Chart Porn

New DC Metro Maps

Dustin — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:41:44 +0000

There really aren’t many differences between the two current proposals, which were designed to incorporate the new Silver Line to Dulles airport. As mentioned in the WashPost comments, the only major flaw I see is using the same color for the background beltway and DC boundary as for the Silver Line.

To be honest, I still prefer a lot of the options that Cameron Booth proposed in his 2010 reworking:

Reverse Engineering a Chart

Dustin — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:00:29 +0000

Every once in a while you discover something that is obviously useful, but for some reason, you never even considered it before. That happened to me today in the form of graph digitizing software. Basically, it lets you create a chart in reverse: it starts with an image of an existing chart, and extracts the data. Why is this useful? Well, sometimes you find a great chart and want to use it for a project, but you don’t have access to the original dataset (it’s lost in time, etc). I’ve gotten around this in the past by tracing images in vector software – but obviously, extracting the data provides more precision and flexibility.

There are several digitizing programs out there, but I like Graphclick because it works with multiple chart types and has a simple interface (though it only works on Macs). Un-Scan-It is a nice one that works on PCs and Macs (but is a bit expensive).

Google’s Visual Design Guidelines

Dustin — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:30:16 +0000

How does Google shape its brand through design? Check out their “Visual Assets Guidelines“. It’s all very similar to the flat design movement, but the level of detail is fascinating.

22 Maps of Linguistic Differences

Dustin — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:21:26 +0000

This has been making the rounds. I like that they used alpha shading to show variations. And it’s pop, not soda.

History of Spying (on ourselves; 1791-2013)

Dustin — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:03:16 +0000

A wonderful interactive timeline of legislation, rulings, and events related to domestic surveillance in the United States. You can drill down into each event for an explanation, and links to primary sources (like the full text of legislation, etc).

Flat Design

Dustin — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:46:41 +0000

With the conference release of iOS 7 yesterday, there is much talk about it’s “flat design”. What is flat design? Designmodo has a nice article explaining the basics.

While I generally love flat design concepts, Apple really choked on some of the implementation – particularly the icon designs. Check out photos, newstand, game center, and settings below. Barf. They are the way too cluttered busy and abstract – the exact opposite of what they should be.

Animated Wind Map

Dustin — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:23:31 +0000

A very cool real time animated map of wind.

Also some historical snapshots, like Hurricane Sandy:

Fruits and Vegetables

Dustin — Fri, 31 May 2013 19:36:05 +0000

Two comprehensive charts from the good people at Pop Chart Lab – both available as posters.

Mom and Dad: How they spend their weekdays (1965 vs 2011)

Dustin — Fri, 31 May 2013 19:31:09 +0000

Things have changed quite a bit, but is anyone (including the children) happier or better off?

Energy Flow Maps

Dustin — Fri, 31 May 2013 19:18:12 +0000

We’ve seen similar maps before, but it’s nice to have them all together from one reliable source.

What Career Should You Choose?

Dustin — Fri, 31 May 2013 19:07:30 +0000

Interesting interactive scatter showing median salaries vs number of people employed – with the color of the dots indicating expected growth by 2020. You can filter by category of employment to cut down the dots a bit. It would have been nice if you could filter by expected growth rate as well.

US Corporations: Effective Tax Rates

Dustin — Fri, 31 May 2013 18:57:43 +0000

A spiffy annotated interactive visualization by the NYT on what different industries actually pay in taxes. The differences in rates between industries illustrate who is getting tax breaks. The related article is worth a read.