Visualization – Kristen Baumlier

Tag: Visualization

Occupy Design – Building a Visual Language for the 99 Percent

Posted on November 28, 2011November 28, 2011 by Kbaumlier

Occupy Design is a grassroots project that connects designers with demonstrators in the Occupy Together movement. The goal of the project is to create freely available visual graphics around a common graphic language to unite the 99%. A common set of used universal icons, logistical signs, and infographics can help support the communication of the movement’s messages and the data surrounding them across the world.

The Occupy Design site has a gallery of existing designs, a how-to guide for demonstrators, a graphic toolkit for designer who want to contribute graphics for the project and a interactive form for the community to suggest ideas for designers.

The project was created in less than 24 hours in October by a team of designers, programmers, artists, and demonstrators in San Francisco as part of three concurrent creative hackathons across the country to support Occupy Together. During the planning process, the team spoke with demonstrators who described their needs. The three main areas of the project are infographic protest signs, logistical signs, and visual icons around social justice themes. The focus on infographics is to support bringing graphic representation of statistical evidence to the front and center on the ground – rather than just on computer screens.

Currently the magazine/website GOOD has partnered with Occupy Design to encourage designers to create a design, icon, or infographic that shares the unifying spirit of the Occupy movement. Individuals and organizations can participate.

All submitted designs will be voted on by the online community. $750 from the GOOD Fund will be used to support Occupy Design to print and distribute the winning design, and the winner will receive their design printed on a vinyl weatherproof sign, several 11×17 prints, and get an Occupy Design t-shirt.

In addition, you can download the Occupy Design Design Toolkit which includes digital templates, logos, and fonts.

Are you a designer and part of the 99%? Take some time today and get working on a graphic for Occupy Design today.

Image Source:
Occupy Design

Links:

Occupy Guide for Designers

Occupy Design

Call to Design: The GOOD + Occupy Design Challenge

Occupy Together

A View from Inside a Flower: Rectified Flowers

Posted on November 23, 2011November 23, 2011 by Kbaumlier

Image rectification is a transformation process where technology is used to combine two or more images into one larger image. Using mapped coordinates and math equations – the distortion in an image can be transformed and images can be “stitched” together. Images taken from different perspectives or viewpoints can be made into one larger image.

In 2010, media artists Golan Levin and Kyle McDonald were reading about domain shifting of polar and Cartesian geometries, and noticed that flowers make interesting subjects for this transformation.

Using Levin’s open-source panoramic-imaging software that he created with some flower photographs from Flickr, they produced “flower panoramas.”

The images were made from Flickr images, and the software is available as free Open Source code. The software was made with Processing and the the ControlP5 library.

The images created are visualizations of what a person would see from inside a flower.

The resulting images sometimes look like flowers from outer space or a view of a flower as if we are a small insect inside.

Links:

Rectified Flower Images on Flickr

Rectified Flowers page and Software Download

Golan Levin

Kyle McDonald

Money Talks? The Occupy George Project

Posted on November 9, 2011November 9, 2011 by Kbaumlier

Ever gotten a dollar bill that someone wrote their name on or stamped a message on? Have you ever “defaced” a dollar bill?

In support of the Occupy Wall Street protests, two men from San Francisco who have backgrounds in design and advertising created Occupy George , 5 graphic stamp designs that can be put on $1 bills. The goal is to inform others with facts and information through the exchange of currency.

Stamped in red ink, the stamps overlay statistics and charts over the dollar bill to indicate how America’s wealthiest 1% dominate the country’s financial power. The designs range from a graph indicating average worker pay versus average CEO pay, a design that shows the amount of income growth over the last century, and also a simple design that states, “Future Property of the 1%” which is meant to be stamped on George Washington’s face.

For about a week, Occupy George supporters have been working around the clock to create the new Occupy George bills. The printed Occupy George bills then get exchanged at the Occupy Wall Street site for a fresh set of plain bills. The Occupy George encourages others to download the templates or to buy the stamps.

LINKS:

http://www.occupygeorge.com/

Visualizations of Human Activity on Earth

Posted on November 4, 2011November 4, 2011 by Kbaumlier

Anthropogenic landscapes are areas of the Earth’s surface where the presence of humans is changing the ecological patterns of the land. We affect the earth to serve our needs for food, fuel, fiber, timber, shelter, trade and recreation.

Globaïa is an organization whose mission is to foster a consistent and informed participation of citizens in environmental issues by providing visualization information of today’s world and its likely future. The research group generates visual images that indicate the hotspots of human activity.

Their recent project marks the paths of human activity including roadways, railways, internet cables, airway traffic, electricity lines, and underwater data cables. The information is based on data from US government agencies.

The maps are not to scale since wires and cables are not seen in space – but they provide a visual glimpse of the increase of human activity. The images have a unique presence since they do not have labels, a legend, or text.

The image above illustrates the Global Transportation System.
Cities are yellow; roads are green ; ships are blue ; and airlines are white.

Links:

View the maps at http://globaia.org/en/anthropocene/#Maps

About Globaia