started my dy/dan 4 slide project. i might not finish… just not inspired and don’t have knowledge of the tools to do this. –Â Sam Shah, who finished second place (!) last year.
I was shocked, frankly, we had twenty entries last year to what was a pretty demanding competition. I’m pushing my luck a second time only because I’m enjoying a fairly transcendent experience designing my own, the kind of happy nerdery you can’t keep to yourself, you know?
I mean, this bar chart is sharp as a blade, right? Any guesses what month my long-distance girlfriend became my close-distance wife?

That’s one of, like, sixteen visualizations I’m working on. We’re looking for four. Possible data sources:
- events recorded in your calendar,
- blog statistics,
- last.fm / iTunes statistics,
- credit card / bank statements,
- cell phone records,
- cocomment / commentful / disqus
- Tweetake
- Google Reader trends.
And, for the love, do not neglect PivotTables, your best offense against huge piles of data.
4 Comments
sam shah
January 22, 2009 - 5:19 pm -Ha, I’ve been called out!
Touche Dan, now I *have* to finish. You’ll be glad to know that I did finally start yesterday. And even though I’ve only finished one slide, I had that “kind of happy nerdery you can’t keep to yourself” experience too. I showed my slide to like 3 people because I was so excited about creating something of my own. I felt like a little kid who drew something in elementary school and showed it to Mom and Dad as soon as he got home from school, because it was the Best. Drawing. Ever. Of course it wasn’t (I couldn’t stay within the lines for the life of me), but to me, then, I was an artist.
Sam.
A. Mercer
January 27, 2009 - 5:19 pm -I just thought I’d share this graph:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/globalpoolofmoney/images/2009/01/marketcap-png.png
Which breaks most of the aesthetic rules using Excel defaults, but the sheer magnitude of the information being conveyed and the clarity of it’s suckitude seems to outweigh the aesthetics.
Your thoughts, as always, appreciated.
Dan Meyer
January 28, 2009 - 6:41 pm -Microsoft’s aesthetic defaults are as easy to spot as they are lame, aren’t they? What good, for instance, are different shapes and different colors except to noisy up the screen? Increase the stroke width to make the colors more obvious and change ’em all to points. I dunno. My two cents.
A. Mercer
January 29, 2009 - 8:19 pm -Ya know, it’s one of the few times the data was SO clear, the defaults didn’t overcome it, lol, although you’re right, they still suck.