A picture of health

Well, in honour of my sketch being shortlisted for the first Information is Beautiful challenge (see last post), I felt I had to work the idea up properly. I really enjoyed working with the isometric perspective, which I haven't tried before. I think in this case the pseudo-3D perspective does make it hard to see the exact relationship between the different resources. A 2D bar chart would have done this better, but the isometric perspective idea does show groupings on the periodic table as well as giving a general idea of resource levels remaining. I found that it was essential to label the elements on the table as well as at the end of the 'bars', so that you can get some definite sense of the bar length by comparing the two positions.

I'm very honoured to have been shortlisted for the first ever Information is Beautiful challenge - which involves visualising the worldwide reserves of different materials. I wish I'd been able to work up a full piece for it, but sadly I only found out about the competition 2 hours before the deadline! So I entered the "napkin challenge" - for sketches and roughs. There are loads of great ideas up there, so obviously a great success for McCandless and the IB team: http://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/2011/10/napkin-shortlist-for-the-1st-challenge/ I guess I'd better produce the full version too now I have more leisure to do so!

[edit] to get the above graphic to legible size, you might have to right-click on it, and select "open link in new tab/window" (not "open image in new tab/window"). A new information graphic from me, on the effects of our ageing population on the number of pharmaceutical products that will be prescribed, if population projections are to be believed. This is particularly relevant as these products often pass through us and end up in water supplies - which we then take in again through eating and drinking, perhaps having unintended consequences. The graphic would not have been possible without input from: Dr Michael Depledge Professor of Environment and Human Health at Peninsula Medical school, in Cornwall and Devon, UK. Ruth Willis who produced reports for the UK's Royal Commission for Environmental Pollution. Dr Clare Redshaw Lecturer in Environmental Toxicology, European Centre for Environment and Human Health.

I've just learned that someone called Ric Hamilton is starting a blog on "the emergence of infographic CVs". I wasn't aware of the phenomenon, but just to shamelessy cash in on it, here is the one I produced for my interview at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health. Anecdotally the panel liked it, and it made me stand out. But it was for a job in visualisation... (Incedentally I did get the job). I still prefer the CV I made for myself when I was an undergraduate though. When all else fails, stick it in a cube :) http://willstahl.com/cv/index.html Edit: A blog post related to this is here: http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/2010/1/8/16-infographic-resumes-a-visual-trend.html Edit 2: Richard Hamilton's post has appeared here: http://www.gurucareersnetwork.com/blog/infographiccv/ It looks like there are mixed opinions, but his general opinion is that you should ask yourself: "Simplifying complexity, does this form part of my job role? If the an

I like to eat locally produced food when I can. It tends to be fresher, and it takes less energy to get it to me. However, as I've grown up in a world of global commerce and supermarkets, I tend to miss out on good seasonal food. I find that asparagus season is pretty much over before I've noticed, for example. Hence the calendar shown above. Creating this has firstly showed me why I can't remember the seasons for all the fruit and vegetables. A) There are a lot of them B) They all overlap, and are very different lengths. I was going to put on seafood and meat as well, but I quickly realised that the text would be illegible. So fruit and vegetables will have to do for now. I'll be using it myself to see how well it works. I might have to do a sequel with fish and game though, if this one proves popular. If anyone would like to print one off and use it, please do, and let me know how you got on with it. It needs to be printed on A2 paper, which should be possible at your

The atmosphere. It's probably a good thing, obviously. But do we really appreciate all the things it does for us? This graphic is based on work by two of my colleagues at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health, Dr Michaela Kendall* and Gyula Kothencz. It explains how different parts of the atmosphere play different roles in supporting our lives. I was going to have a nice curve of the earth at the bottom to orient the viewer. However, as its circumference is around 40,000km at the equator, the curvature wasn't really discernible in any way, even in the wide lines that separate out the different altitudes (the one at the top of the troposphere is called the tropopause, apparently, if you're into that kind of thing). * See Thornes, J et al. 2010. Communicating the Value of Atmospheric Services. Meteorological Applications 17(2); 243 - 250.

This graphic is based on data from the UK's Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC)*. It shows how our carbon emissions in 2009 break down into different sectors. I'm not sure how much I trust the data. For example, the largest category in "business" is "other industrial combustion". How that's been categorised as anything other than industrial, I'm really not sure... I've actually made two versions of the graphic showing the data as I found it. The one shown here (above) is simpler, and probably more suitable for screen presentation. The second includes detail of the subcategories, but due to the text size is really meant to be printed as a poster. You can find it here: http://www.willstahl.com/UKcarbon_v13_L.pdf ---------------------------------- *The data can be found here: http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/climate_change/data/data.asp

I wanted this graphic to give an overview of data on Climate Change reporting in Science News sections of various media. The data comes from a book chapter by Boyce & Lewis (full reference is on the graphic itself). They surveyed stories in evening news bulletins on BBC1 and ITV, the Today programme on Radio 4, and six national daily newspapers and six Sunday newspapers. The message in the chapter was that CC reporting went up in all media, and especially in TV. However, looking at the graphic I'm not so sure that's significant. If you look at the patterns in TV reporting, it seems far less stable than the other media. And the change in newspapers actually looks pretty minimal when shown in visual form... If nothing else, my graphic makes me want to see more data before making up my mind about this one...

This graphic shows some data from the NHS staff survey in 2009. Specifically, it looks at what 66872 people said when they were asked if their Primary Care Trust provided care that they would be happy with for one of their friends or relatives. I can see why it's tempting to write shock stories like this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/mar/18/nhs-staff-survey but the bars on the right show an overwhelmingly positive response around the country. The ranking of trusts in the middle, when presented on the map to the left, doesn't reveal much in the way of a pattern - apart from in London. I think it's really interesting to see the (often specialist hospitals) in central London showing up in dark blue, while the more general outer London Trusts are far more towards the pink end of the scale.

This graphic was an attempt to show the proportion of money spent on different departments in the 2009 UK budget (the width of the pie "slices") - but also the change from the previous year (the darker shaded areas, which extend away from the centre for increases, and towards the centre for decreases in spending). The Inner ring shows the main departments, and the outer ring shows this broken down into sub-departments. I'm not sure how successful the graphic is (HMT, for example, should be many times larger in size thanks to bailing out the banks that year). Percentages are tricky like that...

This data shows how 9 MA Graphic Arts students thought that the concepts of "sense", "action" and "static" relate to the three shapes circle, square and triangle. Some agreement on triangle being related to "action", and not to "static", but otherwise a range of different responses. Here's a link for the slides .