IBM tells us, “Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few.”
With so much data flying around our modern world, it can be difficult to sift through and comprehend vast amounts of information. This is where data visualisation and infographics come in handy. We designers are often asked to find striking ways of visually presenting data, making information more clear and easier to digest at a glance. Infographics can do just this, and five artists around the world have taken data visualisation to the next level.
Annual report props
Annual reports are a great way to showcase your company and brand. They are often filled to the brim with charts and statistics, so how to keep your data from looking stale? This report from Ablynx combined photography and props to create their own unique solution. Check out the full report here.
Pi
For the visual learners out there, mathematics can be tricky to comprehend without a little help. An urban mural project in Brooklyn is aiming to connect students with their community and their understanding of Pi. Colourful representations of Pi, painted by the students, are popping up on city buildings as a way to visualise the concept and beautify their neighbourhood. The latest from Visualize Pi can be found here.
Smartphone gestures
Have you ever looked down at your phone in disgust at all the smudgy fingerprints covering your screen? Artist Evan Roth did, and also noticed the patterns generated by common gestures used while navigating a mobile device. He combined these movements with ink to create a series of paintings titled according to gesture.
Unusual objects
Data visualisation and infographics are often associated with creative iconography and typography. These are great ways to graphically represent data, but sometimes certain projects call for a different approach: objects. Visual News explores instances like this in their article, Gumballs and Pencils: 7 Data Visualisation Projects Made with Unusual Objects. Why objects? “Objects in the real world are intrinsically relatable — we can literally reach out and touch them. And because all of these examples were physically constructed and photographed, they give their numbers an especially tangible (and thus assessable) quality impossible to achieve with other methods.” This approach puts the information in its own context, adding another level of clarity.
Life in perspective
Time is a particularly difficult concept to grasp for most humans, and at risk of triggering an existential crisis, a website called Here is Today hopes to give some perspective on daily life in the largest and smallest contexts of the universe.
