At this point, we offer each of the following contestants 48 hours (until 16:30 PST 2009 February 5) to send a ranking of their top three picks to dan@mrmeyer.com (excluding their own). A ranking seems almost vulgar in light of all this great introspection and design but these prizes won’t give themselves away, etc.
I like not having the scale shown on these. Full confession, I did not track all of this data, so some of the numbers are guessed. My personal favorite slide is the one with the least fact behind it and my least favorite is the one where I can tell you the numbers exactly. Go figure.
… this year I used the opportunity to play around with Photoshop – something I never take the time to do.
With Sarah, our first child, born this year — her arrival and impact on our lives defines 2008. These 4 slides show just some of what’s been happening so far.
I’m going to side with Don Norman, and say that In a proper design, both are important. Though, if there is some imperfection, I think that having beautifully laid out information that is incomprehensible is worse than an eyesore that tells a good story.
I only had two infographics. Why? I don’t keep a spreadsheet with the minutiae of my life. I know that some consider this useful, or therapeutic. In my family, it usually comes with a three letter acronym diagnosis from the DSM IV. No aspersions on Dan or Mr. Feltron, but I’m not into that.
I’m slightly disappointed with this set of slides I made because they don’t tell a story. My slides from last year (2007) told a story – of moving to NYC and changing careers. There was text which explained the stages of my year. This year my slides – hastily done – don’t tell a coherent story.
Luckily I’m just dorky enough to keep track of a few data sets of interest to me. I was also lucky to have a snow day today- otherwise these would probably not be complete.
6 Comments
Mr. K
February 3, 2009 - 7:22 pm -Heh.
I don’t think I’ve ever been called Fred before.
Dan Callahan
February 3, 2009 - 7:24 pm -These are all great but, in my opinion, Fred’s blows all of the others away. Not necessarily from a design point, although I do like the unity of design present, but that four simple statistics could so powerfully tell such a story…they are either the angriest or most dejected powerpoint slides I’ve ever seen. Possibly both. Either way, simply brilliant.
A. Mercer
February 3, 2009 - 7:46 pm -He did kick some a$$ didn’t he? It’s like Dostoevsky meets graphic designer meets NCLB.
I mean this is the nicest way, his design from last year to this year is just light years better (sorry if that came out snarky “Fred”).
And speaking of snarky…Thanks for picking out a quote that makes me sound like a complete witch Dan, lol. It’s ironic because most of your slides did not rely on hard to access data, you just need to look at your monthly phone bill to figure them out, and you rightly pointed out in your call for submissions that the myriad of ready made stats to exploit (google analytics, etc.) I apologize for my statement Dan, it was small of me.
I think some of this work was better than Feltron’s report which was gorgeous, but low on context. Your addition of “handwritten” comments on the stats really did that with just a few words. Fred’s slide titles were brutally good. I loved Ben’s map of his runs which gave the numbers a lot more context than Feltron’s figures about walking.
Dan Meyer
February 3, 2009 - 9:41 pm -It’d be pretty unseemly for the contest organizer to comment on the entries while the judging period is open but I will say that, while the overall quality seems on a par with last year’s submissions, I found more than one entry to be almost stunningly well designed. Like, “where did [designer x & y] come from?” in my opinion.