The most original infographics are not published in newspapers

Today, when everything is spreading all around the world through internet, when the tools are availabale for everybody and are easier to use, when citizen infographics are a fact, in these days, the most original ideas for infographics are not being published in newspapers, but in blogs, flickr or another personal pages, but with echoes all around the web that make them ananymous most of the times. Here ypu are some examples:

If extraterrestrials are watching our TV, what are they watching now?

Just making an operation with the distance of some stars and planets and the speed of electromagnetic waves, you can have this graphic.



This could be the original source

What do different positions think about different sexual behaviors?

Although you can find several mistakes (Catholic church is not neutral about homosexuality, or that is my perception), the idea is direct and easy to understand.



A possible original source, although it looks like anadaptation.

The browser wars

This one is already a classic.



I found this here

How do you want your coffee?

Another classic, already posted on this blog



This one has father, Lokesh Dhakar.

Graphics for a 4th of July

Today is Independence Day in USA. It's a great day for them, and that is something you could see on their newspapers. And what do people do in newspapers when they want to do something big but have no news? Graphics. They allow us to use non breaking news data to build a feature that can be really interesting. Here you are some examples.

Our flag, a graphical history
Mike Witrth sends this graphic about the USA national flag




Washington Post and the fireworks
These are examples from other years, but show some good graphics about fireworks.






Any more examples? Send them!

This july, two new infographics workshops

Two days for july. In Spain that means holidays. But resting is not everything. Is a great opportunity if we want to keep learning. And this july we have two new opportunities: on thios side of the Atlantic and at the other one.

I Workshop of Digital Infographics
Universidade de Minho (Braga, Portugal) July 16-17th

Online infographics workshop corrdinated by Nuno Vargas for people that already know how to use the software.
Teachers 'deluxe': Aitor Eguinoa (90 Grados) and Xaquín González 'Xocas' (The New York Times)
The fee is 250 € (including materials, equipment adn meals) If you want to participate just write a mail to sec-cicom@ics.minho.pt. And hurry up! Just 20 inscriptions accepted!

More details on this PDF


First Workshop for Journalists 2009
Facultad de Ciencias de la Comunicación de la Universidad Latina de Panama, July 20-22nd

Teachers this time are also a great value:
- Nelson J. Fernández, Venezuela
- Guillermo Gomez Hill, Mexico
- Guillermo Fernández, Costa Rica
- Gustavo Caravajal, Argentina
- Eduardo Soto, Panama

The prices, cheaper:
- Students of la Latina 65.00 B
- Students from other Universities 85.00 B
- Professionals 110.00 B

More information here (Spanish)

The tragic death of Eleftheros Typos

Eleftheros Typos, newspaper awarded as best designed of Europe has closed.



I feel this close very near, Eleftheros Typos was my first work as infographics consultant for Innovation. But it's also hard because it was an ended newspaper that came again to life. Who explains this perfectly is who was its Art Director, Spiros Polikandriotis. One of the great helps from inside in the relaunchingand success of the model. He was fired months before ET closed. And it was a big surprise for those who knew him and his great work.

Spiros writes:
"It's not strange at all that the paper closed. ET before the relaunch was selling around 10.000-15.000 a day and 45.000 on Sunday. It was it’s lowest numbers since its birth on 1984. After the relaunch it started rising in circulation reaching 25.000 – 35.000 on the daily and 120.000 on Sunday. These numbers were steady for at least 3-4 months. After that the editorial model changed back to the old ways. And with it slowly came the old numbers, both in circulation and in advertisement."




It's tragic. Because in these bad times is hard to know that one that could be saved has passed away. I just wan t to send a big hug to the infographics section, they showed how believing in change and wanting the change this can be spectacular. They demosntrated that it was possible. From the head of graphics, Kalli Labrou, to the last intern.
Good luck to all them.

lainformacion.com, second month

My new media, lainformacion.com is two-months old this tuesday 23th. Although I published here asome examples of the first works, now here you are some examples to criticise... You can watch them clicking on the image

La clave de las fusiones entre televisiones
Cuando aún no se sabía que cadenas serían las que se fusionasen en España una vez lo ley lo permitiese, hicimos este gráfico compartivo que mostrara los pros y contras de cada posibilidad en cada aspecto.



Who's who on Lost (this one in english)
As Matthew Fox/Jack was spending some days in Spain, we seized the oportunity to make this graphic with the relationships of the series. Great opportunity to mix work and fun!



Merging tv channels
There was a new law that allowed tv channels to merge and there were a lort of rumors about that. So we made a graphic showing how would work the different possibilities on different fields



Inmigration Explorer in Spain
The same day we decided we will do this graphic, nytimes.com published one with the same idea. What I used was the word 'Explorer', I loved it.



Looking for the black box of the AF447
Another coincidence. When Carlos showed me the sketches of the graphic he was starting, we couldn't imagine that El País will publish hours later (and before than us) a look-alike to what was our graphic (it grew from then).



Hidden Matisse
The Thyssen Museum of Madrid inagurated an exhibition with Matisse works, so we decided to make a graphic container fpr the video and Gigapans.



Hiring player at the soccer league
We had a blog aboutthe soccer summer market, so we summarized (and we keep updating daily) all the operations of the Liga.




Interactive guide of instruments of a Phylarmonic orchestra
Adding to a collection of songs we like at lainformacion.com, we celebrated the European Day of Music with this visual encyclopedia by Carlos Gámez

Crime maps: hyperlocal and global

Infographics are, in the best cases, very useful. One of the uses that is succeding at this moment is the crime map.

The last one has been nytimes.com, with this graphic about homicides at The Big Apple. Very The Grey Lady style: clean and with a lot of options to choose how to visualize it.




But the first time I saw one was at chicagocrime.org, today inside of the hyperlocal news site everyblock.org. You can take a glance at the Chicago map here



But many times you don't need to cross the Atlantic Ocean to find examples. One of my hometown newspapers, La Voz de Cádiz, has its own criminal map



But there's also the global scale: Wikicrimes.org, a brazilian initiative for the whole world. This is not very popular yet, but it has the potential to become very useful



Because good and useful ideas have no frontiers

Blogs, blogs, blogs

Another couple of infographics blogs to keep yourself updated

Calendario Visual (spanish)
Diego Sanz Salas, peruvian graphic designer, has started reciently this blog. His style reminds me 'The Guardian' for the typography and Good Magazine for the style




InfographicsGr
Dimitris Kabitis, greek infographics journalist at Eleftheros Typos summarizes graphics from the hellenic conutry on this blog. Not justs his or form his colleagues of newspaper, but from all the newspapers of Greece.