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Infographics, pictographs, and data visualization for marketing

April 20th, 2010

There are a lot of exciting things happening in the infographics world.  In a post-Microsoft world you are going to need to know how to do cool things with graphs and charts in marketing research presentations.

Here are some cool examples of infographics:

Cool Infographics, cool links

In my previous post I talked about how Adobe Illustrator is the best graphics design program out there for designing cool graphs.  These types of images can communicate powerful messages.  They are also in demand (Internet meme–not PG).  Illustrator is great at creating images in .jpg, .tiff, or .png format, but those images aren’t animated and they’re not interactive online.

I really like the Lynda.com Tutorials & training: Illustrator CS4 One-on-One: Mastery with Deke McClelland Chapter 28: Graphs and Pictographs (free one day pass).  Sorry that we didn’t get through all of it in class, but try it on your own with the one day pass if you have time outside of class.  Your ability to make cool graphs will take practice, but it will also separate you from the rest of the pack.  You can revisit Illustrator ‘s graph tool in the graph next week if you’d like.

My sorry first attempt:

satisfaction

Making charts and graphs for print documents or static images is one things, but there are a lot of new tools that you can use to publish data online.

I reviewed this Noupe post on Interactive Flash Graphs and Charts and this Six Revisions post on JavaScript Data Visualization libraries.

Flash uses the ActionScript language, and if you are an ActionScript ninja it’s possible to do amazing things with programs like Adobe Flash CS5.  There are programs/services designed to help you make interactive charts online with Flash, but I think that the best ones require upfront fees.  Here are some of my thoughts:

  • It also looks like that for $149 Swiff Chart would let you do some cool things pretty quickly.
  • Of the free flash chart generators I was able to create a Fusion Chart on my hosted site.  Tumblr lets you upload files at their static file uploader, but I wouldn’t risk uploading .swf and .xml files to tumblr and getting your account banned.
  • It looks like XML/SWF Charts have very cool designs, but they aren’t very generic.
  • I gave Rich Chart Live my email address and got access to their web-based chart editor (see below).  Saving my work was a little tricky, but I guess you get what you pay for.  The chart is not that nice, but at least it gives you an idea of what Flash can do.

marketing research google chart

The JavaScript library available at Highcharts is very cool, it’s free, and it will show up on your iPhone.  It does require some understanding of JavaScript libraries, html, and css.  I can help you get some of these charts on your Tumblr blog, but I’m out of time to customize a demo, but I can show you how I did this.

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