piksels

Today I came across two very noteworthy examples of clever information design which make understanding sets of data both more visual and relative. The best way to grasp what data means is often to put it into perspective with other sets of data so you can easily make a comparison. This is when charts and illustrations quickly become a better data medium than numbers.

How the World Really Shapes Up

The first example takes a map of the world and distorts each region size, relevant to the category it is in. For example, while viewing the map on HIV presence, Africa will be bloated compared to the rest of the world.

See more maps or read more about the project at the UK Daily Mail.

(These maps were produced together by the universities of Michigan and Sheffield)

Size of the Universe

Universcale is a very interactive example of helping us putting into perspective the size of the universe. We quickly can understand how small we are compared to the billions of light years which span across the universe, whilst still being millions of times larger than the building blocks which make up the universe.

(I found Universcale through a design website which I frequently visit, Position Absolute)

Here is a video which also helps us fathom just how large the universe really is

Today while browsing the ever so beautiful interwebs, I came across something interesting about Shakespeare. Turns out that our second favourite William (after the one and only William Gates of course) invented over 1700 of the words we use commonly use, by simply turning nouns into verbs, adjectives into verbs, and so forth..

Here is a very small list of words he invented:

1. Accused
2. Addiction
3. Advertising
4. Amazement
5. Arouse
6. Assassination
7. Bandit
8. Bedroom
9. Beached
10. Blanket
11. Bump
12. Cater
13. Champion
14. Countless
15. Epileptic
16. Fixture
17. Flawed
18. Generous
19. Hint
20. Lonely
21. Mimic
22. Negotiate
23. Obscene
24. Premeditated
25. Rant
26. Summit
27. Torture
28. Varied
29. Worthless
30. Zany

Well the list goes on, and you can read more about it here, or phrases he invented here. It is not surprising that he has had so much influence on the English language, as he is arguably the greatest playwright ever. But it is remarkable how he never felt confined to using only ‘true’ lexicon.

It is disappointing that we are taught that there is a word for everything, because it hampers our imagination to develop, to feel, to express, anything which has not been defined before. And sometimes we convince ourselves that if there is no word for it, then it cannot exist.

I hope we all can take an example from Shakespeare, and dare to break the structured guidelines.