Recent graphics
Have just added a few more recently commissioned and published graphics to Visualoop and Flickr. I have described some of these in more detail here on the blog and in my posts
21st June 2016
D-Day ‘Funny’ Tanks graphic
For the 72nd anniversary of D-Day, BBC Future posted a story about the strange tanks that were converted to help the troops come ashore.
I was commissioned to produce a graphic showing the converted, and really quite wacky tanks.
and thought it would be useful to see my preparatory sketches for this – as with any graphic or visual, the understanding of the purpose and the sketching of ideas is all important, so here goes
8th June 2016
Posts
Have actually started to post things to my website so please have a look at the recent posts as well as the blog, many thanks
07 June 2016
European Drug Report launched
Yesterday, the EMCDDA (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction) launched its latest report, the European Drug Report 2016: trends and developments in Europe’s drug situation (download here)
I have been working with the teams in Lisbon, looking at the visual design and graphics included in the report, especially how we can improve the storytelling aspect, giving the data more of a focus and appeal to the reader, both policy makers across the EU and the public.
It’s a comprehensive and important report, looking at health risks of high-potency products, the emergence of new substances, and changing patterns of drug use.
As well as the report, they also have online sections, focusing on specific drugs, such as Cocaine trafficking routes and the cannabis market as well as a study on wastewater analysis
Thanks to all the team at EMCDDA
1 June 2016
Making a graphic easier to understand
A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with Helen West who was looking at designing a graphic around a paper for Cochrane review. She has put up a very good post on her thoughts and processes. You can also see out comments on the subject. This is a section of the graphic from Cochrane data, as it stood originally
I found that some of the elements, including the double negative text quite difficult to get my head around. So this is my version, changing the format, colour emphasis and text to get rid of the double negative.
There is always something that can be done to make a graphic easier to understand, this is just one example that I thought I should share.
Many thanks to Helen for listening to my comments and you can see the revised graphic here
25 May 2016
Getting schools involved in science
Just posted this on my LinkedIn posts page.
The BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) has been working over the last year or so with EDF energy, getting schools involved in the recording of birds and invertebrates in the school grounds.
The project called “What’s under your feet” has just had its first results published in the latest Volunteer magazine. I was lucky enough to have been involved with the design team at the BTO and commissioned to produce a graphic showing some of the first results.
It’s early days, and the schools involved will carry out further record taking. The results of which will all go to helping the scientists at the BTO produce a scientific paper-exciting stuff. Getting kids to take an interest and to get involved in this record taking is a vital step for our next generation of scientists, journalists and environmentalists as well as getting them to appreciate what is around them. Well done BTO and EDF.
02 May 2016
Printed work
I’m very bad at getting to the newsagent and buying magazines, most I read are on subscription or online – but I still love magazines. I was passing a newsagent this morning and managed to pick up the April issue of Scientific American, a great read if you are interested in any of the sciences. Full of great articles, illustrations and, of course, graphics!
Some of my graphics are included in the article on The Neutron Enigma.
Good to get back into some deep science and I loved reading all the copy and papers
28 April 2016
Latest LinkedIn post
My latest post on LinkedIn has just been posted ‘Distorting the data with graphics’
I hadto post this because of a graphic I saw on Friday showing distorted scales on a bar chart. Something that I feel, and we all should feel, strongly about. Showing the data accurately.
25th April 2016
Re-doing a graphic
This was posted by the European Parliament today on LinkedIn
I found this a misleading graphic and difficult to follow. My eye went to the line with the flags on thinking it was showing a trend (which it isn’t) Also the order of the countries seemed rather random. Surely ascending or descending numbers would have been better.
So I remade it. There are other ways to show the data graphically, such a slope graph to show which countries are increasing or decreasing, but as an example thought I would show the bar.
This is to scale and shows which countries are really taking the fish and whether they are increasing or decreasing over the year. Thinking about what you are trying to show and showing it in the best possible way is so important when producing any graphic.
19 April 2016
EU Drug Markets Report 2016
The EMCDDA (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction) and EUROPOL launched the EU Drug Markets Report 2016 yesterday.
I had the opportunity to work with the brilliant staff and design some of the graphics within the report. Making sense of the huge data sets they had and, hopefully, bringing out the relevant data visually, making it easily understandable to us, the public, as well as to the policy makers.
The report provides a unique insight into the operation of illicit drug markets in the EU and assesses the impact of the drug market on society and the factors driving it. The report combines the analytical power of the EMCDDA’s drug monitoring system with Europol’s operational intelligence on trends in organised crime.
So here are some of the graphics included in the report.
It’s interesting and important data, so go and download the report here.
And thanks to all those involved with making my life easier
06 April 2016
The 2015 annual results of the BTO Garden BirdWatch
My first graphic for the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) has just been released online.
The 2015 annual results of the BTO Garden BirdWatch.
A very important survey, the Garden BirdWatch, monitors the changing fortunes of birds and other garden wildlife through its network of ‘citizen scientists’. All the data on the individual birds is also available. This was my first commission after spending a day with the brilliant staff in Thetford. The work they do, with the help of the public ,is vital in monitoring the state of our wildlife. So I would like to thank all the staff, especially Viola Ross-Smith for putting up with all my questions and queries about this project and watch out for more in the coming weeks
29 March 2016
Malofiej24 Infographics Summit, Pamplona
Credit: Diana Yoo
Malofiej24 Infographics Summit, known as the Pulitzers of the infographics world, has just finished in Pamplona, well it finished on Friday with an awards dinner and much talking that went on well into Saturday morning, when many of us arrived at the airport not having slept.
The jury awarded 13 gold medals, 33 silver medals and 91 bronze medals
La Nación (Argentina) and The New York Times (USA) won Best of Show in print and online categories respectively, with the graphics “Cobertura de las elecciones de 2015” and “You Draw It: How Family Income Predicts Children’s College Chances”. See the list of awards here
Geoff McGee did a great job by storifying it, (day 1,) for those that couldn’t attend or who just wanted a reminder of what was said.
As always, it was a great conference. The speakers didn’t let us down. Every presentation was interesting and thought-provoking. Ranging from map making, VR technology, polling statistics, mind game visuals, graphics for mobile and painful data.
Too many people to quote but a couple to think about”
“The dataviz should honor the data: If the data is messy, it should be messy. If it’s painful, it should be painful” Kim Rees, Periscopic
“We don’t need fucking Big Data. We need big understanding.”
Richard Saul Wurman
Richard Saul Wurman in conversation with John Grimwade
If you work with data and visuals and have never been to Malofiej, then I recommend you attend at least once…or more
Here’s to next year
16 March 2016
Linking colours within graphics…
Yesterday I wrote a post ‘Making your graphic tell the story…and relate to the headline’ .
Today’s post looks at linking graphics by colour. This was posted today by European Parliamentary Research Service.
Here’s the graphic looking at the e-book market around the world.
Again, I will not go into the layout or chart types used (that can be another blog post) but will look at the colours used and the linking of the information within the graphic. I have tried to keep to the original colour scheme
Adding colour to graphs is an easy process, isn’t it? – you have the default colour palette or corporate colours to follow, so just pick one! – but adding colour to charts can also be one of the most difficult to get right. When used well, colours will enhance the graphic and make the reading and understanding an easy process – but they can also kill the graphic which leads to misunderstanding and confusion.
So let’s have a look at the graphic above. Overall, the colours have the same intensity, and therefore, importance. In Figure 1, the US takes 26% of the global book market
In Figure 2, Germany takes 24% of the EU book market (see note below)
Before I even get to discussing the colours…if you are going to use a pie or donut chart then make sure it adds up to 100%. Figure 1 adds up to 99% and even worse, Figure 2 only adds to 80% – where is the other 20%? This should not be a pie chart as it gives a false meaning to the data.
Putting these together the first thing that stands out is the colour use. Figure 1, USA is red, Figure 2, Germany is now the same red etc. This is just confusing. Why not use the same colours for the countries – this would make it much clearer to relate the data country by country – although still not perfect.
Using a different colour range would also make it easier.
And in Figure 3 shows VAT levied on e-books – again using the same colour scheme but showing a totally different data set. Again, very confusing as the reader will automatically assume that the colours relate to the pie charts.
A graduated same-colour scale would have been a better way of illustrating this to show, NO VAT, Zero rate, Reduced rate, and Standard Rate
In isolation, each graphic tries to tells its own story. When combining elements into a storytelling dashboard or sequence of graphics, the elements must come together in a cohesive form that makes sense and helps the reader to understand the story and the data behind it.
With a bit of thought and understanding of your what you are trying to show and what you want the audience to take away from the graphic, these things can be avoided.
Step back and think…Does this help me to understand the story?
23 February 2016
Making the graphic tell the story…
Just posted this on LInkedIn
Making your graphic tell the story…and relate to the headline and vice versa.
This morning, the EU Commission put out a tweet
17 energy projects approved by the European Investment Bank,
with this graphic as the image
Important as the message is, the image that accompanies it is not helping the story as the style of graphic and the colours used, hide the fact of the 17 projects. Why is the number ’17’ not the same colour as the segment of the pie it relates to?
The colour scheme used also muddles the message with R,D,I and Health being darker and so therefore standing out over the Energy segment.
Getting these things correct, especially when images and graphics are shared on social media sites is not hard – it just takes some thought.
I quickly made this graphic to show what I mean
Your eye can instantly relate the story being told to the graphic. It stands out! You don’t need to think about it. It backs up what the tweet was about.
I am not saying a donut chart was the best way to show this data but thought I should keep to the original format to back up what I mean.
Original factsheet here: http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/sites/beta-political/files/sector-factsheet-energy_en.pdf
There are many more out there. Step back and think…is the graphic helping me
22 February 2016
The start of 2016 has been pretty busy. I am working on a couple of projects which will be released soon, so will speak more of those when the time is right.
For the past few years, well 7 or 8, I have been attending the Malofiej World Infographic Summit, based in Pamplona, Spain. I missed last year, as I was just into my freelance career and so felt I couldn’t release the time to go BUT I have just paid up, booked flights and accommodation, and this year I am going again! I can’t wait.
It’s a great place (the best place!) to meet the best infographic and visualisation designers from around the world. The list of speakers this year is impressive and I look forward to meeting all those I haven’t seen for a while and to speaking with the avatars and pictures from Twitter and LinkedIn – yes, you get to see, speak and drink with real people.
If you have never been before and are interested in visual communication and design then you really must attend at least once.
See all of you there soon.
16 February 2016
A day at the BTO.
Last week I spent a fantastic, and full, day with the staff at the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in Thetford, Norfolk.
I was there to speak to them about effective visual communication…and for a little walk around the reserve next to the beautiful building they occupy (a converted Nunnery).
We had a great day. My time was spent speaking to various small teams all concerned with how to tell the stories and research they have in a more visually appealing way. The staff were enthusiastic and eager to listen, discuss and learn and so, I can only thank them for their enthusiasm and hope to visit again soon for more visual treats and data wrangling.
09 February 2016
Again, managed to get my hands on the January issue of Scientific American with my latest graphics included in it.
19 January 2016
My thoughts on a year of freelancing and leaving a ‘proper’ job
http://nigelhawtin.com/one-year-on/
21 December 2015
There has been some great pick up, reviews and comments about the Global Carbon Budget graphic – I am so pleased. Have a look at Randy Krum’s blog http://www.coolinfographics.com/
08 December 2015
Yesterday saw the launch of the latest Global Carbon Budget 2015 in Paris.
I have been privileged to have able to work on the infographic for this report. So many thanks to all involved including Corinne Le Quéré, Róisín Moriarty and Owen Gaffney for asking me to help with this. Here is the link to the graphic
08 December 2015
Just back from another week in Lisbon working on new projects. Lisbon is a lovely city and one day I will actually get around to doing all the touristy things and seeing some of it instead of just working and visiting the bars and restaurants (which they have many of and are all great).
I have also just got round to buying the November issue of Scientific American which has my latest graphics in. It’s a great story ‘Seeing in the Dark’ by Joshua Frieman of The Dark Energy Survey looking at four approaches that DES is studying to see how and why our universe is expanding at an ever faster rate. Here’s a shot of the graphic and a link to the Sciam article
25 November 2015
More more graphics are now on the spectrumnews website. A special report on Sex/gender in Autism.
3 November 2015
Enjoyed a morning at the Royal College of Art, Information Experience Design section, 
talking to the students about the importance of infographics and storytelling. It’s part of a week-long exercise for them to come up with a storytelling, map based project. I will be back on Friday to see what they have all come up with – looking forward to that.
27 October 2015
My latest graphics for BBC Future were published last week. A fascinating, and sad feature all about the 200+ bodies that remain on Everest.
15 October 2015
After a week at the Guardian, I am now back working at home. Some of the visuals I worked on have now been published, one of them has had great exposure on the news media. It’s a visual guide to something that affects 1 in 10 women worldwide, about the same number as those with diabetes but is often misdiagnosed or overlooked entirely – Endometriosis, a visual guide
I have also been busy producing graphics for spectrumnews, a website based in the US highlighting news and advances in autism research. Here’s the graphic showing the costs associated with living with autism
The cost of Autism in the US: Spectrumnews.org
Other works in the pipeline and published include the life of the cicada, for BBC Earth as well as others not published yet but will be here or in my gallery when I can show them…
…there’s more interesting work coming up, so I am looking forward to showing that when I can
29 September, 2015
Am enjoying a week working with the Guardian visuals team, working on some science based stories.Thanks to Cath Levett and Xaquín González Veira for asking me to come in. Some great visuals coming out of a very talented team.
17 September, 2015
Last week, I had a conversation with Nika at Infogr.am about a blog posting they shared 4 Data Visualization Mistakes and How to Avoid Them on a dataviz forum. The posting had some good comments but I felt they were let down by the colour schemes used and offered some alternatives. They took these comments onboard and asked me to write a short posting on how to correctly use colour in data visualizations.
So here it is How to choose colours for charts
26 August, 2015
For the past month or so I have had the fortune to work at Nature magazine in London. It’s good to be back surrounded by scientific papers, and scientific journalists. It was also good to work again with ex-staffers from New Scientist as well as the art team of Nature.
As well as working on the back-end magazine graphics, which included tidying up the scientific graphics to fit in with Nature style, I had the opportunity to come up with some news graphics.
…more to come
18 August, 2015
With all the fantastic images coming from the Pluto flypast, it got me thinking about the size of the dwarf planet, so I quickly came up with this very basic graphic showing Pluto compared to Charon, the closest of it’s five moons, alongside Earth and our moon
20 July, 2015
This week I have been back to my roots in the science community and have been working at Nature magazine in London. It’s good to be back surrounded by scientific papers, but I must say, those graphics in the papers really need to be looked at!
08 July, 2015
I am just back from Helsinki and Vienna, delivery workshops on information graphics and effective visual communication to ECHA and FRA. I must say a big thank you to the organisers and to all the people who attended over the two or three day workshops. It was great to see such enthusiasm and willingness to try new things and learn. I am really looking forward to doing some more…
01 July, 2015
Just out, my first graphic for BBC Britain.
For this I was commissioned to produce a graphic that could be used on the website but also used for social media sites – hence giving the relevant information but in a more stylised way.
09 June, 2015
I am busy now, preparing content for a couple of graphic workshops for EU agencies. Really looking forward to them…more details later
01 June, 2015
It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me.
I was commissioned by BBC Future to produce a graphic for the Prime of Life article. I had a great time reading through all the papers with David Robson at BBCFuture and organising the data for the story. Here’s the final graphic. Thanks to David for commissioning me
I also have been working on other graphics for the BBC so will post them here when I can
1 June, 2015
Just got my hands on the latest issue of Scientific American, a fantastic cover ‘Rise of the Tyrannosours’ and a great issue packed with graphics by many of the best.
My visual featured on the Graphic Science page so it was good to see it printed as it was intended. Here’s the graphic and the cover again
28 May, 2015
I had the great pleasure to get back into the world of science recently when I was commissioned by Jen Christiansen of Scientific American to produce a graphic for the Graphic Science page for the May 2015 issue. A great image on the cover.
The subject was land grabs – looking at wealthy countries such as the U.S. as well as smaller countries with little space buying up or leasing large tracts of land suitable for agriculture in other nations. A fascinating brief full of data and a real challenge to get the information working well in the space available.
I am waiting for the magazine to arrive in the UK and so I won’t spoil the surprise – just go and buy the issue. When it is out I will show some of the process we went through to get to the final result. In the meantime, here’s a snippet
28 APRIL, 2015
I never did get around to congratulating all the fantastic winners as well as all those who entered the Malofiej23 awards – well not publicly, anyway. I didn’t manage to get there this year and obviously missed another brilliant series of presentations along with a few drinks with my friends and colleagues in the field of information graphics.
The full list of winners is here and I was really pleased to see that The Times of Oman won best of show for their brilliantly designed football graphic.
And, of course, congratulations to everybody else. The state of infographics is in healthy hands.
26 APRIL, 2015
It has been another busy couple of weeks for me. Over the Easter period I had another couple of days at the Independent newspaper (there are a couple of graphics in my gallery) followed by a return to a couple of days at my old job, New Scientist, covering for the holiday period. It was great to be back in the science world and to see all my old colleagues – and I did some work!
I am now working on training schedules for upcoming workshops. Will speak more of these when I have conformed places and dates.
11 APRIL, 2015
Pleased to see that a report I worked on in February has been released. Here’s the press release and report. I advised and completed many of the graphics in the report. Thanks to Edward Peck co-founder of IAFN, and CEO of Asset Finance International.
24 MARCH, 2015
Thanks to everybody at the Wellcome Trust for inviting me to speak today as part of their lunchtime series of presentations. It was a great turnout and hopefully was useful.
20 MARCH, 2015
Just added a couple more graphics to the gallery, so have a look – thanks
18 MARCH, 2015
The event for infographics journalists and designers is just about to start. The 23rd Malofiej infographics conference and awards takes place in Pamplona, at the University of Navarra (March 18-20).
This is the first time for quite a few years that I will not be attending – and I’m gutted. If you have never been, or haven’t been for a few years then you really should go. Its a great showcase of all thats best in the world of infographics (in the real meaning of the word). The line-up of presenters looks a good as ever, plus there’s a chance to catch up with or meet all those people you speak to or read about from all over the world.
Hopefully, I will be back next year, but in the meantime I will be following everything on twitter and Facebook.
15 MARCH, 2015
Just back from another week in the offices of EMCDDA, again working on the European Drug Report for 2015 as well as other projects. Working with a brilliant team of hard working statisticians, designers and editors. Its all coming together nicely and I am looking forward to seeing the report when its launched (Early June).
14 MARCH, 2015
Just back from a break in New Zealand – what a wonderful country!
It’s great to come back after a break straight into some very interesting work.
Working on a graphic for Scientific American over the next couple of days plus work on the European Drug report for EMCDDA carries on now the deadline is getting nearer! Still plenty to do.
3 March, 2015
I had my leaving drinks with the staff of New Scientist last Wednesday. We decided to postpone it to after Christmas to allow our livers to recover a bit! It was a great do, and I must thank all the staff for their lovely gifts and kind words included in the brilliant card…
25 JANUARY, 2015
Over the past couple of weeks I have been working with the EMCDDA on the European Drug Report 2015, due out later this year. As well as the overall design, I have been looking at how they may improve the storytelling aspect, giving the data more of a focus as well as appeal to the reader.
There’s lots to do and not much time so a busy week here in Lisbon going through what we, as a team, can do. At least, there is sun to look at through the office window.
15 January, 2015
A Happy New Year.
It’s been a busy start to 2015.The website is now up and running and the first day back at ‘work’ proper, Monday, was spent at The Independent newspaper, helping out in the graphics department. Looking forward to a few more shifts there in January.
My time is now being taken up looking at ideas for visuals in the European Drug Report for the EMCDDA.
(7 Jan, 2015)
My original blog Infographicscience has served me well over the past year or so but now I will try and keep this page up to date…
A new start
From the first hand drawn graphics, produced using CS10 paper and Rotring pens through to the graphics of today for the magazine and visualisations for the web site and app, I have a had a fantastic time working alongside a dedicated and enthusiastic staff.
I’ve learnt so much and still so much more to learn, and so have decided to set up on my own.
I hope to be able to bring my experience and expertise to the scientific and business world, where there is still much to do.
I would like to thank everybody I have worked with at New Scientist over the years and wish them all the success for the future.
Watch this space for more…
Paper and graphic accepted for publication
Had some good news this week. Have just heard that a paper I have been working on, with Christopher Kaiser-Bunbury over the past few months entitled ‘The nutrient economy of Lodoicea maldivica‘ – the plant that produces the world’s largest seed, has been accepted for publication by New Phytologist journal.
The initial brief was to produce one graphic to cover all of the data produced in an interesting and accessible way. In the end, and after many redraws and sketches, we decided to break up the graphic into the more illustrative part showing water retention and soil uptake and keep the more data-driven graphics separate but still easily read, telling the story as you read through the whole graphic.
A couple of the working drawings…
and the final version
Thanks to all involved in this project
Data Visualisation Summit, London
Last Tuesday and Wednesday I attended and presented at the Data Vis Summit in London organised by the Innovation Enterprise. It was two day event aimed at businesses interested in doing more with their data.
I only had the time to attend the first day, but it was an interesting time. We heard from, amongst others, Louise Blais, Principal Data Architect of the Royal Mail, looking at how visualising data can help work flow amongst managers, Macmillan eduction on how we can better understand schooling and marking plus visualisation at the Times, looking at the iPad graphics and a great presentation from Kenneth Cukier from the Economist looking at big data visualisations.
I was on just before lunch and because things were coming up a bit short I managed to speak for 50 minutes on ‘Infographics and the Communication of Science’ plus lots of great questions after the presentation.
I met lots of great people and learnt a lot, so thank you to the organisers for inviting me, hopefully I can come back next year. Unfortunately, or fortunately, you need to register to see the vid and slides but the link is here https://ieondemand.com/
and a couple of slides from the presentation
to read the rest of this blog hit here