Tags: New York Times, superyacht

Tags: Bloomberg, drought, rain

Tags: election, metaphor, Washington Post

Tags: Economist, election

Bluesky, maybe best pitched as a place for those who liked Twitter and…

By Marianne Van Lent A recurring theme in the oeuvre of Marianne Van Lent is the mirage. The paintings in this collection address the theme of the mirage in nature. Ranging from 1996 – 2015 the mirage, as Van Lent … Continue reading →

Imagination is our Window into the Future. Your Oasis in Space There’s no place like home. Warm, wet and with an atmosphere that’s just right, Earth is the only place we know of with life – and lots of it. … Continue reading →

Illustrations by Avery Lana I have been drawing since I was very little and I’ve always been inspired by nature and especially, the majestic beauty of raptors. What I love about art is that you can immerse yourself in other … Continue reading →

Japanese artist, Chie Hitotsuyama, upcycles newspaper into splendid, life-size sculptures of animals and marine creatures. “When a piece of paper is rolled up, it increases its strength, and by glueing together one by one and side by side I can … 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 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 The National Parks Conservation Association In 2016, to celebrate the National Park Service centennial, 150 people experienced the wondrously dark night skies of Mojave National Preserve. Since 2008, these bi-annual star parties — courtesy of NPCA, Mojave National Preserve, … Continue reading →

By University of British Columbia Many people choose organic thinking it’s better for humans and the planet, but a new UBC study published today in Science Advances finds that might not always be the case. “Organic is often proposed a … Continue reading →

By Brett Israel UC Berkeley News Elemental sulfur, the most heavily used pesticide in California, may harm the respiratory health of children living near farms that use the pesticide, according to new research led by UC Berkeley. In a study … 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 →

CBD is being talked about everywhere. With more and more sources reporting the benefits of CBD in supporting health and wellness, comes a lot of myths, confusion, and misinformation. In order to educate the public about CBD, Diamond CBD has launched the “I am CBD, I am THC” video series nationwide. The national CBD educational […]

The post I am CBD, I am THC Video Series a Successful Storytelling Example appeared first on Snap2objects.

Life as a designer can be very stressful and fill your life with stress and tension, you can treat without naturally and without damaging your health. When stress situations reach us, sometimes we feel so anxious that We try to reduce it on our own, such as self-medication, but in the long run, this can […]

The post 5 Ways to Reduce Stress Naturally appeared first on Snap2objects.

In today’s constantly evolving digital landscape, search engine optimization (SEO) has emerged as a critical tool for enhancing online visibility and bringing more eyes to your content.  Implementing SEO strategies in life science marketing goes beyond simple rankings and clicks, though. It’s about providing valuable, user-focused content that resonates with the target audience you want […]

The post How to Boost Search Visibility With Life Science SEO appeared first on 3.7 Designs.

Today’s business landscape is a complex, fast-evolving terrain where the need for agility has never been greater. Enterprises are under constant pressure to enhance customer experience while streamlining operations. This has led many to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) for solutions. One AI tool that has mainly gained attention is the chatbot. A chatbot is a […]

The post Why Use a Chat Bot: Customer Experience Benefits appeared first on 3.7 Designs.

“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 […]

The post Why Invest in Digital Advertising: The Path to Explosive Growth and ROI appeared first on 3.7 Designs.

Today’s tech firms need a solid digital marketing strategy to stand out and remain competitive in the eyes of potential customers. Tech businesses can use many tactics, channels, and communication styles to reach key decision-makers and sell more products or services. So, effective marketing strategies for tech companies must include an intentional combination of these […]

The post Building a Winning Digital Marketing Strategy for B2B Tech Firms appeared first on 3.7 Designs.

A carefully planned and executed search engine optimization campaign is critical to most technology businesses’ overall digital marketing strategy. Technology companies, in particular, require a different approach to SEO than many others. They often face a highly technical target audience, prospects who thoroughly research possible solutions before making a buying decision, multiple stakeholders in the buying process, […]

The post Advanced SEO Tactics for B2B Technology Companies appeared first on 3.7 Designs.

Marketing automation has been a buzzword for years, and maybe you’ve tried it with some (or no) success, or maybe you’re just now ready to give it a shot. Either way, this article is for you. Marketing automation tools can be a game-changer for marketing and sales teams. Still, they need proper implementation to get […]

The post Marketing Automation for B2B: Strategies to Boost Your Sales appeared first on 3.7 Designs.

Zach Rottman dealt with the stress of his son bringing home “bugs” from daycare by creating a table on how often the individuals of the household were sick. There are a bunch of advantages you can get from tracking “quantified self” data with visualizations, and I can appreciate this one about kids bringing home sickness from school. Not the kind of homework parents want to be dealing with.

My boy started school, my boy got sick.

As any parent could have told me, we got clobbered. Within three days, my son had Covid, and while he was only mildly sick for a day or two, he (and I) stayed home for ten. Meanwhile, my partner was out of commission for longer than that. Scarcely a week after his return our son brought home some gnarly cold—home again, not sleeping, not eating. Turns out, it’s especially hard to manage a head cold when you don’t know how to blow your nose yet and have a strong and very vocal preference against medicine. The next time it was hand, foot, and mouth disease, then RSV, followed by a slew of mysterious rashes. You get the idea. Most of the time mommy and daddy didn’t fare much better.

So, to distract me from my misery and take on a project that could plausibly be brought to fruition while also tending to a sick one-year-old, I started quantifying the sick days and built a simple web app (myboyissick.com) to see it all.

I do think the rows of 12 squares aren’t easily translatable to days or weeks on the calendar. Not a big deal when you’re designing just for yourself, but I would layout the grid to be more relatable to a calendar format.

Article found on Nightingale.

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.

Sankey and Alluvial Diagram Tools is a new directory page I just added to the growing library Cool Infographics Tools pages. The page has links to many free and paid tools to create your own diagrams. I’ve included online tools, programming code and downloadable apps.

This will be a growing list as more tools become available, so feel free to send me a note if you know of a tool that I should consider adding to the list!

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.

Addressing a common, annual problem, the U.S. Department of Agriculture put out this 3 Ways to Thaw a Turkey infographic in 2016.

While frozen, a turkey is safe indefinitely. As soon as it begins to thaw, bacteria that may have been present before freezing will begin to grow again. There are three safe ways to defrost a turkey: in the refrigerator, in cold water, and in a microwave oven.

Informative infographics that answer common questions are some of the most popular infographics.

In my book, I also talk about the Online Lifespan of an infographic, and this infographic has a fantastic Online Lifespan as it covers an evergreen topic and becomes popular every year.

I really like this Sankey Diagram explanation of the numbers behind one of this year’s hottest political topics in the U.S.: How to Fix America’s Immigration Crisis. The original article adds a scrolly-telling element that makes it even better by slowly revealing each branch and explaining the data.

I know this article is hidden behind the NY Times paywall. If you’re not a NY Times subscriber you can try to view the original article with this LINK or try using reader mode on your browser. Let me know if this link doesn’t work, and I’ll try to post a new one.

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

There are many reasons why you may want to organize WordPress photos, or change the order of your photography store’s products. You can attention to older products, or increase conversions by showcasing popular items more prominently. Unfortunately, by default, changing the published date of each product is the only way to adjust the order of products in […]

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 – […]

Arguably the most important part of your website is your store’s checkout page. This is where potential customers become buyers, but if your checkout page isn’t optimized correctly, they could end up abandoning their cart and spending their money elsewhere. While increasing checkout conversions is a worthy goal, it may seem like a lost cause because of a phenomenon […]

Setting up a trouble-free payment process can be nerve-wracking. It must be completely secure and fully tested before going live in order to give the customer zero problems and total confidence in their purchase. Any issues with the checkout process, and it could end up with a potential refund to the customer, or no sale at all. Sell Media incorporates a testing […]

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, […]

Do you have a hard time with SEO on your photography website? If so, the tips below will help you rank higher in search results and drive more organic traffic to your website. So, what the heck is SEO? Is it snake oil? Kind of. Will it magically make your website start to rank higher? Sorry, but it won’t. I tend […]

Back in October 2015, Google announced the launch of a project that may change the internet forever. The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project makes static pages and images load faster than ever before, and despite the youth of the project, big names like Pinterest, WordPress, and Twitter have all voiced their support. For photography website owners, the […]

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 […]

Many photographers jump the gun when it comes to pricing photos for sale online. Psychology plays a underestimated role when your customers are ready to buy, so it’s important to have an effective pricing strategy. Don’t blow pricing strategies under the rug. Your prices determine the success or failure of your business. If you apply the […]

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 […]

As a visual medium, your photography deserves to be seen, and the best way to showcase it is by creating a killer website. However, doing so is tough to get right. By not having a website in this day and age, you’ll come across as a modern day caveman. Fortunately, there are some simple and logical steps you can take to get […]

There’s no doubt that we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to powerful photo editing software – for instance, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom provides astounding functionality at a relatively cheap price. The same can be said for creating websites, especially when using WordPress. However, combining them effectively as one solution for managing your photos is just […]

Setting up your site on platforms such as Squarespace, Wix, and Weebly have their benefits – but they’re not necessarily set up for selling your work online. To do that, you’ll have to turn to a more powerful combination of tools. Setting up a subdomain to run an online store may seem like reinventing the […]

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 […]

One perennial question asked by site owners is: “Which web host is the best?” Of course, the answer is normally, “It depends”. Those looking to create a photography website, for example, will have specific factors to consider besides simply who’s in the top spot. There are a number of requirements you should factor in when […]