Alright, here’s a rendition of my own personal info-designer chart:

  • 20% easy access to both sides of the brain
  • 30% curiosity about pretty much everything
  • 10% drawing and writing treated as equals
  • 15% a wee bit of perfectionism
  • 10% tech savvy
  • 15% sense of humor aka sense of proportion/balance

For those of you just tuning in, I’m talking about how Austin described his self-portrait in response to my snippet referencing Michael Surtees’ post about an image from Steven Heller’s book, Nigel Holmes on Information Design, which I probably ought to buy.

Anil Dash noticed the recent popularity of pixel graphs, citing an awful example in the New York Times and a not-as-bad one in Wired Magazine. I also recall this one from Business Week a while back, and another commenter mentioned one at Curbed today. It’ll take some time and trial & error to figure out what kind of data sets works best with the technique. I can appreciate the trend, but the only example I really like is the one from Business Week. Looks like a happy marriage of table and graph.

I like Andy Rutledge’s little essay on quiet structure: “Quiet structure is achieved when you de‚Äìemphasize the structural elements; the containing boxes, structural lines, bullets, structural color elements, etc‚Ķ and bring a rhythmical consistency to the layout.” A good grid is a powerful thing.