As has become my ritual, I’m spending December 31 reflecting on everything that happened throughout the year. Then, I’ll spend the night hunkered down with the kitties, safe from the pops and bangs at midnight. 2023 has most definitely been a challenging year. So challenging that I failed to write…

In a recent broadcast, Vladimir Solovyov, a Russian state TV host and known ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, called for the destruction of America's critical infrastructure if the United States tries to give Moscow "any kind of an ultimatum" in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

Carole Cadwalladr: The era that began with the Great Disruptor's first term is over. Beware the emerging elite.

The mother of a 7-year-old boy accused the Moscow pediatrician, Nadezhda Buyanova, of telling him that his father's death while fighting in Ukraine was justified.

President-elect Donald Trump reportedly plans to name Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) as his secretary of state, The New York Times reported Monday night.

Save money (10-50%) on CorelDRAW software with these top discounts, sales & deals. See the best CorelDRAW discounts & special offers on Graphics Suite & more.

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Courtesy of The Story of Stuff Project  Another gem from The Story of Stuff Project – this time about the dangers of tiny plastic microbeads in many products we use daily, which go down the drain and into our lakes, … Continue reading →

By Beth Porter Other Words How much of what you recycle ends up at the dump? Do you cross the street to put your soda can in the recycling bin or avidly pluck plastics and paper from your neighbor’s trash … Continue reading →

Tags: Illustrator, R

Tags: election, metaphor, Washington Post

Tags: David Mora, love, Michelle Jia, Pudding, song

By Yessenia Funes Yes! magazine In his new documentary, Josh Fox says we can use love to push aside the fear and hopelessness that comes with climate change. China’s smog-ridden skies have driven some people to rebel in the streets—even … Continue reading →

By AMKK Botanical artist extraordinaire, Azuma Makoto, created this delightful short animation to teach his young daughter about the life cycle of flowers.

“In the beginning of time, there were supernatual beings that lived in the ocean and could come out to be with us and go back into the ocean at will. That is how close we were to the supernatural beings, … Continue reading →

These beautiful 11th International Garden Photographer of the Year award-winning photographs irrefutably evidence diverse, tender and grand wonders to be found in our cultivated and natural environs the world over today. From Brazil to Canada, from China to Croatia, Hong … Continue reading →

By UC Santa Barbara News A new study from UCSB’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis finds kelps are doing better than other key coastal ecosystem-forming species Like all marine ecosystems around the world, kelp forests are threatened by … Continue reading →

By Julie Cohen UC Santa Barbara UCSB researchers develop a model that marries ecology and economics to determine how much species protection can be achieved from managing ecosystem services. Money may not grow on trees, but trees themselves and all … Continue reading →

By Catherine V. Moore YES! Magazine In the post-coal economy, life-skills training helps employ people and restore the savaged land. On a surface-mine-turned-farm in Mingo County, West Virginia, former coal miner Wilburn Jude plunks down three objects on the bed … Continue reading →

By Nate Seltenrich Environmental Health Perspectives Human impacts on our planet have become so profound that many researchers now favor a new name for the current epoch: the Anthropocene.1 The underlying premise of this term is that essentially every Earth … Continue reading →

For software companies competing in today’s digital marketplace, simply having an online presence isn’t enough. To capture the attention of your target audience and engage them throughout your sales funnel, you need to develop and deploy a strategic, comprehensive, and consistent digital marketing plan. Digital marketing is not just about visibility — it’s about establishing […]

The post The Most Effective Digital Marketing Strategies for B2B Software Companies appeared first on 3.7 Designs.

Launching a new B2B software product requires a different approach than traditional go-to-market strategies. The business model you choose should align with varying types of products and market conditions, as it significantly influences overall sales success and the structuring of sales teams. The software space is crowded, and your potential customers are likely already using […]

The post From Research to Revenue: A Complete Guide to B2B Software GTM appeared first on 3.7 Designs.

The History of Barbie infographic from the design team at Lemonly does a great job bringing you up to date on Barbie’s history to help you enjoy the new blockbuster movie even more.

From Lemonly:

You know her. You love her. But how well do you know the history of Barbie? Barbie’s many evolutions have taken her to the runway, the White House, and everywhere in between. For more than 60 years, Barbie has held a special place in the hearts and imaginations of children everywhere — and done it all in pink high heels.

To celebrate Barbie’s iconic legacy and the premiere of Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, we created this infographic to help Barbie fans everywhere learn more about the history of one of the world’s most iconic dolls.

Check out the illustrated timeline of Barbie history below!

This design has more text than I normally like, but it works in this context, explaining each event with only 1-2 sentences. As a timeline, I’m not a fan of the weaving back-and-forth line style that doesn’t spread out the events based on time durations.

You also notice that all of the illustrations are new. They didn’t use any actual product images, movie images or even the official Barbie font to stay clear of any potential copyright or trademark issues.

The 2023 Women’s World Cup Flags infographic from UK Featherflags takes a currently popular topic in the news, and makes it relevant to the publishers business of making flags. This is the content they know about best.

From the publisher:

[This infographic] takes a look at the flags for the different countries in the 2023 FIFA women's world cup which is taking place from 20 July to 20 August 2023 and is jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand.

Check out this handy design to view the flags for the countries in the various groups of the tournament along with some interesting facts.

I like the simple infographics that tell one story really well. Not a lot fo text, and the flag images are the highlight of the infographic design. I love that they included the URL to the infographic landing page in the footer! Many people will share or repost an infographic without providing a link back to the original. This makes it easy for readers to track down the source and learn more if they were interested.

This design is missing a few things:

• I prefer to include the publisher’s logo on the infographic somewhere (usually in the footer). This only mentions the publisher’s website in text as part of the subtitle. It’s easy to miss, and that loses the publisher’s benefit of releasing the infographic in the first place.

• It’s missing some type of conclusion or call-to-action at the end. What should readers do after reading the infographic? It doesn’t have to be a hard sales pitch. Visit the website, sign up for our newsletter, learn more about flags on our site, etc. What action should the reader take after enjoying the infographic?

• Copyright or Creative Commons license.

Thanks to David for submitting the infographic!

Ten years ago today, the Cool Infographics book was released on October 28, 2013. I frequently lament that it’s nice to have written a book, but the actual process of writing a book was pretty difficult.

I never set out to write a book. Wiley publishing approached me in 2011, and convinced me to turn the talk I was presenting at conferences into the outline for a new book. I had started my infographics design company, InfoNewt, in 2010, and was giving almost monthly presentations about my process to design, publish and promote infographics. Turns out that the talk outline did lend itself nicely to the structure of what became the Cool Infographics chapters.

Looking back, there were a number of unique challenges that I had to solve while putting together the book, and some were also new issues for Wiley.

Permissions to include infographics

I didn’t design most of the infographics I included in the book, because this wasn’t a book of self promotion. My goal was to share the best designs from the world of infographics as examples, and that meant including designs from some of the best designers in the world.

Here was my challenge. Most infographics are meant to be shared and reposted as much as possible online. “Going viral” was the ultimate achievement of an infographic. However, legally reprinting an infographic in a book required the explicit, signed permission of each infographic’s copyright holder. I ended up including over 100 infographic examples in the book, which was a lot of negotiation and legwork.

For every design I included, I had to track down the designer or publishing company, and get them to sign an official permission form that allowed me to include their design. I wasn’t able to include many of the designs I wanted to share because either I couldn’t track down the original designer, or they refused to sign the permission form.

Infographics are large

The online infographics that I was writing about were much larger that what could effectively be shown on the 7.3 x 9.2 inch pages of the book. They had to be reduced to fit on the pages, which made the text in many of them unreadable when sized to the book’s pages. Wiley didn’t want to publish a larger format book, so I had to come up with another idea.

My solution was that every design I included, also included a link to view the original infographic online. The downside was that readers can’t click a link in a printed book. That meant they would have to manually type in the URL, and many of the links were really long and complicated addresses. So, I created over 100 shortened links for the book, using my hosting platform from the coolinfographics.com website.

For example:

Link in the book: Coolinfographics.com/Figure-5-19

Forwards to the long original URL: http://create.mcgraw-hill.com/wordpress-mu/connectblog/files/2012/03/McGraw-Hill-Connect-Handout-WHITE-Small.jpg

See what I mean? No one was ever going to try to type in that long URL.

I also created an index web page for all of the Figures that had clickable links for every design in the book that is available to see online: coolinfographics.com/figures

Making the book navigation visual

Infographics is a very visual topic. Not only do readers want to see the visual examples of every concept I discuss in the book, but I wanted the book itself to be visual too. This took some negotiating with Wiley to make happen. Every chapter has its own color, and I included that color on every page in a small tab that prints all the way to what is called the “fore edge” of the page. This makes the color visible at the edges of the pages even when the book is closed. These tabs are staggered down the page to provide an easy navigation to find the color you see in the Table of Contents.

Marketing was my job

It turns out that most book publishing companies are very focused on publishing, printing and distributing a book, but not so much on marketing them once they get printed. Once a book is published they move on to publishing the next book, and the majority of promoting my book fell to me. This was something I didn’t expect. I am constantly teaching people that designing and publishing an infographic isn’t enough, and you have to promote it too. I wrote a whole chapter about in the Cool Infographics book! Similarly, I expected a big book publisher to be good at the promotion process for books. I was wrong. They printed a beautiful color book and got it into Amazon and onto the shelves at bookstores like Barnes & Noble, but that’s where their effort mostly ended.

Most of the promotion for the book has come from me. Whether it was one of my talks, a guest appearance on a podcast, an article that mentioned the book (like this one) or someone using Google to search for infographics and finding the Cool Infographics website.

Where to go from here?

The book has done really well for 10 years, and sales continue. The concepts I wrote about in the book are all just as relevant now, as they were 10 years ago. However, some of the example designs are out-of-date, and some of the design tools aren’t around anymore.

Where do you think we should from here? As readers of the Cool Infographics website and book, what would you like to see as ongoing content exploring the design, publishing and promotion of infographics? Videos, workshops, articles, tutorials, online courses, etc. Post a question, comment, or idea and let me know how Cool Infographics can be relevant to you in the future.

I’d love to hear from you. Either post a comment below or send me a note through the CONTACT page.

Vizion Online created a Timeline of Reddit to give a better understanding of the platform.

Most of us have come across Reddit at some point but what do we really know about this hugely popular social networking platform?

It was conceived in America in 2005 as a news forum where it became popular with prominently a younger well educated profile, sharing topics, links and images, allowing users and communities to comment on each post.

Reddit has grown to be a prevalent news forum where members vote on content giving them ratings. Although Reddit is considered a social media platform it is a unique network centred around communities and subgroups known as subreddits.

Throughout its history, there has been a number of high-profile stories including activist protest and political coverage.

We have created this infographic to give a better understanding of the platform using a timeline of key events throughout the history of Reddit.

Personally, I don’t like timelines designed this way. I prefer to see the events spaced out chronologically to match an actual timeline instead of each event equally spaced. If three events happen in the same year, I would list them in the same box. Only one box per year.

Found on Vizion Online

The Evolution of UK Company Logos is an infographic that visually shows the timeline history of different brand logos, created by Cheap Roller Banners. See how some of most well known UK brands have redesigned their logos over the years!

Here we have an infographic that we have designed that shows how the logos have evolved over the years for some of the most well known UK brands. We have chosen to include companies with interesting logo history and ones that have updated their logo several times.

Check out this intriguing design to see the logo evolution for companies including Shell, Tesco, the BBC, Vodafone, Sky, Barclays, Cadbury, Walkers, Birds Eye, McVitie's, Hovis and British Airways.

We hope that you appreciate this UK company logos infographic and please feel free to share it on blogs or social media.

Sometimes an infographic doesn’t have numbers and charts to share. This design is more of a visual timeline, and it’s really important that you can see the evolution of the logos over time.

It’s important to connect and infographic topic with your company’s products and services to get the most benefit from publishing an infographic. They don’t offer logo design services, but they do offer printing services for trade show booths and events.

Found on Cheap Roller Banners

The Mammoth Cost of Operating America’s Combat Aircraft shows the operating cost per aircraft in 2018. Statista created this infographic when the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released an overview of mission capable rates and the cost of operating U.S. military aircraft in 2020. Over 40 aircrafts were examined, Statista chose to highlight these 15 in their infographic.

The non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released an overview of mission capable rates and the cost of operating U.S. military aircraft. It examined more than 40 different aircraft types, finding that only three of them reached their mission capable goals between fiscal years 2011 and 2019. In total, the report put the collective cost of operating all of the U.S. military's aircraft fleets at $49 billion in fiscal year 2018, taking operational & support (O&S) costs such as maintenance as well as supply support in account. O&S generally makes up 70 percent of a weapon system's total life cycle costs and it includes spare parts, depot and field maintenance, contract services, engineering support and personnel, amongst other factors.

It would be nice to see how many we have in service too. The stacked bars work well. As a reader you can tell the values between operating/support and maintenance, but the total is what matters.

Read more at Statista

Are you having a hard time finding a professional WordPress photography theme to perfectly display your work? If so, this article will set you straight. Below, we will show you all of our best professional WordPress photography themes specifically designed for professional photographers. We’ll provide a brief overview of the main features of each theme. By […]

Finding the best way of presenting your images online can be overwhelming given the minefield of choices. A photo gallery plugin is the ideal solution, and fortunately, there are plenty on the market to choose from. Each offers a myriad of features to display your work, all customizable at the touch of a button (or […]

Having a web presence is essential for any modern photographer to generate new business, showcase their portfolio and get their images seen by as many people as possible. However, it’s unfortunate that so many photographers are missing out on the potential of a great business website by getting some fundamental things wrong. Is your website […]

If you are finding it difficult to locate the right theme for your portfolio website, you are in the right place. This article will show you our best professional WordPress portfolio themes, giving you a good idea for how your perfect portfolio website should be. We’ll provide a quick description of each theme telling about it’s […]

Since 27.5% of the web is powered by WordPress, you may wonder whether it’s the right platform for your photography site. After all, you want your website to stand out from the crowd. The beautiful thing about WordPress, however, is the diversity and customization it offers. With the huge variety of themes and immense selection of […]

Running a successful business should be your ultimate goal, and offering coupons to your customers is a key aspect of strengthening sales. However, it’s important to also devise a plan of action – without one, you could essentially hamstring your overall campaign. By harnessing the power of Sell Media (and elements such as the Discount Codes […]

What makes a website effective? Is it the design? Is it the copy? Is it the speed? Yes, yes, and yes. But honestly, focusing on design, copy, and speed singularly gets you nowhere. You need to take a more holistic approach and think critically about the entire user experience of your website. That’s what we’re […]

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Military service is difficult, dangerous, and demanding. But for some veterans, returning to civilian life can also be a challenge. Going from the structure of active duty—with its purpose-driven roles, full-throttle environment, and sense of camaraderie—to the relatively humdrum life of a civilian can be jarring, particularly for veterans who’ve experienced trauma during their service and may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Researchers at Boston University, including Dawne Vogt and Casey Taft—both professors of psychiatry in the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine—are utilizing a variety of data-backed strategies to support veterans struggling to adapt to their new normal lives. 

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Tuesday, November 28, 2023 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced its Defective by Design campaign's 17th annual International Day Against DRM (IDAD). It will protest uses of Digital Restrictions Management technology's hold over public libraries around the world, exemplified by corporations like OverDrive and Follett Destiny. IDAD will take place digitally and worldwide on December 8, 2023.