visual (r)evolution

CNN has done a feature, "A new way of looking at the world" that focuses on the growing diversity and use of visualization tools to express data in interesting, instructional and also beautiful ways. In other words, exactly the stuff this blog is made of!

What is a graph? A graph is a more accessible, easier and faster way of interpreting information that otherwise may take a certain expertise, and certainly greater time, to comprehend. Using this principle to visualize increasingly "data" - such as Ben Fry's work on Darwin's The Origin of Species - gives a whole new agency to visualization. Though visualization projects are more time-consuming for a "user" to create, they are much like Wikipedia entries in terms of their ability to instruct, social accessibility and function. I've been looking for a great visual on the health care legislation - so I'm excited to hear about Many Eyes, which features, among other great projects, visuals galore on issues surrounding the contentious health care debate.

Another development that the article touches on in the field of visualization is the ability to provide new insight on certain social, behavioral, environmental etc ideas and norms. Bruce Mau, who calls the merging of technical and cultural changes a "social revolution," has a particularly interesting installation that questions the way we, as humans, measure wealth. The installation makes us wonder - how did our mass culture form in such a way that we value money - a complete social construction - over something as critical and physically real as the number of species on earth?

If the proliferation and accessibility of such tools continues to grow, maybe a "visual" Wikipedia isn't so far-fetched?

GOOD magazine: CEO compensation contest

GOOD Magazine's CEO Compensation Contest asked designers to create a graphic that explores and makes an interesting statement about executive pay in the U.S.. The winner (above, announced Oct 2) by Dee Adams is a great visual representation of hierarchy and the imbalance in pay and position between  executives and the employees that are (literally) beneath them. It's an awesome way to incorporate social commentary into an infographic.

 See here for GOOD's analysis on the winner and the entries of the runners up. Click here for other contest entries.

GOOD Magazine has a lot of interesting infographics and studies related to current public policy dilemmas, campaigns, claims etc in their transparency section.
.

people-mapping by the mapping people

I read about Worldmapper and one of their studies on BBC News. Worldmapper itself is an initiative of various geographers at Sheffield University (and one at University of Michigan...) that reinterprets maps to visualize different demographic information. The map shown above is from a series of population maps that the group developed to emphasize population densities  in different countries.

Professor Danny Dorling, who oversaw the study, argues that the creation of these maps "changes how you think about places...if you really want a fair map of an area you do it by population. What you are interested in most of the time is people." (via BBC News)

While I don't necessarily agree with this statement (depends on what field you're working in!), I do agree, of course, that population is a critical measurement to take into consideration when studying regions. On a country-by-country level, I don't think that these visualizations really add much to the comprehension of population densities. However, from the perspective of say, a planner trying to get his/her bearings on a new town, city county etc, this would be a really helpful visual tool to interpret population trends throughout the area of study.

Many of the other visualizations Worldmapper does are really instructive, such as an animation that displays internet usage over time or one that shows age of death worldwide.