For booklovers

Do you remember Andre Chiote's posters of Brazilian World Cup stadia? Now Chiote has developed some elegant posters of great libraries around the world. Awesome illustrations.

Great grad school poster/image

Geeks vs. Nerds: The Inforgraphic

As the geeks vs. nerds debate continues, there is now an infographic to help novices navigate these dangerous waters.

Greenest cities infographics

Fast Company has some fascinating infographics to help you sort out which cities are the greenest in the world.

Lots of drawing

One guy is trying to draw, one building at a time, all of the buildings in New York.I am looking forward to seeing the Gristede's on 26th (which should also include a long line of UCB fans).

Harvest the Goodness of GIS

The ghosts of GIS Days past have brought back a few of the graphic reminders of the early years:

A special thanks to Caroline Phillipuk, whose GIS Day posters outlived the celebrations.

Graphic: The benefits of gardening

Source by Loch Ness Water Gardens

Avoiding Powerpoint comas

LifeHacker posted a guide to making presentations that suck less.  Edward Tufte's Congnitive Style of Powerpoint might be the best overall guide. If you want ongoing commentary, Presentation Zen offers some greate examples of ways to improve your visual aids.  And, watching Ted Talks is never a bad way to get some ideas.

Designing infographics: sports edition

Information communication guru Edward Tufte has posted a interesting discussion by Ric Werme about creating communicative sports graphics. But it could could just as easily apply to changing demographics or stormwater runoff, etc.

Earthquake graphics

In February Good Magazine ran a great infographic (with Column Five Media) on where to expect the next earthquake. After Haiti they thought we might be due again in 15 years.

moveibarcode

moviebarcode is a different way to look at movies.

databending

Do you think Photoshop will add a DataBending option anytime soon?

Moving graphics

WNYC has collected nearly 1700 responses of listeners describing their moves over the last 10 years.  Now they are releasing these as a giant database and giving listeners until August 22nd to make something of it.  Between our spatial skills and our graphic skills and our understanding of people, I would expect that some underemployed EP&D students or grads might be able to make quite a splash with this.

Big cities in China

I stumbled onto this fascinating blog/site called Chinfographics that explores different graphics highlighting issues about China.  It has some great examples of interesting graphics that convey lots of information.  The one that got me there in the first place was called The Long Tail – 60 Chinese Cities with a Population of Over 1 Million that was featured on Scocca. It will be interesting to see where they go next.

Map-making video

A graphic artist has created a great time-lapse video showing how he used Illustrator to make a tourist map for a Florida attraction.  Digital Urban has both the video and related links.  It is great to see the process revealed.

Ancient History

As a final tribute to past lecture series Kyle Beidler helped round up these old posters and reformat them for the blog. This is in addition to Monday's set. Which do you most regret missing? Which poster do you like best?

Fall 2009
Spring 2009

Fall 2008
Spring 2008
Fall 2007
Spring 2007

Creative mapping

Sunday's NY Times included a creative map of scents or odors around the city. That, combined with the psychogeography maps, reminded me of other creative maps I have seen recently, but not yet shared including a beautifully made map of the heart of America. But one worth setting aside some serious time to surf through is Visual Complexity which has amassed a collection of nearly 700 notable graphic displays including this unusual nationwide transit map, Paula Scher's Maps series, and one of many maps of the Internet and Chris Yates' simplified Interstate Map (shown here).





While we talk about it a little in my geomatics course, we dig in and do it my landscape architecture studio. Last year's class did a particularly strong job in reaching beyond the basic limitations of GIS.

How designers fail

The other day I overheard some design students complaining about a tough critique on their first iteration of a project. Designing, changing, redesigning, and changing again is part of the process. Jason Tselentis clearly agrees, as he explains in this essay on Speak-Up.

"The entire creative process requires you to be unsuccessful: failed concepts, long hours, repeated attempts, constant revisions, massaging the details, and patience carving your career."

But for students, the software makes this even more difficult. This story from the essay soounds pretty familiar:

The student exclaims, I just cannot make Photoshop do what I want to!
The instructor replies, This is only the fifth week of class,
to which the student retorts, I know, I should’ve mastered it by now!

visualizing science

The NY Times looked at a study that produced a spatial representation of the relationships between different fields. You could say that it puts geography in its place.

Great NCAA graphics

Although it isn't as riveting as the NIT brackets, the NY Times has an elegant graphic that shows the big hubs of NCAA success over the history of the tournament. Because, as we Kentucky fans know, it is not about this year but the long view of NCAA history.