How To Create an Info-graphic (prt.2)

After showing the power of info-graphics in a previous post, I thought it would be best to go over some tips for gathering data and tools to help you create your own info-graphic.

Where can you gather the data?

Before you can start an info-graphic you need to collect a good amount of data so you can visualize the story that’s behind the numbers. The following are some great places to start.

• • TV Ratings
  • Food Statistics
  • Economic Ratings
  • Scientific Findings
  • One Thing Vs Another

One Place I repeatedly go back to that has tons of publicly available data is the World Fact Book by the CIA. If you haven’t had the chance to check out this resource I highly suggest doing so.

Best Place to start is with another person’s idea :

Once you’ve gathered the data that you think has an interesting story behind it go collect some inspiration for how you want to visualize your recently collected data. Here’s some places to look of inspiration;

• Chart Porn
• Cool Infographics
• Wall of Stats
• Social Media Graphics

Tools to visualize your data:

Microsoft Excel - We all know this one. I use Excel from time to time when my dataset is small or if I’m in a point-and-click mood.

Alright, the data are processed, formatted, and ready to go. Now it’s time to visualize. The software I use for static charts and graphs depends on the task at hand, so I try not to limit myself to anyone piece of software. For example, R is good for quick results, but no good for a Web application.

Adobe Illustrator -Probably the most widely used tool is

Illustrator isn’t the easiest program to use however, it will produce high quality images.

Flash/Action Script – Takes some time to get use to but at the same time these programs help visualize large quantities of data. The interactive/animated visualization you see from places like The New York Times, Stamen Design, and web applications are usually implemented with Flash and Actionscript. Not sure if it’s Flash? The tell tale sign is a simple right click on whatever you’re looking at. .

RESOURCES:

• How to Learn Actionscript for Data Visualization
• Modest Maps Display and Interaction Library
• Flare Visualization Toolkit
• TweenFilterLite by GreenSock
• ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook: Solutions for Flash Platform and Flex Application Developers
• Adobe Flex Builder 3.0

Microsoft Pivot – Probably the most comprehensive tool out there right now. Here’s a video clip  that will show you the power that is built into this tool.