At the BlogWell conference two weeks ago, we tried our hand at graphical note-taking during some of the sessions. Here are a few highlights from our efforts.
Delta Airlines leads the way in customer contact – the airline has a Twitter handle specifically for dealing with customers in crisis, among other efforts. Continue Reading →
Today’s MOTD runs into a theme we’ve seen here before, segregating countries by the types of cuisine that they are known for. This time the country is India and you can read more about the provided map @ www.spiritualjourneys.net.
Today’s MOTD is a followup to a previous infographic about how to change a tire. Today’s explains the different markings on a tire and gives you all the information you need to successfully replace your blow out.
Today’s MOTD comes to us from the Washington Post and is a great infographic explaining the current DC Metro expansion and how they will excavate the tunnel.
Today’s MOTD is the coaching tree of the creator of the west coast offense and one of the greatest coaches of all time Bill Walsh.
In analyzing the tree, Mike Holmgren’s lineage is probably the strongest but Dennis Green’s tree is making a case bolstered by the most current super bowl winning coach, Mike Tomlin.
Today’s MOTD is a flowchart information graphic explaining the new cash for clunkers program, www.cashforclunkersfacts.com.
I found this visual personally enlightening because after following the flow chart, I do qualify for the most cash for my car $4,500.
*Note there are different qualifications for trucks.
Today’s MOTD is an map of the major mass transit systems of North America.
I like this graphic because it does not show traditional boundaries, but one can clearly visualize the outline of N.A..
Today’s MOTD comes to us from The Rice School of Architecture.
The graphic is composed of overlapping circles showing the mileage of ring roads around various cities. Houston is the biggest, while Vienna is the smallest.
It is interesting to note where Washington, DC fits in. With all the pain that the beltway causes, its hard to imagine that there are worse ring roads out there…
This MOTD created by Transportation For America, with the author unknown at this time, centers around shifting public transit trends and is a great illustration of using not only multivariate technique (the width of the lines is determined by the level of ridership in each city), but also using the a topic relevant layout to make a point.
By this, I mean that the image is about transportation, and they’ve used a metro map style of layout to start and end particular cities “track” in either service cuts, fare hikes or job loss, depending on which metric applies to a particular cities transportation bureau. I believe this technique, topic relevant architecture and medium, allows for not only a deeper emotive connection with the intended audience but for an increased level of information retention.
Thanks to the Maga intern, David McClain, for showing me this!
Today’s image was found on the World Subway Systems website, and displays daily subway ride statistics.
Other than enjoying the layout, which allows for easy conclusions to be drawn about the data, I thought that the conceptual route maps of each city was a nice second substrata of information.
Moreover, the bright yellow column along the right hand side of the image is chokful of information about each city, from founding date of the route, to the average single ride fare.
Today’s selection comes from either Conde Nast Traveler, or John Grimwade, and is a well proportioned look of the trip to where tectonic plate activity has allowed for the Earth’s molten core to penetrate ocean bottom.
It’s a little bit on the textbook side of things stylistically, but I find that it is an example of one of principles to which Maga adheres to, specifically, using systems of maps to present a variety of important views on a subject. This type of systems thinking allows an individual to understand the information on a variety of levels, from the strategic to the tactical, as well as subsequently becoming empowered to make more informed decisions, which leads to increased impact with upon acting.
Today’s Map O’ the Day is all about “getting around”, or the different modes of transportation and some usage statistics regarding the select types. It was designed by the folks at International Networks Archive, a group out of Princeton University and presents some pretty interesting statistics including my favorite tidbit: the fact that the rise of mega yachts has been 214% since 1996.
A neat aspect of this presentation is the use of actual transportation methods to display the information.
Q: How do you get a blonde out of a tree?
A: Wave
According to this map – and if you really believe that blondes have less brains –a nasty fall like that is more likely to happen in the central parts of Norway, Sweden and Finland, where at least 80% of the population is fair-haired, the highest figure in all of Europe.
This map, indicating the varying degrees of ‘blondness’ in Europe, shows how fair hair gets rarer further away from this core area – towards the south, as one intuitively might presume, but also towards the east, west and even towards the north.
The consecutive bands (coloured in such a way as to approximately represent the ‘average’ hair colour in each area) surrounding the core blonde area in Scandinavia in most cases don’t correspond with national boundaries, but could be taken to represent certain degrees of ethnic variation, often with a possible historical explanation.
The highest percentages of fair-haired people can be found around the Baltic Sea (e.g. Denmark, the Polish coast and the Baltic states), making it in effect an almost entirely blonde-bounded lake. Only the German part of the Baltic coastline is remarkably un-blonde.
Iceland was settled by mainly Norwegian colonists, and Icelanders still share the same degree of blondness with the largest part of Norway.
The southern border of the fairer-haired part of Great Britain seems to correspond quite well with the southern border of the Danelaw, which was ruled and settled by the Danish in the early Middle Ages.
The northern border of the 50-79% blonde area in Britain excludes the Highlands, perhaps indicating this was a refuge for the darker-haired Celtic people of Scotland.
The darkest-haired part of France seems to correspond with those areas most heavily populated by its more ancient Gallo-Roman inhabitants, lighter-haired regions possibly reflect a later influx of Celts (in Brittany) and a more pronounced settlement of Frankish tribes of Germanic origin (in northern France and down towards Burgundy).
Galicia prides itself on its Celtic heritage. Maybe this explains the relative blondness of that nort-west corner of Spain. The darker-haired area of Switzerland seems to correspond with the areas where Rhaeto-Roman and Italian are spoken. The blonder area in northern Italy might reflect a larger Germanic, Celtic and/or Slavic component of the local population, a similar area in the heel of Italy, way down south, is more of a mystery.
A significant blonder-darker divide cuts through the Balkans, dividing Serbia in two (whilst Montenegro lands on the ‘blonder’ side of the border, and Kosovo on the ‘darker’ side).
Romanian areas closest to the Hungarian border are equally blonde – many ethnic Hungarians live in Romania, possibly most of them closest to the border. Moldova, ethnically Romanian, is equally dark-haired. As is an adjacent part of the Ukraine, which for the largest part is as blonde as most of central and eastern Europe (all the way down to Georgia).
The darker areas in Russia’s far north (the Kola peninsula) and further east (Siberia) are probably due to the prevalence of native, darker-haired peoples, e.g. the Saami (formerly referred to as the Lapps), who also account for the darker area at the very north of the Scandinavian peninsula.
NYC – Any and every American city is built up out of Avenues and Streets, most of them numbered. A much nicer way to describe a city is by mapping its neighborhoods. As in this map of Manhattan.
Manhattan – A variation on Map #2a done by Alexander Cheek. The differences between these two maps indicate that neighborhoods in Manhattan are ‘fluid’, and constantly evolving.
