Interactive Infographics and Word Clouds
Sam Smith’s song entitled “Not in That Way” is represented by this word cloud I created. The message of the song is loving someone who will never love you in that way. A Word Cloud is designed to highlight the messages and means of the words represented. The biggest words are the words that are most used words in the song. This also shows how significant these words pay into the meaning of the song. Before listening to the song someone can understand the mood, message, and intention of the song based on the words shown above. I chose a serif typeface to help connect all the words together. I also changed the color scheme to have dark warm and cold colors to connect the inner turmoil Sam Smith is feeling through the words he is using in his song.
Lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/samsmith/notinthatway.html
The above word cloud entails Carl Sagan's dialogue of Earth from the interstellar perspective of the image titled "The Pale Blue Dot," referenced in his book of the same name. Repetitiously, he makes use of the word "every" to encapsulate several aspects of human history within the context of Earth's minuscule place in the cosmos. It captures not only humanity's insignificance in comparison to the size of everything else beyond Earth, but also how we are unique; we exist on a planet that is known to have intelligent life, and we can make comprehensive conclusions about how the cosmos works.
Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/02/an-early-draft-of-carl-sagans-famous-pale-blue-dot-quote/283516/
Interactive Infographics: (By Diego Girgado)
This interactive infographic shows how all 50 states have positivity and/or negatively effected the environment and how each state uses renewable energy, mass transit, recycling, and so on. As you click on each state it shows how that particular state compares to the rest of the states. If you click on one of the categories it will show which states did the best, which states did the worst, and everything in-between. This interactive infographic is condensing all of the data they have collected from each state and instead of making a bar chart or table and facts box, the interactive graphic is easier to understand and remember.
Link: http://infographicworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/greenstates.swf
The next interactive infographic I found was about the recent 2014 GM recall that is affecting millions of Americans that own recalled GM automobiles. At first I didn't think anything of the infographic until I began clicking on each individual car. When I did that a small menu popped up and disclosed the model of the car, why it is being recalled, and when the recalled started for that particular model. At the top of the chart it shows the different problems GM is having with its recalled cars and if you each on each tab than the chart will show you how many cars have recalled for that specific problem. This infographic is concise, interactive, and simple to understand to eliminate any confusion someone might have about the recent recall.
Link: http://www.gannett-cdn.com/experiments/usatoday/2014/gm-recall/index.html
The last interactive infographic I found was about how mar is from earth. But instead of using miles or Astronomical units the creators used pixels to help graphic designers understand astronomy in a language they understand. As you clicked the arrow at the bottom of the page you began to travel through space first stopping at Earth’s moon and than embarking on the long journey to Mars. Somewhere along the way the interactive graphic even tells you how fast you are travel. Even though this infographic can be reduced to a quick google search I felt like I was actually traveling through space, which was pretty cool.
Link: http://www.distancetomars.com/
