Should I Text Him?

You met at a party or went on a date, exchanged numbers… and nothing. Or you have a secret crush who doesn’t know you exist. In all cases, texting feels like an easy and safe way to make contact. But is it really a good idea? Text messaging makes the bold overture simpler, but adds layers of unknowns (Did he get my sarcasm?) and the stress of ill-conceived split-second responses (I can’t believe I just wrote that!) Use this helpful decision tree as a guide (but don’t necessarily take it seriously!). And always remember: friends don’t let friends drunk-text.

Should I Text Him? Flowchart infographic by beccaclason.

How Facebook Affects You and Your Relationships

A social network flirtation with a co-worker is going well. You cleverly emphasize your subtle subtext with a daring emoticon… then you realize your mom “liked” it. Facebook is a great way to find old friends, and old flames, but is it really helping people build successful relationships? And how does it influence your self-confidence and self-esteem (both important factors when it comes to love and sex)?

How Does Facebook Affect Your Relationships? infographic

Gamers Get Girls

Matchmaking websites with compatibility algorithms are connecting thousands of hopeful singles. Online gaming sites with awesome graphics are connecting thousands of level 45 battle mages. While the dating sites boast focused singles seeking mates, the gaming sites have a whole lot more users (World of Warcraft has about 12 million users to eHarmony’s 1 million) who all have one very important thing in common: the game. If you’re skeptical, chew on this startling statistic: 74.7% of WoW players are dating someone else who plays.

Gamers Get Girls infographic by bobbybernethy.

Strangest Sex Laws

We’ve all heard about them – bizarre draconian laws that hearken back to a time when sex was feared and reviled. In most cases, the sex laws from the good old days are no longer enforced. They exist simply as vestiges of a quainter, simpler era. But in some cases, in some places, these laws still stand. Prepare to be amazed, disgusted, and shocked. You may even blush.

Strange Sex Laws infographic

Should I Go Out With This Guy?

For many hopeful women, deciding whether or not to go on an actual date with an online acquaintance is an exercise in both terror and titillation: the excitement of the unknown; the possibility that he’s a serial-killer; the hope for a love connection; the obsession over every zit; and the late-night, red-eyed review of your own Photoshopped profile picture (you didn’t even look like that in college). Don’t fret, simply consult this helpful decision tree for the single girl.

Should I go out with this guy? A single girl’s guide to online dating. infographic by joannachao.

Online Stalking: How to Google Your Way Out of Love

If there’s one thing Google is good for, it’s learning a whole lot about people you barely know. The Internet’s “paper” trail can be great, if your love interest is an accomplished academic with a history of fancy publications and no embarrassing social network accounts. Or, it can be terrible, if your love interest is active on LiveJournal, writes fan fiction, and considers herself Team Edward.

Online Stalking: How to Google Your Way Out of Love infographic by Cracked.

The STD Heat Map

Any discussion of love and sex in 2013 should include some mention of safety. After all, this isn’t 1971. Consider this overview of the state of STDs in America as a sex-ed style reminder about responsibility, lest any of you get carried away. Be careful out there, especially if you’re in Hawaii.

STD Heat Map infographic

The Wedding Planning Checklist

So you met a girl on World of Warcraft, Google stalked her, text messaged, Facebooked, dated, and you’re ready for the next step. Congratulations! When’s the wedding? Weddings sound charming and quaint. They evoke images of flitting butterflies, soft rose petals, and the light tinkle of champagne flutes. In real life, weddings are some of the most stressful events imaginable. When it comes time to plan yours, the learning curve can be steep and the mistakes cliff precipitous. There are at least a million wedding websites that offer recommendations and checklists, apps and registries. The sheer volume of tips, tricks, and ultimate guides is enough to turn a frenetic planner apoplectic. Avoid the dark side of the big bad wedding obsessed Internet and stick with a simple and straight-forward checklist infographic, like the one below.

99 Problems But the Bride Ain’t One, Wedding Planning Checklist infographic

Anni Murray is a writer, editor, multimedia artist, amateur mycologist, and biology student. She is currently working on Prism, a speculative science fiction story cycle. All opinions expressed in this article are her own. Follow her on Twitter.

Why? For one, many TV shows have twisty plots or complicated relationships that just beg to be laid out in a beautiful design. Since television is visual by its very nature, the visual aspects of those infographics are already there — and in many cases, the fans would appreciate them for that alone. But most importantly, let’s not forget that designers and data visualization professionals are people too — and like most of us, they have their favorite TV shows. When you create an infographic about something you enjoy, love or even obsess about, you will design not only with knowledge, but with heart as well.

Here are nine such visualizations.

1. A Graphic Tribute to Game of Thrones

Just in time for the much-anticipated Season 3 premiere, Nigel Evan Dennis brings us this stunning interactive visualization that will tell you pretty much everything you want to know about the show’s characters – without giving away the saucy plot lines (you should watch the show to see those for yourself — and read the books, if you truly want to understand everything that’s going on). Each character is illustrated in a minimalist – but very true to life – design and classified according to their house and faith, and there is an interactive timeline (shown above) for the show’s fans to peruse. (Click on the image below to launch the interactive.)

A Graphic Tribute To ‘Game Of Thrones’ infographic

2. The Supernatural Sprawl of True Blood

True Blood began as a love story between a vampire and a human telepath, with a bit of shifter sprinkled in. Then, with each new episode, more supernatural beings came into the mix: werewolves, werepanthers, demons, witches, mediums, ghosts… By Season 5, even the truest of Truebies could have easily lost count.

This visualization, aptly named The Supernatural Sprawl of True Blood, breaks down what type of creatures appeared in each single episode during the show’s first five seasons.

The Supernatural Sprawl of True Blood infographic by visually.

3.Lostalgic

Santiago Ortiz is one of the data vis community’s most respected professionals. His amazing work includes Pleiades, which visualizes Twitter communities, and the 7 sets Venn Diagram: an interactive visualization of seven colors, mixed to create 128 combinations.

But most impressive — particularly to fans of the cult TV show LOST — is his Lostalgic: an interactive visualization of the script of LOST in its entirety; every single character, episode, even word. The visualization has several functionalities, including a matrix of characters (sized based on their lines in a particular episode), a graph that maps out character relationships and even a “reenactment” option that will take you through the script, line by line. There is so much to do and explore here, LOST fans can get lost in this interactive for hours.

4. Walking Dead Zombie Kills

Even those of us who don’t watch the Walking Dead know that this show is about zombies — and killings. The infographic below visualizes zombie kills — very tastefully, too.

Walking Dead Zombie Kills infographic by cobradave.

5. Vampire Diaries: Surviving Death

The Vampire Diaries has a faithful following, overwhelmingly among the female demographic (especially teenagers and their moms). Luckily, infographic designer Michelle Calderon is a fan and created this visualization in the weeks leading up to the Season 4 premiere (the season is already under way).

Vampire Diaries: Surviving Death infographic by michelleink88.

6. Dexter’s Victims

Watching Dexter isn’t recommended if blood makes you squeamish. The killings are many, the blood is free-flowing. The infographic below, visualizing Dexter’s victims during the show’s first five seasons, should give you a pretty good idea of just how gory things can get:

Dexter’s Victims infographic by Dehahs.

7. Breaking Bad Periodic Table

“Periodic table” visualizations — other than the one created by Dmitri Mendeleev — are rarely successful and often downright cheesy. Hardly any data other than that in the Periodic Table of the Elements lends itself to a periodic table visualization. That is, unless you’re looking at the Periodic Table of Breaking Bad characters. It’s only fitting!

Breaking Bad Periodic table infographic

8. Mad Drinkers

What do the men (and women) of Mad Men do? Why, they drink. The Mad Drinkers interactive visualization captures the spirit of the show perfectly:

Mad Drinkers infographic

9. Relationships in Gossip Girl

Finally, one just for fun. Remember Gossip Girl? If you never watched that show, here’s how it goes down: not much happens over the course of six seasons, other than every single one of the main characters dating everyone else. The infographic below captures that perfectly, with just the appropriate amount of simplicity:

Relationships in Gossip Girl infographic

Aleks Todorova is the editorial director at Visual.ly. The Vampire Diaries is her favorite TV show – and she is not ashamed to admit it. She is often guilty of talking about it on Twitter, too.

Twitter Throwdown by Ernesto Oliviares takes a look at some of the most popular ones.

Throwdown Between Official and Fake Twitter Accounts of the Famous infographic by ernestoolivares.

The problem is, many of those explode into the Twitterverse and sizzle out fairly quickly. @AngiesRightLeg had more than 30,000 followers at one point — it is now closed. It takes effort, time and dedication to maintain such an account. Even @PaulRyanGosling, run by five women, has not been updated since February.

It was through such a Twitter account and Facebook page that we found Eagerpies.com — a satirical take on one of the most commonly used data visualization tools, pie charts.

Its name was inspired by Robert Kosara’s blog and online identity, eagereyes. Robert had this to say about the new blog:

“I’m flattered that somebody went to all that trouble to make a spoof version of my website. It looks quite similar, and the logo is very cleverly based on mine (with some tastefully added pie charts). Whoever did this clearly has some design skills (or at least is good with photoshop).

I hope that these Twitter accounts and the eagerpies website will stay active beyond April 1. We can certainly use some lighthearted commentary between all the serious discussions.”

Obviously an April Fools’ Day joke, the blog made quite a splash in the data vis community:

In any community, satire is a healthy thing. It shows the ability to self criticize that, at the most basic level, helps to keep people responsible and honest. At a deeper level it stems from a background rooted in science. Testing and evaluating everything is healthy in the long term.

We, too, hope that all of these accounts continue to produce satirical content. They help lighten the mood and build the community, and they certainly help keep the business of visualizing data fun.

 
Drew Skau is Visualization Architect at Visual.ly and a PhD Computer Science Visualization student at UNCC with an undergraduate degree in Architecture. You can follow him on twitter @SeeingStructure

Visual.ly had a blast at SXSW this year, and we thought we’d bring you back to the party with some highlights of our visit.

Below are just a few of our photos. Did you capture any memorable moments yourself? Go ahead and share them with us via the comments below! And make sure to follow more Visually photos from @abreckler on Instagram.

At the Speakeasy

w/ the band "Wilder Lee"

With a Fake Cat on the corner

With the Holographic 3M Lady

At the Bing Party

At the @Visually Gallery at the AMOA-Arthouse at the Jones Center

At the Party at the AMOA-Arthouse at the Jones Center

Outside the recess arcade bar

Food trucks at East Side King at SXSW

At the @Visually booth giving out #visualhappiness

At the Postit booth

Picture the future...

At the @Visually booth, talking to clients

With the friendly dutch girl at the @visually booth

For all of you, we have a solution: a visual guide for lunch breaks, coffee breaks, and prolonged trips to the bathroom with your iPad. These are the times most likely to contain can’t-miss action, so study them, print them out and put them on your desk.

Before We Begin…
Be prepared! Download the NCAA March Madness Live app on your smartphone or tablet for discrete game-watching under the conference room table. Also, scout out the nearest TV, either in your office or at the nearest bar. Should a game get interesting, you’ll want to get in front of a screen in less than two minutes.

March Madness Coffee Break Planner infographic by anibalinfographics.

So pull up a seat and revisit the films of 2012 that made you laugh, inspired tears and evoked thrill. Fall in love again with familiar faces, but take note of how even after 85 years, the names behind the greatest films of the year can be as fresh as their creations. Experience this year’s Oscars, and the history that led up to it.

The Oscars 2013 Yearbook infographic by anibalinfographics.