Remember when data used to be dull? When the task of becoming well informed required you to exhibit the patience of a saint as you trawled through graphs and spread sheets? When every quarterly report inevitably included a three-dimensional pie chart?
Thankfully, data is no longer dull.
On the 27 September the world's best examples of visually stunning information was recognised at the inaugural Information is Beautiful awards. The event, held at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, awarded designers from all over the world in a variety of categories, including data visualisation, infographics and data journalism.
When David McCandless, author, data journalist and founder of the Information is Beautiful (IIB) data-visualisation studio, announced in early 2012 that IIB was looking for award applicants, he was inundated with over 1,000 entries. "There's been a year of build-up for these awards -- I've been having some quite intense infographic dreams for the past few weeks! I've just been amazed by the sheer quality of the creative work submitted to the awards from around the world," McCandless told Wired.co.uk. "There are a number of criteria we look for when judging these awards. Not only do they have to have the right visual quality and be easily understood, they have to have that invisible element of story telling as well. "We were blown away by the standard and variety of the entries.
We had quite a few from Russia, where visual data is a strong design skill. We also had entries from Brazil, and a lot from eastern countries including China and South Korea -- it shows that visual data is spreading. Whittling the shortlist down has been no easy task."
Alongside entries from large design companies and individual artists, the IIB received an application from an eight-year-old girl. "She had a really cute representation of the water table, which I guess she must have done for a school project," explained McCandless. "Although she didn't get shortlisted we did send her a special message thanking her for her entry."
Having handed out the specially commissioned awards at the ceremony, McCandless is looking forward to escaping from the world of infographics and locking himself away in his "cave" for the next six months to work on his next book, Knowledge is Beautiful. "I think for next year's awards we'll want to use the design community a bit more. There's so much material out there that to keep on top of."
The winners, listed below, were selected by a panel of judges including musician and visual artist Brian Eno, senior curator of the Museum of Modern Art Paola Antonelli, BrainPickings.org editor Maria Popova and Guardian Datablog editor Simon Rogers*.* They each received a specially designed trophy and prize money from the sponsors of the event Kantar.
Data Visualisation
Gold: Information Graphics in Context, Peter
Ørntoft
Silver: Look at the Sky, Carla Fernández Arce
Bronze: Lunar Calendar, Dimitre Lima
Infographic/Infodesign
Gold: Cover-mania, Michele Mauri
Silver: Envisioning Emerging Technology for 2012 and Beyond, Michell Zappa
Bronze: CV, Paulo Estriga
Interactive Visualisation
Gold: Notabilia, Moritz Stefaner / Dario Taraborelli / Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia
Silver: The American Energy Spectrum, Hyperakt (Deroy Peraza / Eric Fensterheim)
Bronze: Evolution of Web, Hyperakt (Deroy Peraza
/ Eric Fensterheim)
Data Journalism
Gold: CNN Home and Away, Stamen
Silver: Government Spending, Guardian data and graphics teams
Bronze: Metallica on Stage, Deniz Cem Önduygu /
Amaç Herdağdelen / Eser Aygün
Motion Inforgraphic
Gold: What is the True Cost of War? Peter Jeffs / Tom Stevenson
Silver: Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Virus, Patrick Clair / Scott Mitchell
Bronze: The Seventh Billion, Economist.com team
Tool or Website
Gold: The Antimap, Trent Brooks
Silver: FF Chartwell, Travis Kochel /
FontFont
Bronze: Gephi, Mathieu Bastian / Sébastien Heymann / Mathieu Jacomy
Click on the gallery to check out a selection of this year's award winners and visit informationisbeautifulawards.com for the full list of the Special Award winners
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
