Hasta La Ideas

Detail from Peter Ørntoft’s Infographics in Context (Interest #4 Refugees and Immigrants) which won gold in Data Visualisation (see below for full graphic)

Earlier this evening the ICA in London staged the inaugural Information is Beautiful Awards, a celebration of the best work in data visualisation and infographics. Here are the winning projects from the night…

Staged in partnership with market research company Kantar, the awards were set up by data journalist and information designer, David McCandless, whose informationisbeautiful.net has been reporting on data visualisation since 2009.

There were six main awards categories, with a bronze, silver and gold awarded in Infographic / Information Design; Data Visualisation; Interactive Visualisation; Data Journalism; Motion Infographic; and Tool or Website.

Over 1,000 projects were entered and judged by a panel including musician and artist Brian Eno; Paola Antonelli, senior curator at the Museum of Modern Art; Maria Popova, editor of cultural curation site BrainPickings.org; and Simon Rogers, editor of The Guardian Datablog. Visitors to the IIB site were also invited to vote for the Community Award, and their votes also contributed to the final totals.

For larger versions of the winning work, and to access interactive sections, please follow the links included below.

Motion Infographic:

Gold: What is the True Cost of War? by Peter Jeffs, Tom Stevenson. Narrated by Tony Benn this short animation examines the cost of the UK’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

Silver: Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Virus by Patrick Clair, Scott Mitchell.

Bronze: The seventh billion by economist.com.

Interactive Visualisation:

Gold: Notabilia by Moritz Stefaner, Dario Taraborelli and Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia. This interesting site visualises various “deletion discussions on Wikipedia”.

Silver: The American Energy Spectrum Infographic by Hyperakt (Deroy Peraza, Eric Fensterhei).

Bronze: The Evolution of the Web by Hyperakt (Deroy Peraza, Eric Fensterheim).

Tool or Website:

Gold: AntiMap by Trent Brooks. AntiMap is a creative toolset for recording and then visualising a user’s own data, via the AntiMap Log smart phone app (below, top) which can be synchronised with the AntiMap Video desktop application (demo shown, below).

Silver: FF Chartwell by Travis Kochel and FontFont.

Bronze: Gephi by Mathieu Bastian, Sébastien Heymann, Mathieu Jacomy.

Data Journalism:

Gold: CNN Home and Away by Stamen Design LLC. This sobering infographic plots US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, against a map showing the location of each of the soldiers’ hometowns.

Silver: Public Spending by the UK’s Government Departments, 2010-2011 by The Guardian Data and The Guardian Graphics teams.

Bronze: Metallica on Stage by Deniz Cem Önduygu, Amaç Herdağdelen, Eser Aygün.

Data Visualisation:

Gold: Infographics in Context (Interest #4 – Refugees and Immigrants) by Peter Ørntoft. “The focus of the interest deals with whether or not the Danes think it’s ethical to wear religious symbols in public professions,” writes Ørntoft on his website (where another six examples are shown). “I have used the looks and appearances of traditional religious symbols to design the diagrams explaining the data.”

Silver: Look At The Sky: Belief and Science by Carla Fernández Arce.

Bronze: Lunar Calendar by Dimitre Lima.

Infographic / Information Design:

Gold: Cover Mania by Michele Mauri. This infographic, which appeared in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra and can be seen in its entirety here, shows how The Beatles became the ‘most covered’ band ever.

Silver: Envisioning Emerging Technology by Michell Zappa / Envisioning Tech.

Bronze: CV by Paulo Estriga.

Special Awards

Studio Award:
Hyperakt

Best individual contribution:
Moritz Stefaner

Student Award:
Timeline of the Universe, Omid Kashan

Corporate Award:
The Interactive UK Energy Consumption Guide, Epiphany Search (Gaz Battersby and Bryan James)

Community Award:
Metallica on Stage, Deniz Cem Önduygu, Amaç Herdağdelen, Eser Aygün

Challenge Winner, infodesign:
The Top Most Profitable Movies of 2001 Across 22 Story Types, Cristina Vanko

Challenge Winner, interactive:
Budgets Big and Small, Daniel Leventhal

Ultimate Award – Most Beautiful:
CNN Home & Away, Stamen

More details on the winning work will also be available at informationisbeautifulawards.com.

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
In our October print issue we have a major feature on the rise of Riso printing, celebrate the art of signwriting, examine the credentials of ‘Goodvertising’ and look back at the birth of D&AD. Rebecca Lynch reviews the Book of Books, a survey of 500 years of book design, Jeremy Leslie explains how the daily London 2012 magazine delivered all the news and stories of the Games and Michael Evamy explores website emblemetric.com, offering “data-driven insights into logo design”. In addition to the issue this month, subscribers will receive a special 36-page supplement sponsored by Tag celebrating D&AD’s 50th with details of all those honoured with Lifetime Achievement awards plus pieces on this year’s Black Pencil and President’s Award-winners Derek Birdsall and Dan Wieden. And subscribers also receive Monograph which this month features Rian Hughes’ photographs of the unique lettering and illustration styles of British fairgrounds

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

You may need to look no further than your paycheck and your inbox to corroborate some of the findings of the 2012 AIGA/Aquent Survey of Design Salaries, released this week: design salaries have remained relatively flat for several years, even as many design firms report that they are busier than ever. “There are indications that firms are busy because they have not replaced workers who had been released during the start of the recession,” according to AIGA executive director Richard Grefé, who has observed a move toward outsourcing by in-house design departments. “The result has been an increase in the use of freelance and contract employees, whose availability has held compensation increases in check. In addition, approximately 12,000 students of communication design graduate from four-year programs each year—more than can be absorbed into the current workforce.”

The good news? Design is increasingly in demand, and compensation is on the rise for some positions, particularly those involved with integrating design into business strategy&#8212strategists and operations management&#8212as well as roles which deal with usability, web, and interactive design. Below are some more thought-provoking highlights from the survey results. Dig into the data yourself at AIGA’s newly launched design salaries site.

• Those with 10 to 19 years of experience earn the greatest compensation, though younger designers’ (0–10 years of experience) technology skills may put them on par with older designers (20–30 years of experience) in terms of earnings
• There does not seem to be a noticeable premium paid for the highest levels of education: a 4 percent median salary difference was reported between MFA and BFA graduates
• Sixty-six percent of freelance respondents work with a staffing agency, and one in four of those working with an agency receive benefits
• Women are still not earning as much as their male counterparts, despite the fact that 54 percent of design professionals are female and more than half of AIGA’s members are female

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Under Neville Brody’s presidency, D&AD is undergoing some important changes to the way it’s run and what it hopes to achieve. Will they be enough to reinvigorate an organisation which marked its 50th year last week?

When you think of D&AD what do you think of? For most people, it’s awards and that’s a problem. Not that D&AD doesn’t want people to enter its awards. The problem is that it wants to be thought of primarily as an educational charity, using the money it generates from all those awards entries (over 20,000 per year) to nurture the next generation of designers and creatives. To do good not to slap backs.

The link, between the money-making and the money-giving, where that money goes and the good that it does, has not been made clear enough. This has been allied to and connected with a background of, particularly in the design community, a growing sense of disillusionment with D&AD and the feeling that it is no longer relevant.

But what if there was an organisation which supported needy students who are struggling to pay tuition fees in these difficult economic times with bursaries or scholarships? An organisation that was helping to break down the homogeneity of the creative industries by offering financial help to students with disadvantaged backgrounds? Making sure that industry and academia talked to each other and supported each other? Supporting graduates coming into work, providing training and networking? While at the same time performing a valuable role in the professional community by championing the best of its community’s work, reinforcing the value of what it does and acting as a forum for debate and the exchange of ideas. That’s what D&AD wants to be known for and, in large part, it’s what it already does.

Somewhat lost amid the hoopla of its 50th birthday celebrations (top), D&AD has announced a significant change – the launch of the D&AD Foundation. D&AD is being re-organised to separate the awards and professional services side of what it does from its educational activities. In future, the ‘business’ side of D&AD will concentrate on making as much revenue as it can from its awards and professional training courses. The Foundation will be funded and supported by the profits generated by these activities.

The Foundation’s cash will support students through their education and then, through internships, apprenticeships, mentoring and activities such as the Graduate Academy, through the first years of professional life until they are in a position to be entering – hopefully winning – the professional awards themselves. At that point, D&AD will expect the circle to become complete as those who have themselves benefitted from D&AD’s support, offer their own to the next generation, perhaps through endowments or gifts but certainly through entering the awards

This clarified agenda for D&AD is being driven by its chief exec Tim Lindsay and incoming president Neville Brody (subscribers can read a revealing interview with them both in the supplement with the October issue of CR, shown above). Both also recognise the need for D&AD to grow its membership if it is to genuinely represent the industry and offer more to professionals than just the chance of winning an oversized pencil.

“D&AD is often accused of being less relevant today,” Lindsay admits in the interview, “but the way you make yourself relevant is to make yourself useful and the way you do that is to provide a product and a service that people find they need recourse to frequently. You need to take a look at yourself and ask whether what you are doing is right for the emerging generations. I think D&AD has done quite a good job on students and quite a good job at the more mature end of the industry but it has missed out the middle. We can disconnect with people when they’ve been in the business for two or three years until they win an award.”

But is winning an award even that important to younger designers and creatives? “If awards are about peer review and peer approval then you get that much more widely and rigorously and instantly by putting something up on YouTube than you do by entering an awards show,” Lindsay concedes. “We have to be much more than an awards show. We have to offer great training, great speakers, to be a great place to have discussions. And, most of all, we want to make money to put into the Foundation.”

Brody also wants D&AD to be more vocal in the interests of its members. “We’re not going to be shy of raising our voices more politically,” he promises. “What this government has done to creative education in this country is an absolute fucking disaster. They’re shooting themselves in the foot. A huge amount of UK income comes from the creative services, so what possible good can come out of killing creative education? I don’t support the idea that industry should be paying for education but we have no choice, so let’s formulate a positive response, make it work and stick two fingers up to the government.” D&AD, he says, “needs to have a more strident voice to defend the profession we represent and to help protect students who want to go into creative education.”

Lindsay and Brody are promising a more active, engaged D&AD that has a clear remit to support education in practical ways. The Foundation, they hope, will set out where D&AD’s priorities lie, to an extent not seen in its previous five decades. That sounds to me like something worth supporting, but what do readers think?

A lot of people have been very critical of D&AD in the comments here: What do you want from D&AD that it currently fails to provide?

Where should it be concentrating its energies?

How would you like to see it change?

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
In our October print issue we have a major feature on the rise of Riso printing, celebrate the art of signwriting, examine the credentials of ‘Goodvertising’ and look back at the birth of D&AD. Rebecca Lynch reviews the Book of Books, a survey of 500 years of book design, Jeremy Leslie explains how the daily London 2012 magazine delivered all the news and stories of the Games and Michael Evamy explores website emblematic.com, offering “data-driven insights into logo design”. In addition to the issue this month, subscribers will receive a special 36-page supplement celebrating D&AD’s 50th with details of all those honoured with Lifetime Achievement awards plus pieces on this year’s Black Pencil and President’s Award-winners Derek Birdsall and Dan Wieden. And subscribers also receive Monograph which this month features Rian Hughes’ photographs of the unique lettering and illustration styles of British fairgrounds

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

Asked to produce a brand identity guidelines manual for Norwich Cathedral, there was really only one route The Click Design Consultants could take…

The Click created Norwich Cathedral’s brand identity back in 2009. They have carried on working with the client since and were recently asked to create a brand guidelines manual for cathedral staff and suppliers.

The solution was staring them in the face – a ‘brand bible’ created to look like a real bible.

It looks like the consultancy had a huge amount of fun shoehorning as many religious references into the work as possible.

And fair play to the cathedral authorities for going along with what could have seemed a slightly sacrilegious gag.

One slight let down is that the book does not actually exist as a physical object – it was designed to be an online resource only. But in these times of tight budgets and environmental concerns, that makes sense.

See more from The Click here

CR for the iPad
Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here

CR in Print
In our October print issue we have a major feature on the rise of Riso printing, celebrate the art of signwriting, examine the credentials of ‘Goodvertising’ and look back at the birth of D&AD. Rebecca Lynch reviews the Book of Books, a survey of 500 years of book design, Jeremy Leslie explains how the daily London 2012 magazine delivered all the news and stories of the Games and Michael Evamy explores website emblematic.com, offering “data-driven insights into logo design”. In addition to the issue this month, subscribers will receive a special 36-page supplement celebrating D&AD’s 50th with details of all those honoured with Lifetime Achievement awards plus pieces on this year’s Black Pencil and President’s Award-winners Derek Birdsall and Dan Wieden. And subscribers also receive Monograph which this month features Rian Hughes’ photographs of the unique lettering and illustration styles of British fairgrounds

Please note, CR now has a limited presence on the newsstand at WH Smith high street stores (although it can still be found in WH Smith travel branches at train stations and airports). If you cannot find a copy of CR in your town, your WH Smith store or a local independent newsagent can order it for you. You can search for your nearest stockist here. Alternatively, call us on 020 7970 4878 to buy a copy direct from us. Based outside the UK? Simply call +44(0)207 970 4878 to find your nearest stockist. Better yet, subscribe to CR for a year here and save yourself almost 30% on the printed magazine.

Amsterdam’s Stedelijk has renovated more than its building. The museum tapped Dutch graphic design duo Mevis & Van Deursen (a.k.a. Armand Mevis and Linda van Deursen) to whip up a fresh identity. They begin with the idea of “some kind of stage for the works of art to be shown on,” expains Mevis in the below video. “Our source of inspiration is art.” But when it came to creating a clear and recognizable logo, “Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam” doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue or pop off the page, so they got creative with the letter “S.” Survey says? Surprising, scrappy, and smart. Here’s the full scoop:

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.