Phil Gyford recently created an infographic that defames infographics. Its argument: bad infographics give talented designers a bad name. This comes in response to the proliferation of data visualizations that don’t fully take advantage of the medium, but instead give flat visual interpretations of uninteresting stats.
The visualization that results from the Ionz personality infographic generator probably falls in this category, as it’s hard to read and interpret. But the process behind it is fun. Answer a few questions about yourself in English or Portuguese, and you get your own personalized infographic. You can customize aspects of its appearance, too. Click on the image above to see mine.
I love browsing through images posted by my Flickr contacts. There are so many talented people on there now. It’s often a better resource than my reader or FFFFOUND. It’s also a nice way to spend a quick break from work.
Last year, I noticed that Jeffrey Zeldman had been posting screencaps of the images he favorited, capturing the griddy glory of the Favorites page. It was lovely, and provided a good overview of his tastes at a glance. Inspired, I started doing the same, and have been documenting my faves with some consistency since April 2009. The images here are my two most recent collections.
If you want to check out more by other users, there’s a Flickr group for just this. The new Galleries feature does something like it, too, though it’s more for organizing by theme or user.
Happy New Year, all!
I’m not huge on resolutions, since it seems a bit silly to reserve new endeavors and changes in lifestyle for that one day. Life’s a process, not a schedule. But if you’re into that sort of thing, here are a few ideas:
Make Something Cool Every Day, like Mark Weaver
and Brock Davis did.
Resolve to donate to non-profits and independent projects more often. I gave small amounts to some of my favorite organizations and projects around Christmas time. It’s awesome to know that my tiny contributions are helping out great causes. Some suggestions:
- 826 National, a nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization with locations in seven cities across the country.
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a donor-funded nonprofit that supports and defends digital rights.
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- Rhizome, which supports the creation, presentation, and preservation of art engaged with the internet and new technology.
- Eyebeam, an art and technology center that provides tools for digital research and experimentation.
- NUTUREart, an organization dedicated to helping emerging artists.
- The Teacher Salary Project, a feature-length documentary film, interactive online resource, and national outreach campaign that delves into the U.S. educational crisis, as seen through the eyes of teachers.
- WNYC, makers of such awesome programs as Radiolab.
If neither of those suit your fancy, you can always use the Resolution Generator. (via swiss miss)
