“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 Deirdre Fulton Common Dreams The epoch is thought to have begun in the 1950s, when human activity set global systems on a different trajectory   The Anthropocene Epoch has begun, according to a group of experts assembled at the … 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 Susan Bales Courtesy of Children & Nature Network Some years ago, I worked as a “nature lady” at a Y camp in the San Bernardino Mountains above Los Angeles. Urban kids who had no experience in nature came to … 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 →

Whether you want to make it as a graphic designer or work in an up-and-coming tech company, the world of technology offers some of the best job prospects of any field in the world. It is very fast-paced but has outgrown the days where you did not need a degree to master the field – […]

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Starting an SEO campaign in 2022 can be a daunting task. Many SEO landscapes are highly competitive, SEO campaigns take a long time to gain returns, and many different types of optimization can be done. But don’t worry, we’re here to help! This guide will give you all the information you need to get your […]

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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 […]

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“They say you have to spend money to make money,” goes the saying, and nowhere is this more relevant than in the digital landscape. As businesses continue to vie for consumer attention online, Google has steadily shifted its strategy, prioritizing search ads over organic results. If you’ve been observing your website’s organic ranking take a […]

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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.

This infographic shares the depressing small amount of plastic that gets recycled. Information is Beautiful created The Problem with Plastics infographic by visualizing data by Geyer et al, Science Advances, back in 2017. The infographic uses a Sankey Diagram to show the fate of all plastics that were ever made.

Why plastic recycling doesn’t work ????

“Most ‘recycled’ plastic still ends up being dumped or incinerated”

n.b. These numbers are from 2017. Humanity produces approx. 345 million tonnes of plastic a year. That means another ~1.7 billion tonnes since this study was released.

Found on Informationisbeautiful.net

The Quickest Route to Washington DC is a GIS visualization from @ArterialMapping (also known as MattMDL on reddit)

From @ArterialMapping:

How was this map completed? Well, using @Esri ArcGIS Pro Network Analysis toolset! In general terms, there were 4 steps:

1. Created a dot grid for the whole of the continental U.S. This grid is what enables the routes to be created to D.C. A dot was also created for D.C.

2. Run Network Analysis to find the shortest route to D.C. from each dot.

3. Run a calculation for the number of overlapping routes (shown as the stronger strokes on the roadways)

4. Then, of the 4 main spokes I saw, I copied them over into their own layers and colored them accordingly.

Red generally follows I-70 to I-270, Green generally follows I-81 to I-66, Blue generally follows I-95 south of D.C., Orange generally follows I-95 north of D.C.

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

Pin Point: The Most Common 4-digit PIN numbers by Information is Beautiful was a redesign of Nick Berry’s original work. Having a pin that’s easy for you to remember, could also be an easy one to guess. Check out this infographic and see how safe your favorite PIN may be.

Chip and PIN card, phone passcode, hotel safe – how predictable is your chosen PIN number?

3.4 million data points visualized from several data breaches.

Created by the late great Nick Berry of Data Genetics (redesigned and used with permission). He wrote a great data story around this which is also worth a read.

I really like this heatmap. Visually, it reveals a number of insights from the data:

• The diagonal line shows the PINs where two digits are repeated to create a 4-digit PIN. 1111, 3434, 5050, etc.

• The lower left corner is brighter with PINs starting with low numbers, generally representing dates. The section goes to the right up to the number 31, representing the day. Birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

• There is a bright horizontal line of PINs starting with “19” the wraps into a line starting with “20”, representing a year that someone has chosen for some significance. Birth year, wedding, graduation, etc.

• The black squares are the least used PIN numbers, also listed at the bottom of the infographic.

Found on Information is Beautiful.

The Generation Gap infographic by Steve Perry highlights the birth years of different generations. The stats from 2022 led him to develop a few fun facts of the differences between the generations.

Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the largest generation in the United States, with an estimated population of over 72 million. While Millennials and Gen Z face challenges in building wealth, with factors such as student loan debt and rising home prices, Baby Boomers tend to have the highest wealth accumulation, with only 20% of the population they have 52% of the wealth in the country, benefiting from longer periods of economic growth and home ownership. Older generations have traditionally had higher voter turnout rates compared to younger generations. Millennials and Generation X are becoming increasingly politically engaged. Older generations are also delaying retirement and staying in the workforce longer, leading to a “graying” of the labor force and potential competition for job opportunities with younger generations.

Found on Tableau Public’s Viz of the Day

How Long Can People Cover Their Needs Without Income? infographic by Visual Capitalist.

How Long Can People Cover Their Needs Without Income?

With nearly half of people under 34 worldwide unable to cover their needs for a month or less without income, it is no surprise that financial resiliency is a hot topic.

So, for this graphic, Visual Capitalist has partnered with Lloyd’s Register Foundation to explore economic resilience further and determine how long the average person can afford to cover their needs without income.

World Risk Poll 2024 Report: Economic Resilience

Lloyd’s Register Foundation produces the World Risk Poll every two years in partnership with Gallup, and the World Risk Poll 2024 report explores the everyday risks of 147,000 people from 142 nations.

They asked respondents how long they could afford to cover basic needs, such as food, transport, and shelter, if they lost all income. 

The results reveal a distinct trend across all age groups, with respondents typically falling into two categories: those with one month or less of financial runway, and those with more than four months. Relatively fewer respondents reported being able to survive two to three months.

I think this is a really interesting adaptation of a Sankey/Alluvial diagram. I’d like to see summaries of each timeframe to support their discussion around trends.

Found on Visual Capitalist.

Cloud storage has become immensely popular, especially for hosting hefty files such as images and video. There are numerous benefits to storing your content on a dedicated server, and for offering downloads that are both consistently quick and secure, cloud storage is vital. We’ve developed our Sell Media plugin to help you sell images and video on your WordPress website – and by […]

Are you one of the 55% of people globally who watch online videos every single day? Video has become an incredibly popular format for consuming content, and it’s now as ubiquitous as images within our social media news feeds and timelines. Despite this, the ability to sell videos online is difficult than many other forms of static media – […]

Say hello to Composition, our new multipurpose WordPress theme that has all the right ingredients for building any kind of website. What is a Multipurpose WordPress Theme? Simply put, a multipurpose WordPress theme is designed with maximum flexibility in mind. This means that you can use Composition for a wide range of websites including ones for Businesses, Portfolios, […]

While there are a number of ways visitors can potentially find your photography, search is the most vital method. If your website doesn’t offer a keyword search function, visitors may head to other sites that do – and the drop in traffic could hammer your sales figures. Just as search is crucial for finding websites, having a way […]

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 […]

If you are a photographer who is ready to make your own website to start displaying your photos, look no further. This article will take you through our 10 best FREE WordPress photography themes. We will tell you about their main features and what makes these them unique, allowing you to display your photos in a […]

WordPress boasts thousands of free themes, some of which are pretty darn good. But it also offers the option of installing premium themes. They say that you get what you pay for, and this often holds true with premium themes. Your website’s design is your company’s virtual storefront. To mark your presence in the real […]

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 […]

Showcasing your photography is vital in the digital age – so much so that to lack an online presence can make you seem behind the times. What’s more, you may have already recognized you need a website, but perhaps your choice of theme leaves your design looking outdated. That’s not a good situation to be in. […]

If you’re ready to start your own portfolio website, choosing a great theme is a very important step. Here is a list of our 10 best free WordPress portfolio themes. Providing a detailed description of each theme and it’s benefits, you should know the perfect theme for your website by the end of this article. Our […]

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A troubling report from the Pentagon earlier this year revealed that suicide is the leading cause of death for Army soldiers—a population that is nearly nine times as likely to die by suicide than in combat.  “Suicide in the military continues to be a public health crisis, despite decades of targeted interventions. The rates are persistently higher than in the general population,” says Jayna Moceri-Brooks, an assistant professor at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing who studies firearm injury prevention and suicide among service members and veterans.

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. 

A commentary, published in the Journal of Neurotrauma, calls for traumatic brain injury to be recognized as a chronic condition as are diabetes, asthma, depression and heart failure. To provide comprehensive care for traumatic brain injury throughout individuals' lifespans, the authors propose that coordinated care models they and others have developed, tested and applied to various populations—including older adults, individuals living with depression and post-intensive care unit survivors—be adapted to improve communication and integration between brain injury specialists—including physical medicine and rehabilitation clinicians—and primary care physicians, fostering better long-term patient care for traumatic brain injury survivors and more support for both patients and their families.

New research data offers much-needed hope for veterans wrestling with combat-associated posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study explores the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) to address symptoms that persist despite standard treatments.

NRCgov posted a photo:

NRC staffers hold a meeting on board the Nuclear Ship Savannah, docked in Baltimore, to accept public comments on the vessel’s License Termination Plan. The hybrid session is the first time the NRC has conducted a public meeting aboard a seagoing vessel. As the Savannah nears the end of a multi-year decommissioning process, the U.S. Maritime Administration submitted the termination plan for NRC review. It spells out how the final steps will be carried out, including thorough checks for any residual radioactivity. The Savannah was defueled in 1971 and its reactor vessel removed at the end of 2022.

Visit the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's website at www.nrc.gov/.
Photo Usage Guidelines: www.flickr.com/people/nrcgov/
Privacy Policy: www.nrc.gov/site-help/privacy.html.
For additional information, or to comment on this photo contact us via e-mail at: OPA.Resource@nrc.gov.

NRCgov posted a photo:

NRC staffers hold a meeting on board the Nuclear Ship Savannah, docked in Baltimore, to accept public comments on the vessel’s License Termination Plan. The hybrid session is the first time the NRC has conducted a public meeting aboard a seagoing vessel. As the Savannah nears the end of a multi-year decommissioning process, the U.S. Maritime Administration submitted the termination plan for NRC review. It spells out how the final steps will be carried out, including thorough checks for any residual radioactivity. The Savannah was defueled in 1971 and its reactor vessel removed at the end of 2022.

Visit the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's website at www.nrc.gov/.
Photo Usage Guidelines: www.flickr.com/people/nrcgov/
Privacy Policy: www.nrc.gov/site-help/privacy.html.
For additional information, or to comment on this photo contact us via e-mail at: OPA.Resource@nrc.gov.