How to Enter

Use Chart.js to create a browser-based dashboard with three or more charts that visualize personal data in interesting ways. Visualize real data that will help you track personal activities, optimize your life, and inspire others. Data could include social activity, entertainment, exercise, eating, or anything else you don’t mind sharing publicly!

Prizes

• iPad mini 16GB for the three best submissions
• Free t-shirts for the first 250 eligible submissions
• The chance to contribute to an awesome GitHub project

Deadline

If you want to optimize your life with a personal dashboard and participate, you’ll need to enter by July 11, 2013.

Happy Visualizing!

1. Tell us a bit about yourself: how did you get into design, and how long have you been doing it?
I think calling myself a ‘designer’ is a bit of a stretch. (Designers nod in unison.) I do ‘design’ my charts, but my background is really in investigating things. I’ve done everything from newspaper reporting and competitive intelligence to political opposition research, private investigations and litigation support. My website — CHARTGIRL.COM — was really born out of a need to understand and explain complicated things I was investigating.

2. In 7 words or less, describe your style.
I guess I hope my charts are: smart, helpful, funny, thought-provoking, interesting and timely.

3. If you could take a seminar with one designer or artist, dead or living, who would that be? Why?
Mark Lombardi. Hands down, no question. I did do Ed Tufte’s seminar a month or so ago and found it fascinating, but my dream would be to bring Mark Lombardi back to life and ask him a million questions. (Lombardi was an artist and researcher who made diagrams of political corruption scandals and the like.)

4. What’s your favorite color? Why?
I don’t have a favorite color. I like stripes.

5. What is the biggest mistake you’ve made in your work and what did you learn from it?
Spending almost four years working at an incredibly depressing place. Steer clear of law firms and other places where people lack a sense of humor and an imagination, or both.

6. What about your biggest achievement? Tell us about the project you are most proud of in your career so far.
I guess having ChartGirl making TIME’s 50 Best Websites of 2013 would be the highlight.

7. Who should we feature in this space next?
Sam Bradd.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself: how did you get into design, and how long have you been doing it?
Lemonly is on a mission to make the world an easier place to understand. We do this through design, specifically infographics, data viz, and UI/UX design. We were founded in August of 2011, so we’re not quite two years old. We’re a small team of 10 located in little Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We may be on the prairie, but we got big ideas and visions for the information design industry.

2. In 7 words or less, describe your style.
Concise, creative, cool.

3. If you could take a seminar with one designer or artist, dead or living, who would that be? Why?
Herb Lubalin. He was brilliant at creating graphics out of type and manipulating letterforms to convey messages. Both type and communicating our message in a clear, concise way is critical to what we do at Lemonly.

4. What’s your favorite color? Why?
Ah yes, the color question. This is an ongoing office debate that changes regularly. Based on our work, we used teal the most in 2012 (we actually aggregated all of our graphics to form a report and the statistics don’t lie). Maybe we like teal because of our logo.

5. What is the biggest mistake you’ve made in your work and what did you learn from it?
Reaching “burnout” as a designer. Your work begins to suffer. It’s very difficult to produce your best work or try new design styles when you’re rushing projects to meet deadlines. The line between productive and burnout can be thin but it is good to remind yourself to walk away and approach your project later with fresh perspective.

6. What about your biggest achievement? Tell us about the project you are most proud of in your career so far.
Looking back at our 2012 with our Lemonly Annual Report was a very rewarding experience. I think too often as creatives we’re always thinking of the next project or looking forward to where we are going without looking back at where we’ve came. Building that report not only brought back the memories of all those past projects but also gave our team a great feeling of accomplishment.

Lemon.ly’s ‘One Sweet Year’ 2012 Annual Report infographic by Lemon.ly.

We’ve definitely had some incoming voicemails or emails from clients that made certain employees jump out of their chairs with excitement. A couple that come to mind right now would be Major League Baseball, Red Mango, Nike and that gigantic entertainment/media empire run by a little, friendly mouse.

7. Who should we feature in this space next?
He doesn’t have a Visual.ly profile, but hopefully he will after this. But Nigel Evan Dennis, the guy who did the Game of Thrones visualization, is incredible. That piece is comprehensive, it is visual, and it tells a very compelling story. Get that dude a Visual.ly profile! [Editor's note: We completely agree and were honored when Nigel agreed to contribute to our blog recently, with a blog post about the making of his Game of Thrones visualization. You can read it here.]

How does your team stack up? Check out the “Top 10″ graphics below.

We also worked closely with the Bleacher Report team to create a “draft risk” interactive graphic, by averaging performance of every first round draft slot since 1980. This allows you to sort the first round of the draft by risk versus numerical order.

NFL Draft Risk infographic by visually.

The challenge has an interesting approach for the final stages. The top few entries will work with local leaders to iterate and implement the application or visualizations they produce. This will help to make sure the entries do the best possible job at addressing the needs of the community, and should help to answer any questions that the entrants have.

There are three phases of the challenge. The ideation phase helps to figure out what the needs of the community are, and potential solutions to address them. The creation phase involves building the tools, and the implementation phase involves putting the tools to use, and refining them as needed.

Judging

Challenge entries will be judged based on the following criteria:

• Thoughtfulness of Utilizing Civic Data
• Quality of Concept
• Analysis of Community Need
• Collaboration with Local Leaders
• Incorporation of Diverse Skill Sets
• User Experience
• Quality of Design
• Ultimate Utility of the Product

Special consideration will be given to entries that incorporate Knight Foundation Soul of the Community data.

Prizes

The prizes have not been announced yet, but past prizes for the Civic Data Challenge have been valued at $100,000 and included:

• Cash
• Conference Passes
• High-Profile Blog Features
• Access to Data Expertise and Consulting Services

2013 Prizes will be announced throughout the Challenge. Prizes will be available for finalists at the end of Creation phase, as well as for overall grand prize winners at the end of the Implementation phase.

The full rules and criteria for entering can be found here.

Visually is thrilled to be helping to judge the challenge, and we hope to see some amazing applications and visualizations produced. So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and get brainstorming!

In a little more than two short years, Visually has become the largest platform for distributing infographics on the web. We are proud to serve our ever-expanding community of information designers, data journalists and web users, and connect data visualization professionals with companies seeking the creative talent for their next data visualization or infographic project.

If you are a Visually fan or simply a fan of infographics and data visualization, we would be honored to have your vote!

The good news is that voting is as easy as 1-2-3 and should take no more than a couple of minutes of your time!

1. Click here to go directly to the page with Web Services and Applications People’s Choice awards.

2. If you already have an account, sign in. If not, you can create a new account or login with Facebook or Twitter to save some time:

3. You will then see all the nominees in the category. We are proud to be in such distinguished company!

After you vote, please help us get the word out by sharing with your family, friends and social networks. Thank you!

1. Tell us a bit about yourself: how did you get into design, and how long have you been doing it?
I was that kid that was always drawing something. I loved trying to redraw pictures from books, and art was definitely my favourite class. In high school, I took a bunch of computer classes, and learned the ropes of Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash (I still love Flash — bad, I know!). It wasn’t until probably my second year of university that I really “got” what design was.

I’ve been balancing my time over the past few years between finishing university and working various freelance design jobs. I got into information design and data vis only a couple of years ago, and I’m very glad that I did! When I’m not working some design magic, I’m usually found knitting, baking or enjoying a cold pint on a patio.

2. In 7 words or less, describe your style.
Go above and beyond, keep it fun.

3. If you could take a seminar with one designer or artist, dead or living, who would that be? Why?
I would love to take a seminar (or could we do lunch?!) with Nicolas Felton. He’s that awesome (and maybe a little crazy) designer who tracks random aspects of his daily life, and then turns that data into beautiful pieces of information design, known as the Feltron Annual Reports. The ways in which he presents the data is quite beautiful and simple. Some of the daily routine-type of stuff that he keeps track of is hilarious; I’d be curious to see how many times he would stop and record something during a lunch hour.

4. What’s your favorite color? Why?
Can you really ask a designer this? Not fair! If I had to choose, I would have to go with turquoise. It’s bright and vibrant, and it reminds me of a beach somewhere tropical. Now that I think about it, my favourites of my own design work usually incorporates some shade of turquoise.

5. What is the biggest mistake you’ve made in your work and what did you learn from it?
I often take on too many projects at once. I get excited at the thought of a new project and I usually find it hard to turn down new work.

6. What about your biggest achievement? Tell us about the project you are most proud of in your career so far.
This isn’t a specific project, but just over a week ago, I finished my final class of university (ahh!) and I will be graduating with a degree in Graphic Design. It involved a lot of great projects, late nights, and enough coffee that I could probably have opened my own Starbucks. I’m super excited to be done, and I’m looking forward to taking on new projects–look out world!

If I were to pick a project that I’m really proud of, I would choose the first graphic I ever worked on with Visual.ly, which was The Patent Wars infographic. It examined the at-the-time patent battle relationships going on between major tech companies. It was a challenging data set to visualize, and it was really amazing to see how viral that graphic went.

Patent Wars infographic by visually.

7. Who should we feature in this space next?
I really like the work of Lemon.ly. I find their quirky illustrations and use of bright colours to be very eye-catching.

I’m in the process of putting together my best design projects from school for our end-of-year showcase. Ping-pong tables make excellent workspaces for cutting, gluing and making a mess.

My at-home desk.

Visually has created a community around data visualization and infographics. We have done our best to nurture this community and help it to thrive. The presentation covers some of what we’ve done to try to help build the ecosystem that supports the community.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself: how did you get into design, and how long have you been doing it?
The first time I ever designed something on a computer was when my mom started her own business in the early 90s. She used to make ads for the newspaper (whaaa?) and I helped her out using ClarisWorks on a Mac Performa IIe. I think I was maybe 12 or 13. It’s just something I’ve always done, sometimes as a job and other times as a hobby, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. These days I’ve moved more into UX design, because my primary motivation is problem solving and user experience is where novel problems in the web and digital arena often arise.

2. In 7 words or less, describe your style.
Malevich and Tschichold. Stuff of my dreams.

3. If you could take a seminar with one designer or artist, dead or living, who would that be? Why?

El Lissitzky. He was working at the intersection of typography, formal abstraction, and architecture. My three favorite design-y things. I deeply appreciate the rigorous theoretical foundation of his work, and I admire the marriage of form and action that took place in Russian art and architecture in the nascent years of the 20th century. So much so, that I have some Constructivist architecture tattooed on my arm.

4. What’s your favorite color? Why?

Wait, is this a date? haha I find this question completely impossible. I guess my favorite color is “leather” and “coffee” and “brass”. And “heavy metal”.

5. What is the biggest mistake you’ve made in your work and what did you learn from it?

I’ve always tried hard to avoid having a boss. It’s rarely a relationship that has worked well for me. However, as I reached a point in my career when people began to work for me, I realized how much I could have learned about managing people if I had ever let myself be managed. But hey, when you’re young you think you know everything!

6. What about your biggest achievement? Tell us about the project you are most proud of in your career so far.

I’m proud of everything that I do at the time that I do it — and I think it’s all junk about six months afterwards (haha). That’s how I keep myself from getting complacent, I guess. The “What Are the Odds” infographic was the piece of work that garnered the most media attention, and it was pretty exciting to reach that many people. But I would be truly proud if I could create something that has a substantial and subversive social impact. I have zero desire to reach 2,000,000 Coca-Cola consumers with my brilliant advertising campaign; I’d rather be part of something like Occupy Design.

7. Who should we feature in this space next?

Viktor Timofejev. He’s not a Visually Marketplace designer, but he has a bunch of pages full of amazing art. I look at his art all the time (here and here).

Editor’s note: We asked Sofya for a photo of her at her workspace… she sent us this. Thanks, Sofya! Now you’ve made us jealous:

1. Tell us a bit about yourself: how did you get into design, and how long have you been doing it?

My route into design was a rather long one. Ever since I was young, I’ve loved the visual arts. Some of my earliest memories are of staring, slack jawed, at the giant paintings that adorn the galleries of Northern England (this is one of my favourites).

I originally studied mathematics, economics and physics before taking a few years off to travel the world. When I returned it was to study history. After completing this and, following a further series of unlikely and absurd events, I founded NeoMam with the very talented Danny Ashton.

I currently manage a 12 strong team of graphic designers, copy writers, researchers and programmers. I also work with a budding data scientist.

2. In 7 words or less, describe your style.

Always attempt to avoid producing a turd.

3. If you could take a seminar with one designer or artist, dead or living, who would that be? Why?

Ernst Haeckel – One of those very rare people that had a very firm grasp on both the arts and sciences; Artist, physician, philosopher and naturalist. His Kuntsformen der Natur sits on my desk and is a constant source of wonder and inspiration.

4. What’s your favorite color? Why?

30FFCE – It makes me thinks of Miami Beach

5. What is the biggest mistake you’ve made in your work and what did you learn from it?

The biggest mistake that I’ve ever made at NeoMam was accidentally switching the columns on an excel sheet. This sheet was then passed along to one of our designers who proceeded to spend three days visualizing the data. Once the mistake was discovered we had to spend another three days fixing it.

I now have someone to double check everything. It’s the best investment I ever made.

6. What about your biggest achievement? Tell us about the project you are most proud of in your career so far.

The graphic I’m most proud of is with is one we recently produced for carloan4u.co.uk, it got mentioned in the Guardian newspaper. It’s not easy task to get a mention from a national newspaper so I was very, very happy.

The Race for the First Driverless Car infographic

7. Who should we feature in this space next?

Anyone from hyperakt.com, they really are the bee’s pyjamas.