World Cup Mobile Text Traffic

During the World Cup O2 were tracking the amount of text message data sent during the England matches. Not all messages sent during this time were solely about the game, but you can clearly see on the graphs below when something happened worth talking about there was a definite spike in traffic.

For example, on the first game against the USA when Gerrard scored there was a period between the goal and the peak reaction when messages averaged over 3,000 per second. That’s alot of things to happen per second!

The following shows how the time expands and compacts based on the amount of traffic during each match. In the second game against Algeria you can see hardly anything got a reaction. The score was 0-0 and the match to watch wasn’t very exciting, except at the end Rooney made a comment to the camera and network traffic went crazy.

The final graph is a comparative look at the traffic over all 3 matches. We can see from this graphic when something significant happened during the match there was a traffic spike, and another at the end when the match finished.

Though the end spike was probably everyone working out which pub to go to!

Post Details Posted June 30, 2010 at 9:22 pm By Dave | Filed under Design | 2 Comments

How big is the USA?

The first draft of this visualisation was created in about 8 hours before the deadline for USA by Designers expired, on the day before I had to move out of my house and before I’d started any packing! So, to say I was rushed, stressed, and clock watching is a HUGE understatement.

What’s shown below is the updated graphic with about half hours more work on it since the submitted version for the competition. The original idea I had was to do about four visualisations looking at wealth, quality of life, culture, and size. I’d already spent time gathering and compiling the data a couple of weeks beforehand from various sources, but then other projects took priority (again) and my time lines got screwed (again!). So here’s just one: size.

How big is the USA poster

It’s a visualisation focused on showing the size of the USA compared to other countries in the world.

The process and older drafts

This is the first draft that was completed with only 5 minutes to spare before the deadline ended, using an automatically generated colour palette.

This is the second draft after I decided I hated the colours, and decided to go with a monochromatic green variant to represent the land.

This is the third draft after I decided to try and colour code everything by the dominant country’s flag colour, then gave up halfway through as I realised I was going backwards.

This is the final draft you see above. I’ve taken out the block colours and used a stronger line weight to pick out the more important areas of the visualisation. As it’s a focus on the USA, I’ve brought out the USA’s area on the pie with their customary red, white and blue colours.

…and I did try an inverted version but never really fancied it.

Now I’ll have to wait to see if my entry gets picked up by the project, and try and be cheeky and ask the organisers if they’d be so kind as to accept the updated version. I couldn’t leave it after the second draft anyhow, it just wasn’t up to spec.

Post Details Posted March 5, 2010 at 11:01 pm By Dave | Filed under DTN Lab, Design | Tagged as , , , , , , , | 0 Comments

Buzz Tracker

This week I’ve been working on a sweet new data visualisation that aggregates opinion from twitter for a specfic event or set of topics. All week it’s been evolving, growing in ability and scope and I think it’s about time it deserved a little mention on DTN.

I’m not going into too much detail right now until I put a little video together of how it works, but if you’re in London and you’re free tonight (February 19th 2010) then you should come along to Design Overtime at the Design Museum on the Thames. It’s going to be a great night with full open access to all the exhibits, plus the designers in residence (that includes me) will be taking over the museum. What this means I’m not sure, but my visualisation will be tracking everything, and if the weather holds out then this vis will be projected onto the outside wall of the DesMus for all to see. Should be pretty darn cool.

I’ll have plenty of pictures, video, and screencast on this after the weekend, so tell your friends! — and if you are in London and you want to come down then I have a few tickets going begging. Let me know on twitter, @davebowker or @designingnews, and you should follow me too. I like to think I’m funny. :)

Post Details Posted February 19, 2010 at 4:37 am By Dave | Filed under DTN Lab, Design, Programming | 1 Comment

Plans

So lately I’ve been thinking about just what I want Designing The News to be and I had a Jerry Maguire moment - an epiphany. There are alot of data visualisation blogs out there that consistently post great examples of data visualisation, and for me putting together last weeks post wasn’t fun. If felt like a chore. I have alot of respect for these authors who take the time to put together a quality article, but I’ve decided I’m not going to do that any more.

DTN’s primary focus now is to create original infographics and data visualisations. If you like seeing great examples of data visualisation then you should follow @designingnews on twitter for regular updates on fantastic data related stuff I find around the web, but I will no longer be posting these on the blog. I find twitter updates to be passive, and great for this sort of content.

So there you go. Hope you enjoy original content as much as I do. :)

Announcing the next visualisation project

For those who haven’t heard already HUG United have launched their second open project, USA by Designers, for designers to create artwork around the subject “USA”. Have had this on my radar for the last couple of weeks and since wrapping up the last of my freelance jobs just a couple of hours ago I’ve decided to enter the contest.

Designers, illustrators, photographers, design studios, collectives/crews, agencies, students, visual artists… you are welcome to submit an innovative, creative, exciting, personal and experimental artwork inspired by the theme: “WHAT DOES USA MEAN TO YOU?”
We are expecting diversity and freestyle: all styles of outstanding visual media are welcome. Selected works will be featured through online exhibit and book (more information soon).

With the fantastic data resource Data.Gov I’m sure there’ll be some interesting stuff to make some really cool visuals from. Stay tuned.

And another…

Also, for those who haven’t seen the work of the amazingly talented Mike Deal, his data visualisations for the Charting The Beatles project are great examples of clean, colourful data visualisation and his series of posters have inspired me to create something too. More to come. Lots more.

Post Details Posted January 23, 2010 at 8:29 pm By Dave | Filed under update | Tagged as , , , | 1 Comment

Educational food and drink infographics

In the past couple of weeks I’ve been noticing an increase in infographics about food and drink, whether these are brand new productions or just old content being resurfaced I thought I’d start collecting them as and when they cropped up.

What follows are 20 examples of food and drink infographics, ranging from high-end commissions for Wired or GOOD magazines, to the hobbyist just trying to communicate data.

Lokesh Dhakars Illustrated Coffee Guide
Beautiful simple and strong illustrations makes this coffee infographic really stand out.

The Caffeine Poster
Not graphically the strongest, but very interesting to see caffeine levels of everyday drinks.

Wine Infographics
The high contrast colour scheme and strong simple line illustrations really make this one stand out.

How Clean Is Your Tap Water

Sugar Stacks
Simple everday foods and drinks are simply photgraphed next to how much sugar they contain. Some powerful, and interesting images on this site.

The Story Of Beer
A vertial timeline of beer, littered with nuggets of historical and interesting information.

The Best Beer In America
A great style to this graphic, almost cartoon like and beautifully illustrated by Mike Wirth.

Starbucks And McDonalds

Iria Castro Poster

Food For All Seasons
Another one from Good Magazine, the colours on this graphic really stand out.

Seasonal Food Chart

Which Countries Eat The Most Meat

Wired Magazine: The Future Of Food
An excellent series of infographics with a huge variety of graphs, charts, and pictograms to illustrate this thought provoking food report.

Ensuring The Future Of Food

Graham Meyer’s Estimated Food Consumption
A simple, colourful and beautiful infographic illustration of what Graham Meyer ate over the course of a month.

Lunch Break

Digital Podge
Thsi beautiful infographic website has been doing the rounds recently, and for good reason. Go take a look!

Processed food: A Silent Assassin

Fast Food Calories Per Dollar

Hellmann’s - It’s Time for Real
A fantastic video with animated infographic goodness make this video about eating local food really shout it’s message.

Post Details Posted January 16, 2010 at 5:40 pm By Dave | Filed under Food & Drink, infographics | Tagged as , , , , , | 17 Comments

Resolution

Out of the three resolutions I made this new year this is the only one I’ve not broken yet. Sad but true. 8 days in I’ve already had a beer and cut my hair. Re-launching, writing, and designing for this site is the only one that remains, and with the constant challenge of Anton’s Project52 bearing down upon me I intend to keep it.

The basic idea is to write 1 post every week, 52 posts for 2010. This is number 1. Hello.

Now this first post is a bit of a copout, and it’s for the same excuse I’ve been using for the past year - I’ve had no time. But, I have been getting my act together. I’ve been busy. I could have posted screenshots of the new design (oh yea!), written about the upcoming news browsing visualisation I’ve been working on at my dayjob, or even documented all the un-used ideas, mockups, and files for the original DTN series. However, it being after 2am on the last day of entry for the first #p52 of the year - I haven’t.

Next week will be better. Promise. Until then here’s a little promo video I made a while ago which I’ve been meaning to post for bloody ages.

I know, the resolution’s crappy and my video editing sucks. I’ve used the program maybe twice!

For those of you on twitter who are so inclined, I’m posting regular updates on data visualisation and infographic stuff on the DTN twitter account. I’m planning a sweet visualisation of my twitter followers at some point, so if you want to be immortalised in print you should really follow me!

Post Details Posted January 8, 2010 at 3:16 am By Dave | Filed under Site News | 0 Comments