its success to some pretty savvy corporate strategy.
A perfect illustration of this comes thanks to Pop Chart Lab's newest poster, "The Insanely Great History of Macintosh." Look closely, and you can actually see three distinct phases of Apple's overall product strategy.
Updated Fri Jan 13, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: The Pro Sports Twitterverse Andrew Garcia Phillips, one of the data viz geniuses over at Chartball, has sent us the company's latest project: A sprawling map of the pro sports Twitterverse. In one zoomable map, it shows you who speaks loudest in the realm of pro-sports tweeting. The short answer? While celebrity athletes such as Shaq and Chad Ochocinco command a huge following, the pro-sports media outlets are far more intensely networked--meaning that their tweets command a pretty large megaphone due to network effects, not just fame.
Updated Fri Jan 13, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: The Best Design Tools On The Market Designers, in many ways, are quintessential first adopters and ideal test customers: They're technically savvy and demanding, with an extreme attention to detail and polish. Please them, and it's pretty certain that you've got a great product on your hands.
All of which makes this infographic commissioned by Best Vendor particularly interesting: Drawn from a survey of 180 design pros, it shows the favored apps in their toolkits. At the very least, these charts will show you a few apps that you might consider:
Updated Fri Jan 13, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: The Metals That Enable Our Gadgets Are Vanishing It's been widely reported that we're running out of the rare-earth elements and various other metals that make our smartphones and computers run. But rarely do you get very precise information about how dire that problem is. It's not that we don't know--it's simply that we haven't had any decent information designers addressing the data.
Updated Fri Jan 13, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: 13 Rules For Realizing Your Creative Vision Bre Pettis knows a thing or two about getting things done rather than getting them perfect: He's the founder of Makerbot, a company that turns out cheap rapid prototyping machines. No one would say they've been perfectly realized, but a key to Makerbot's is that it has evolved in the real world, rather than foundering as just another great idea.
Updated Fri Jan 13, 2012
Infographic Of The Day: Everything About The Mobile App Market Everything you hear about these days is mobile-app this and mobile-app that. But what does the mobile-app market look like? What do people want from apps? And what does the competitive landscape look like when you compare iPhone to Windows to Android?
Lucky for you, we have answers, thanks to James West of GDS Infographics, who created this superb collection of facts and figures for the iStrategy conference. Let's dive in.
Updated Tue Jan 10, 2012
