We love the illustrations The New York Times creates to accompany some of their articles. Oftentimes they are infographically dense without being cluttered, readily comprehensible without being too compromisingly simplistic, visually gorgeous without being unnecessarily flashy. For someone commonly tasked to distill fantastically complex information for laymen clients who might consider interpreting plans and schematic diagrams akin to deciphering ancient, dead languages, these illustrations always provide important lessons for creating a successful graphic presentation. There is much to learn (or emulate).
We're huge fans, in other words, collecting them ravenously as though we were lunatic orchidophiles or fanatic philatelists, and hoping all the while that they will be collated and published in a volume, which will be ten times better than anything Edward Tufte puts out, of course, though perhaps similarly overpriced, in which case, if you have your own collection, you should now create a Flickr set for it, such as the one we have recently created.
You'll find there, among others, the following graphic summarizing the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Rapanos v. United States, a dizzyingly complex case (to us, at least) rendered penetrable.
And also this more recent graphic listing five proposals to combat global warming on a gargantuan scale, all neatly and beautifully presented in 800x1155 pixels. It makes you feel as though you no longer need to read New Scientist for further research, although we wouldn't recommend you stop reading the venerable periodical.
One more? How about this on the migrating barrier islands of North Carolina?
Quite clinical and somber in its presentation of the data, and yet it's always a source of endless hilarity here on Pruned. Can you spot the hilarity?
