UPDATE: This post has been updated on 05 April 2008.
This visual has been modified from its original version. The logo has been amended, and introduction information has been added.
Well yet another day is complete. When there’s little distraction I really enjoy cranking these visuals out. Looking at it now, in some ways the result kind of reminds me of a ’70s pinball-esque, dark side of the moon album covered hard drive. Schweeet!
The original idea was inspired by looking at polar graphs, and figuring out a way to maximise the amount of data I could plot on it. The concentric circles are news categories, expanding from least to most total word counts per category. The individual word counts of each story are plotted on the corresponding concentric circle, on a spoke of the corresponding page. The rest I’m sure you can figure out. Pretty no?
Mmm…. Taste the rainbow!
Expandability!
As I was making this one, I was thinking that if it were pulling live data (like RSS/XML or pulling direct from some news database), it would be rather nice to tile the days. Each day is represented by one set of concentric circles, and each category in the circle is linked to its equivalent category for different days, each linking to everyone else in a parallel fashion. Mmm… linkage. Anyways, it’s just a thought.
I’m imagining a HUGE set of these static visuals on a gallery wall for one whole year. Damn that would be cool.
The Series
This is one day in a series that takes the news from one week of the Guardian newspaper, and visually represents it as a series of static visualisations. You may also be interested in:
- Monday - A typographic and layout based piece previewing the contents of the paper as ingredients.
- Tuesday - A list of headlines contained in the paper illustrated with references to the article or subject.
- Wednesday - A polar graph inspired layout mapping the stories and categories on colour coded concentric circles.
- Thursday - A content map showing the relationships between information inside of a circular container.
- Friday - A text heavy piece highlighting the sheer amount of information contained within in the paper.
- Saturday - A grid based typographic piece, showing patterns and author relationships through the paper.
19 Comments
Gorgeous work there.
Thanks Joe! :)
HI there, this is flipping brilliant - i totally love the idea and the execution is second to none.
This is the stuff that statistical link bait is made of. Major kudos.
I would love to do this for my seo stuff, with a graph showing keyword, ranking traffic, ROI and revenues one one kick-ass layout like this.
That’s pretty wild. I will definitely be checking in again.
Cool!
Thanks guys. Glad you like! :)
Dave, I saved this image on my desktop a few days ago. but i totally lost touch with the site or credit that i got it from… then i looked at the image more closely and saw your URL. it was so frustrating… now i can move on to other things. lol
I’m keeping a close eye on you buddy! this was brilliant. even if the content is totally irrelevant to me, the poster is something i can see framed on my wall.
Thanks Faramarz.
I went back through them and just tweaked a few things on each, so I’ll be republishing them in the next couple of days hopefully. You’ll have to re-download them! ;)
I’ve also done Thursdays, Fridays, and am just finishing Saturdays as well so it should be a nice update!
Holy shit, that’s gorgeous! I’m rather jealous, I admit…props, good sir. Props.
clean & beauty
ok… great stuff and it looks great but… i have no idea what this is!! xD
would you mind explaining a bit more on the concept? Is this an index for a newspaper or something?
Beautifull work. Thanks.
@ViLa4480,
It’s a static visualisation of the Guardian newspaper for one day. Taking this one day in time and on each day trying to create a unique visual representation of the data.
The concepts can be made to use live data and do this everyday/hour/minute to have a running visualisation, but for the moment I’m creating static visualisations that you could be proud to have on your wall as a piece of informational artwork. :)
Stunning! Have been looking at it for the past couple of days.
Mind telling us how you made this and what you used?
Hats off!
Stunning. I want a poster of this (and all the others) for my wall.
I’m a sucker for an infographic and these are really tasty.
Keep up the good work. I’ll certainly be keeping up with your blog from now on.
Glad you like!
I’ve had a couple of requests for these to be available to buy so I think I might have to look into it. They do look excellent when printed I have to say!
Like a gent in a pinstripe suit spewing up Skittles, but much, much sweeter. Beautiful.
You must say if you manage to get a print run on it. I’d love one.
this is just brilliant. i can’t stop looking at it. can you please explain what it means when you said ‘on a spoke of the corresponding page.’ english is not my native language, obviously, i’m having a hard time understanding what it means.
Majed,
Thanks! A spoke is like a spoke on a bicycle wheel, and there’s 26 of them, one for each page. They’re invisible, but evenly spread out around the circle. Each story is plotted on a spoke, which is the page of that story.
Hey Dave,
Great work, once again. I’ve got this one hung in my office, check it out:
http://flickr.com/photos/jasonrobb/2696406190/
I’ve got to know:
What do the clusters mean? They’re all on the same page? I’m having trouble explaining this to people that pass by. =) Thanks!
Hey Jason,
The clusters mean the articles are all on the same page, in the same subject. Some of the back pages of the Guardian have a lot of little stories, so trying to get them all to sit in the same place meant I had to cluster some items.
That’s a great pic by the way! Nice to see the work ‘in action’. :)
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[…] One week of The Guardian: Wednesday. Interesting Data Visualisation. The individual word counts of each story are plotted on the corresponding concentric circle. […]
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[…] Wednesday is a polar graph inspired layout mapping the stories and categories on colour coded concentric circles. The concentric circles are news categories, expanding from least to most total word counts per category. The individual word counts of each story are plotted on the corresponding concentric circle, on a spoke of the corresponding page. The colours on this piece are vibrant and the circular image clashing with the straight stripe adds a new feel to the piece. Taking what could be a boring mass of news item and turning these into something wonderful to look at. […]