Steve Jobs counseled Disney CEO Bob Iger to think in terms of brand deposits and brand withdrawals. Since 1937's Snow White, enduring film characters have been Disney's biggest brand deposits, and their success is most fantastically expressed with a dedicated theme park attraction in Florida at Walt Disney World. Track our favorite magic-maker's Characters by the Numbers:
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Story Points Several plot points about Disney's evolution can be inferred from Read more
The USS Constitution set itself apart from her sister frigates in the War of 1812 - sailing under three captains through adventures which have forever since made "Old Ironsides" famous. Whether they be heroic victories against HMS Guerriere and HMS Java, or daring escapes, The War of 1812 made the ship the legend we love today.
Follow the Constitution through each major event and port of call - from her return to America in 1812 to the war's end in 1815.
Design The timeline of action the ship saw is read from left to right. Read more
Who is the fairest of them all? Sorry Snow White, but Cinderella is by far the favorite classic princess according to Google Ngrams, which samples published books to deliver relative frequency of phrases:
Constitution was called out of ordinary in 1803 and recommissioned in order to fight against the collected Barbary States, leading the third squadron to the Mediterranean in what would be known as the First Barbary War.
Once again, one dimension of geography (this time latitude) is abandoned in favor of providing time as an axis. Read more
Google Ngrams provide a fascinating peak at trending topics over time by allowing us to compare the popularity of expressions in published books. For Halloween this week I whipped up the following sketch of some of Hollywood's favorite monsters:
Thoughts
Popular vampire movies since the '90s (Interview with a Vampire, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Twilight, etc.) helped catapult our leading ghoul. Read more
Before the USS Constitution was the oldest commissioned warship still afloat, and even before it was nicknamed Old Ironsides it was a squadron flagship in our mostly forgotten "Quasi-War" with France at the end of the 18th century. Learn more about the construction and first cruises of the Constitution in the first installment of a series that pay tribute to her glory.
The design Telling a story across geography and time on a static plane is difficult because it requires three dimensions - time, latitude, and longitude - when there are only two dimensions available. Read more
Perhaps it was the chemistry icons of Breaking Bad that drove me to organize the classes of MIT's Course 15 into a handy table. Or maybe it was just reflection on the incredibly knowledge-rich environment of MIT Sloan. For students still taking classes, alumni combing through old notes, and the public digging through MIT's fabulous open courseware (where over 170 management titles are available to all for free), navigate your way though the finest graduate business curriculum around using the Periodic Table of Course 15:
MIT and class names For the unfamiliar, numbers rule at MIT, and classes are no exception. Read more
Imagine seeing the entire catalogue raisonné of an artist at once. What might you learn about the artist's life and painting - favored motifs, density of projects, size of pieces? What if Picasso's blue period could be pictured against the kaleidoscope of his surrounding other work?
Any quest requires the development of special skills. I am currently exploring approaches for visualizing an artist's entire body of work. Before tackling some of the big guys who produced hundreds of works, I am experimenting with the paintings of Johannes Vermeer - my Dutch guinea pig. His body of 34 accepted paintings is the right size to quickly produce a neat little infographic:
Even this small gallery reveals the repeated arrangements of Vermeer's subjects in the rooms of his house, evidenced by the common black and white floor and light pouring through from the window on the left side of his paintings. This Vermeer cartoon is a great start to my investigation of catalogue raisonnés, and I encourage Read more
The entertainment company LIONSGATE's (NYSE: LGF) rise to stardom is a Hollywood darling of a success story as perfect as any Oscar-worthy screenplay: from initial founding in Vancouver in 1997, through breakout success with daring features like 2000's American Psycho, to becoming the most successful independent film and TV distribution company in North America today with properties like Twilight and The Hunger Games. LIONSGATE's story was first brought to my attention by film money-baller HollyQuant.com, and we have collaborated since to produce a poster that sings the saga of this studio, The Lionsgate Universe:
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Introduction to the design
The design of the poster is based on the company's Read more
Welcome aboard to Info We Trust - a data adventure! Together we can explore stories about our history, culture, and way of life with help from the magic of infographics.
Motivation We must depart the old world of crawling through miles of text. There is a wide gap between the format of the information we consume and the way our mind recalls that same information. Today, information is presented in lists (pages of paragraphs on Wikipedia, newsfeeds on Facebook, search results on Google) which harnesses little of our brain's amazing pattern-recognition abilities. We use ctrl+F, Table of Contents, and other push methods to poke our way into the universe of information.
Imagine instead: complex information organized into visual patterns, with interesting pearls jumping at us visually and pulling us deeper to the most interesting facets. And while we are at it, why not present information beautifully? New types of navigation of our information universe are possible and it is a worthy pursuit to construct them.
Inspiration I traveled to Queen Victoria's Osborne House at the age of 14 and was spellbound by Max Lindemann's Chart Showing Comparative Length of Reigns. Created to celebrate Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, it mapped the length of British monarchs's reign as ornate columns:
This 19th century infographic not only shows who reigned the longest, it also groups families, shrouds violently killed kings in dark cloth, and provides more detailed information at the bottom. Most importantly, this chart moved me when I first saw it and has stuck with me since because it is aesthetically pleasing. It is not only informative, but beautiful. So beautiful that it was framed and hung on the wall of a Queen's palace.
Since then an amateur education ranging from Charles Minard to the Pioneer Plaque has kept me excited. I am also indebted to many other fantastic infographic blogs which I look forward to writing about soon.
Let's set sail! Enough with the manifesto - it's time to start exploring! So, please climb aboard the great infographic crystal ship to the stars and get ready for an exciting journey. Subscribe! Comment! and send me the stories that you want to see.
Info We Trust is a data adventure exploring how to better humanize information. The creator, RJ Andrews, is an engineer and proud Northeastern University and MIT graduate. Please reach out through facebook, twitter @infowetrust, or the contact page.
