25+ Useful Infographics for Web Designers

As someone notes in the comments: “As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Somehow seeing things with a picture adds a whole new dimension.”

Infographics can be a great way to quickly reference information.

Instead of pouring over figures and long reports to decipher data, an infographic can immediately make apparent exactly what a dataset actually means…

Some are incredibly practical, some provide information that might be of interest to designers and some just present data that might be interesting to those who design websites all day.



phiii.com – the graphic finder


Looks like the start of a buy-n-sell infogaphics site?

Basically, everyone in phiii participate, both as buyers and as sellers. As a buyer, there are no restrictions. Sellers are invited phiii of their graphics on the platform phiii.com can sell or advertise with us. Prerequisite for the provision of graphics on phiii.com is a high quality of graphics. Poorly made or inadequately researched graphics are not acceptable to us. Any graphic that is offered here, an information. Cheap clip-art graphics or purely artistically motivated illustrations for sale are not allowed.



How to reduce your PSD file size using Photoshop

Wow:

If you want to save some space (my tests showed a loss of 20%, but I didn’t try it on bigger files, which could lead to an even better result), put a white filled layer on the top of your PSD file, save it, and see the slim-fast effect.

Thanks Frank!



Never Use White Type on a Black Background: And 50 Other Ridiculous Design Rules


What a great idea for a visual book:

Design has many rules that claim to be big truths and full of wisdom. Designers all go by rules that work for them. However, their rules may not work for someone else, or for a particular piece of design work. When a rule is forced upon you, it stops working and becomes a joke, like “Never use a PC,” or “Leave it until the last minute,” or the most famous of them all, “Less is more.”

The problem is that every rule related to, or governing, design is ultimately ridiculous. In this book we have collected the most talked-about rules and the viewpoints of designers and thought leaders who live by them or hate them.

(Thanks SwissMiss!)



Man decorates basement with $10 worth of Sharpie


Nice.

When Charlie Kratzer started on the basement art project in his south Lexington home, he was surrounded by walls painted a classic cream. Ten dollars of Magic Marker and Sharpie later, the place was black and cream and drawn all over.



FlowingPrints

FlowingPrints, brought to you by Nathan from FlowingData:

FlowingPrints posterizes the hidden stories in data.

Not only are we creating more data every day, but data is growing more widely available from governments, organizations, and individuals. Big databases are just the first step though. We need to make sense of it all.

Enter FlowingPrints. As a project of FlowingData, FlowingPrints analyzes, interprets, and visualizes the meaning behind the data. The final result: posters that present beautiful stories in beautiful data.

FlowingPrints will announce whenever a poster is ready, and that poster will be available for a limited time. While previous posters will be digitally viewable in archives, only one poster will be on sale at any given time.



Cargo

I just got beta access and can’t wait to try out this visually-oriented CMS:

The Cargo platform powers a variety of creative communities in the fields of Education, Design, Research, and Conceptual Art — currently under development… Cargo evolved out of the system that runs the SpaceCollective community. We found it remarkably successful and efficient in creating visual content on the web, placing a strong emphasis on design, layout, image quality and typography. Our goal is to dramatically increase the accessibility and exposure of creative individuals on the Internet, while aspiring to build a networked context that will contribute to the culture as a whole.



Interaction Design Pilot Year (Courses)


Check out this gallery of student work:

The Interaction Design Pilot Year is a collaborative initiative between Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) and The Danish Design School (DKDS). Our aim is for students, faculty and staff to work together in a multi-cultural, multidisciplinary studio environment to co-create a new kind of education that is relevant for academia and industry.



Lou Romano: The art of UP

Have a look at this amazing work:

Here is some of the development & production work I did on UP (2005-2008). Similar to the work from The Incredibles, (production paintings, color/lighting design and artistic direction) this was done to help inspire the look of the film… A challenge in film is conveying how something feels, not how it exists in reality. Research trips can be a blessing and a curse: the blessing in that visiting an actual place surpasses what you can get from video and photos alone, the curse in being too much a slave to the actual place. Imagination and feeling should dictate everything, not reality.

(Thanks Waxy!)



GOOD Transparencies Archive

The official GOOD Magazine infographics archive on Flickr:

GOOD is an editorially-led, member-driven community that provides content and experiences that blend entertainment and relevance. Out portfolio includes GOOD Magazine and www.GOOD.is, updated daily with fresh editorial and short-form video features. Launched in 2006, we have received numerous awards for our aesthetic and unique voice that reflects the cultural shift among consumers who want to move the world forward and enjoy themselves while doing so.



RANDOM WALK: The visualization of randomness

Beautiful:

There is one remarkable thing about randomness: Its existence is neither proved nor disproved it even appears everyday in science and in our everyday lives. Random walk is interesting for people who want to know more about the mystic character of this invisible companion.

RANDOM WALK… presents experiments in mathematics and physics, showing the mysterious interaction of chaos and order in randomness. The project RANDOM WALK simulates randomness in visualizations, which are easy to understand. In this way, it delivers insight into a phenomenon, which has so far remained unexplained.



Still workin’…

Yikes — two months?!? I’m getting ready to relaunch xBlog soon. Thanks for yer patience.



Introducing Typekit

True font control on the Web? It’s getting closer:

When we started Small Batch Inc. last year, our goal was to explore what’s now possible on the web. That exploration has taken many shapes: bringing together a community at The Start Conference, working with our friends at Twitter for a few months, and digging deep into data with Wikirank. Now we’re focusing on an entirely new idea, and we’d like to share that with you. It’s called Typekit.

We’ve been following developments in web browsers very closely, looking for new and smarter ways to build stuff. Last fall, we started seeing renewed interest in linking to fonts via Cascading Stylesheets. While the W3C working draft has been around for years, a new wave of browser support will finally offer designers more control over fonts on the web. A particularly cogent article from John Allsopp, followed by frequent conversations with him, helped us understand that there was a significant opportunity here.



Making some tweaks

Doing some work on xBlog for the next few days, including implementing a new theme, incorporating VISUALS, starting to publish new, original, content and more. xBlog is 10 years old this year and it’s time to grow up. :-)

Some links are broken and some layout is wonky at the moment but will be fixed soon. In the meantime check out the new bBlog.

—Bill



Anyone Can Swiss

“With our patented auto-swissification technology, making posters is a snap!”