“This application prototype is part of the Master thesis ‘The Form of Facts and Figures,’ developed by Christian Behrens in the Interface Design program at Potsdam University of Applied Sciences. Its goal is the development of of a design pattern taxonomy for the field of data visualization and information design.”

“Since the days of the caveman, we’ve been using information graphics or ‘infographics’, as visual shorthand to convey information to the viewer that might take paragraphs or pages to explain in words. We interact with infographics on a daily basis, from the stick figure telling us when to cross the street, to icons in a web navigational menu. The field of infographics is exploding, with Edward Tufte being the current leading expert. There are many great examples to be found, that run the gamut of information displayed…”

A list of winners from “the Oscars of information graphics” contest recently help in Pamplona. XPLANE took a bronze. Congrats, Ted, Taylor and Matt!

Steve Duenes answered reader questions Feb. 25-29, 2008: “Mr. Duenes manages the graphics department, a group of 30 journalists who research and create the diagrams, maps and charts for the newspaper and the Web site. He started at The Times in 1999 as the graphics editor for science. In 2001, he became the deputy graphics director, and in 2004, he became the graphics director.” Check out this excerpted anecdote from one of the readers (emphasis mine):

in september i traveled with bill gates to africa to look at his work fighting aids there. while setting the trip up, it emerged that his initial interest in giving pots of money to fight disease had arisen after he and melinda read a two-part series of articles i did on third world disease in January 1997. until then, their plan had been to give money mainly to get countries wired and full of computers.

bill and melinda recently reread those pieces, and said that it was the second piece in the series, about bad water and diarrhea killing millions of kids a year, that really got them thinking of public health. Great! I was really proud of this impact that my worldwide reporting and 3,500-word article had had. But then bill confessed that actually it wasn’t the article itself that had grabbed him so much — it was the graphic. It was just a two column, inside graphic, very simple, listing third world health problems and how many people they kill. but he remembered it after all those years and said that it was the single thing that got him redirected toward public health.

No graphic in human history has saved so many lives in africa and asia.

This is a list of software to create any kind of information graphics:

• either includes the ability to create one or more infographics from a provided data set
• either it is provided specifically for information visualization

“Absolute genious. Compiled from the phishook forums. Let’s see how many you can figure out.”

“After 54 weeks of gestating, the 2007 annual report has finally hatched. It was a typical year that saw me entering my 30th year, tasting a few new things, drinking a bit less and learning more about feline dentistry than I had expected. I hope you will enjoy it.”

The visual approach of these charts on religious topics is pretty impressive, having been created between 1914 and 1919. This collection includes information graphics describing “the history of man through the ages, the contrasts of the church and the kingdom, the different positions of the “church” in the Bible, the three heavens found in the Scriptures, how the prophets viewed prophecy, an illustrative view of the Ages and Dispensations, the failure of man in every dispensation, overview of the second coming of Christ, view of all the resurrections and judgments found in the Bible and an illustration of the different aspects of the spirit world.”

From The Economist: “A good graphic can tell a story, bring a lump to the throat, even change policies. Here are three of history’s best.”

From one of the guys who put together ChartChooser: “Here’s something we came up with to help you consider which chart to use. It was inspired by the table in Gene Zelazny’s classic work Saying It With Charts.”

“Google released a chart generator service they are calling the Google Chart API. Usage is quite straightforward: you link to an image in the form of a parameterized URL and Google returns a PNG graphic containing the chart.”

“As it turns out, though, it appears that most of these examples probably wouldn’t be considered “information visualization” by the “information visualization” community represented by the InfoVis conference, presumably because, for the most part, they aren’t designed as tools with which you do rigorous analytic work.”

“Bringing together leaders in visual thinking for the first time in one location, the VizThink ‘08 Conference (http://www.vizthink.com) is an opportunity for executives to understand ways of incorporating visualization processes into business, learning and communications strategies to gain faster and more effective results. Hosted by Portland, Ore. based VizThink LLC, the conference will include breakout sessions and forums facilitated by some of the most recognized names in the visual thinking space, including the distinguished Bob Horn from Stanford University, renowned author and artist Scott McCloud, award winning designer Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design, most notably known for her work in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, and Nigel Holmes formerly with Time magazine. The conference will be held at the Westin San Francisco Market Street Hotel from January 27-29. Registration (http://www.vizthink.com/reg.html) is open now.”

“A while back we had a roundabout discussion about the term illustration and its limitations. Bob Flynn and Jaleen Grove both pushed back a little against my impatience with the term, and the supposed tyranny of the word which I decried… Frustrated by the lack of a larger narrative in which to locate genres, careers, and achievements, I have been working on visualizations of the development of commerical images. This week I have blundered into print with one such attempt: Commercial Images: An Evolutionary Scheme, a two-page infographic that occupies a central spread in the new Modern Graphic History Library catalogue, out this week. It posits two basic strands in commercial image history: illustration and cartooning, increasingly intermingled but distinct.”

“Find and download great looking Excel and PowerPoint charts. Our Chart Chooser lets you explore many different well designed charts and download templates for Excel or PowerPoint with a click. Chart Chooser is an online tool that answers two questions we commonly get:
1. What type of chart should I use to show my data?
2. How can I make good looking Excel or PowerPoint charts?”