If you’ve been following me on twitter you are well aware of what I’ve been up to the past few weeks. Today I’m launching another (mini) blog called Daily Design Bits. This blog will feature frequent short posts of all the ‘shiny things I find on and off the interwebs’. Hop on over there and explore (and grab the feed so you don’t miss anything)! You can also submit cool things that you find if you want them to be featured!

Daily Design Bits is powered by Tumblr – which so far has been an AWESOME platform to work with! I’ve got some great content queued up for your viewing pleasure! I’m still tweaking things and setting things up – so if you find something that’s broken shoot me an email and let me know!

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think!

Interesting subway-like map of web trends.

I’ve been snagging these little mini-newspapers or ‘good sheets’ from the Starbucks down the street for some time now. Good magazine is releasing amazing information graphics covering and explaining hot topics such as the economy, gas prices, and health care. If you dig these little goodsheets check out the magazine itself. Sweet sweet information graphics, and all proceeds from the subscription fees go to charity! Check out their website: good.is

http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/goodsheet/goodsheet006economy.html

http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/goodsheet/goodsheet003immigration.html

http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/goodsheet/goodsheet001carbon.html

http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/goodsheet/goodsheet010NationalService.html

Interesting logo and social music networking site – Soundcloud. Love the integration of sound waves into the cloud! Soundcloud makes it easy to share, send and receive music. I’m gonna check it out and let you guys know what I think. Checkout my profile here: http://soundcloud.com/nikibrown/

So I’m sitting here on my couch, laptop, tv and ipods connected piping info my way. You could say that i’m downright obsessed with information graphics Here’s a roundup of some tasty info graphics covering the election results!

CNN

http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/

Love the detail on this top info bar on the CNN.com website. The number for each candidate are displayed in a flip-clock style. They also have an interactive flash flash map that is simple and sleek. CNN’s on air graphics are also amazing! And whats this? CNN HAS HOLOGRAMS??? Welcome to the future!!!

Good Magazine

http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/goodsheet/goodsheet008VoterGuide.html

Lots of facts displayed in a small area and yet it still had a nice hierarchy.

Newsweek Election Night Cheat Sheet

http://www.newsweek.com/id/155183

This chart is like a “Choose your own adventure game” slightly amusing and interesting way to approach the election.

Yahoo Political Dashboard

http://news.yahoo.com/election/2008/dashboard;_ylt=Au07rrhG5ERjmvDWA6fcNPgSq594

This flash based graphic has a tab to create your own scenario much like the newsweek graphic.

An Orange America

http://anorangeamerica.com/

Interesting twitter visualization of mentions of key words and how they relate to Obama or McCain

USA Today

http://usatoday.com

Looks like usa today has the standard interactive map with a barchart above that reaches 270 in the middle.

New York Times

http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html

Nice detail on specific counties on the NYT map. They also just added a sweet 3D map of the vote in each county.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/election/uscounties.html

Fox News

http://elections.foxnews.com/states_map/index.html?stateAbbr=OK

Fox news has a slightly garish gradient flash thing going on. Looks like an icky cross between flash and 3d rendering. heh.

Newseum

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/default.asp
Frontpages of the nations newspapers with articles about Obama winning!

Find any cool election graphics? Leave a comment and let me know and Ill add it to the list!

Just voted

Yesterday during the wee hours of the morning I started working on an info graphic about the structure of a web page. I was broadcasting my illustration process live via ustream.tv . A few people joined to watch and gave me their thoughts on the spot. Quite an interesting experiment! I have to say that I’m fascinated with screen casting and instantaneous-ness (is that of word?) of the internet.

Click more to watch the video (30 mins) and see a few screen shots of the progression of the design.

Design 1: Ven Diagram

My initial idea was to visually show the makeup of a webpage. I was going to use this graphic in an article about why separation of structure and styling is important.

Design 2: Circular Pie Chart

Another attempt at showing the same information with a different graph style.

Design 3: Layered Circular Pie Chart

A viewer pointed out that behavior isn’t necessarily an equal part of what goes into a web page, but rather something that goes on an additional layer. I tried to show this by placing behavior as a blue circle with transparency overlapping and above the circular pie chart.

What do you think of the design?

Please let me know your thoughts on this graphic! Feel free to critique me to your hearts content! I’m a total newbie to information design and want to get better!

How does social networking affect your design work?

Do you let people view your work in progress? How would designing live (broadcasting your screen) affect your design? Good? Bad? Let me know! Sorry to overwhelm you guys with questions – I really would like to have an open conversation about this!

Enjoy

1. Grab a chopstick

2. Grab another chopstick while you are at it since you will need two

3. Attempt to pick up un-identified food nugget/object*

*Note – you should probably not eat un-identified food nuggets and/or objects. Perhaps it might be better to go for a wonton, or a crab ragoon.

Go check out the august update at http://bananasandcoffee.com

Question For My Readers:

Do you guys have any suggestions on ways to display data on the web? IF you do please leave a comment and let me know! Thanks!