David McCandless, founder of popular data visualization website Information is Beautiful, has decided to divvy out a $30,000 cash money dollar pot to the winners of the inaugural Information is Beautiful awards. If you’re not familiar with the site or David McCandless, pop on over to his TED talk here. It’s incredibly inspiring, and had a lot to do with one of my first — and to this day, favorite — posts here on Conspire (Let the Dataset Change the Mindset).
Next, you should check out the awards for two reasons. Firstly, the panel of judges is an all-star lineup, including: legendary musician and visual artist Brian Eno; Museum of Modern Art Senior Curator Paola Antonelli; Editor of brainpickings.org Maria Popova; Kantar’s Creative Director Aziz Cami and, of course, McCandless himself.
But more importantly, the awards provide a great idea of how the world of visualization is evolving. Writes McCandless: “…with much toil and heartache, we managed to boil down each of the six categories to a shortlist – of the best, most representative, most emblematic and most excellent work.”
- Data visualization – A singular visualisation of data or information.
- Infographic – Using multiple data visualisations in service to a theme or story
- Interactive visualization – Any viz where you can dynamically filter or explore the data.
- Data journalism – A combination of text and visualizations in a journalistic format.
- Motion infographic – Moving and animated visualizations along a theme or story.
- Tool or website – Online tools & apps to aid datavizzing.
The official winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on September 27th. Who do you think will take home the prize?