Andrew Kelsall | Graphic Designer

When we were in the midst of the credit crunch, did you hear words like “sub-prime”, “CDO” and “Hedge Fund”, but had little idea about how they were all connected and how this credit crunch derived? Well, I was a little confused myself, but recently I came across this great 2-part infographic by Good.is.

After watching various reports about the credit crunch on the news over 2 years, I had a fair idea about what was going on. However, after just reviewing this infographic for just a few minutes, I suddenly knew 10 times as much.

You can view the infographic on the Good.is site. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.

I’ve been interested in infographics for years, and have always wanted to design one at some point. The good ones prove that amazing design can indeed teach facts far better than general information and articles.

Further reading suggestions:

Six Revisions: 40 Useful and Creative Infographics

Design You Trust: 50 Great Examples of Infographics

Visualisation Magazine: 100 of the best  most innovative and creative data visualisations and information graphics

Six Revisions: 10 Revealing Infographics about the Web

Infographics Showcase: Various

Whilst on Twitter yesterday, I followed a link via @Retinart (Alex Charchar) regarding a great new site aptly named Learn Something New Every Day.

It has weird and wonderful facts that are illustrated and updated daily. Here are 10 such facts from the site, with amusingly simple yet effective and colourful images. Don’t rely on these facts for accuracy, but I’m sure they’re true

“Star Fish have no brains”

“The brain is 80% water”

“4000 year old cheese was found in Egyptian Tombs”

“Jim Henson developed an allergy to fleece”

“Golf is the only sport to be played on the Moon”

“90 percent of the Worlds species are yet to be discovered”

“penguins are able to jump 2 metres high”

“Shakespeare was dyslexic”

“A Rubiks Cube has 43250032744898856000 possible positions”

“Sherlock Holmes never said Elementary, my dear Watson”
ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT of LearnSomethingNewEveryDay.co.uk.

PS, If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m @AndrewKelsall (yes, very hard to guess)…

I’ve always admired fractal-images and art from the moment I first saw them. In a nut-shell, fractals are forms made out of mathematical formula; a better explanation is offered in the following quote:

A fractal is generally “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole,” a property called self-similarity. The term was coined by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1975 and was derived from the Latin fractus meaning “broken” or “fractured.” A mathematical fractal is based on an equation that undergoes iteration, a form of feedback based on recursion. [Quote taken from Wikipedia]

The following 10 fractal images only show a glimpse of what can be achieved using fractals. Be they blue, green, orange or multicolored, these digital fractal-art images can truly inspire…

Image Copyright: lrargerich

Image Source: Dreamstime

Image Copyright: Draves

Image Copyright: Santarosa

Image Copyright: Motiv Designs

Image Copyright: Visulogik

Image Copyright: Santarosa

Image Source: Dreamstime

Image Copyright: fdecomite

Image Copyright: Digon3