Ries's BALT 318 Blog

This week I will be explaining the importance of focus in infographics and I will also start thinking about a few potential clients that I think I would be interested in creating infographics for.  But first, I would like to provide a solution to an issue that I have had with my previous blog posts, and one that you guys could be experiencing when creating your own blog posts as well.  I have had difficulties getting clear images placed in the blog.  A simple solution to this is just converting the graphic into a PDF and then posting a link to it.  To demonstrate the difference, I have posted a link to the infographic that I created last week, and the graphic is much clearer as you can see it in the original size.  Click here to see the infographic! We have talked about the best practices and how to simplify infographics, but not we are going to emphasize the importance of focus.  Infographics are supposed to relay information or data in a fast an...

Last week I talked about dashboards and Tableau, an incredibly helpful software for creating dashboards.  I still need a bit more practice using Tableau before I can blog about it so stay tuned for that post later on! This week, I will be going back to infographics and reviewing some platforms that are commonly used to create them.  I will be creating two infographics, both using the same bulk of information, both with the same message trying to be relayed.  One will be created in Piktochart and the other in Microsoft Powerpoint.  I have chosen to create these infographics based on a topic that I am currently interested in and have been reading a lot about lately, globalization.  My ultimate goal this week is to inform you of the benefits and downsides of each both Piktochart and Powerpoint so you know which one will be most useful when you go to create your very own infographic. Before I get started with that, I want to touch on the importance of ...

So far we have covered the basics of creating an infographic with Canva as well as a dashboard using Tableau.  I did not emphasize it very much last week but Tableau is a great platform for creating dashboards. This week, I watched David McCandless's TED Talk, "The Beauty of Data Visualization."  For starters, McCandless mentioned something in this video that really got me thinking about something I have been noticing for the past couple of weeks now.  He said, "data is the new oil," and I found this quite interesting.  Oil was and still is one of the most important goods that everyone wants and everyone needs, and only a few had.  But, this is as true anymore.  Now, people need data, information, and technology, and this is what will be the characteristic of a developed nation in the coming years.  Oil prices will no longer be one of the most talked about topics in the news, but rather it will be the price of data and who can think of the most innov...

Last week, I created my first infographic and let's just say I have learned a lot since then.  I stated last week that my infographic did not have enough data in it, so this week I have really focused on the best ways to present data in a professional, understandable manner. I would like to begin by first clarifying the difference between an infographic and a dashboard, as I was confused by this when I first started.  "Infographics tell a premeditated story to guide the audience to conclusions (subjective).  Data visualizations or dashboards let the audience draw their own conclusions (objective)," (Chan, 2017).  Dashboards are meant to inform while infographics are meant to persuade.  This difference is important to understand before creating either type of graphic. I watched a very informative video on data visualization and the best practices to use and also avoid when creating a dashboard.  The video defines a dashboard as a visual di...