Hello,
I am working for an intergovernmental organization for the protection of the Baltic Sea called Helsinki Commission, also known as HELCOM.
I made this infographic explaining how much is the pollution being reduced in the Baltic Sea and how far are countries from their pollution reduction targets.
The target audience are the representative of each Baltic Sea country – they need to understand how far are countries from their targets.
The format is a printed A3.
It has three parts:
1. Introduction: the problem and the aim of the infographic with a map showing sub basins, the main sub-divisions of the Baltic Sea, and its catchment area, the area in which rivers flow into the Baltic Sea.
2. Bar graphs showing that the pollution is being reduced in the whole Baltic Sea but that the target has not been reached yet.
3. Small multiple bar graphs showing how far are countries from target in each sub basin. The idea is that the user can explore data and draw own conclusions.
The challenges I am facing:
– How to make it more attractive? It looks quite boring but I am afraid of decorating too much and of adding too many colors. Now the focus goes to part 2 which is the most important. That’s why I decided to leave parts 1 and 2 in grey.
– Are the fonts appropriate? Cooper Black and Myriad Pro
– Suggestions for improving the layout? I struggle to fit it into an A3. Is it possible to squeezed even more without having to decrease the size of the fonts even more?
Any other general comments are welcome!
Is the raw data available? I think there are some other interesting challenges that would require experimentation to explore.
Minor ideas:
– I keep misreading the ceiling line as a base line with the bars going up and down, especially for phosphorous. Adding a zero base line may be worth the extra ink.
– I don’t need the numbers above the bars. Adding a +/-10 band around the ceiling is another way to provide a little precision if that is needed.
– The yellow is too bright/saturated compared to the other colors.
– The summary for each sub-basin and source is a binary green/red, but why not make them bars, too. That is, add an 8th basin bar for the weighted average within a source and an addition source chart for the weighted average across all sources.
– The bars on the left do look a bit dull. Maybe they should get the same coloring treatment (red in this case), or some other color. I don’t mind gray in general but you’re also using gray as a background color (for HELCOM sources).
– You might split each of the left bar charts into three: total, HELCOM, non-HELCOM.
Possible errors:
– The first Nitrogen bar on the left has a date range of 1997-2003 but the same Phosphorous bar is labeled 1997-2007. The text above also says 1997-2003.
– The Nitrogen/Poland/Gulf of Finland bar is above the ceiling but is green.
Major ideas:
– While it’s often good to normalize the values, I feel like the lack of absolute values (except in the aggregate bars) would hamper my ability to draw conclusions from the graphic. That is, Latvia looks much worse than Sweden, but if Latvia is a much smaller absolute contribution I should be more concerned about Sweden. Of course, showing absolute values only makes the graphic more complex, and you have to draw the line somewhere. However, it would interesting to try representations that show the absolute values one way (length or position) and the relative values another way (color).
– The other thing I’m wondering about as a reader is the change over time. The arrows give a rough indication, which may be enough. If you eliminate the labels you may be able to plot the before level against the bar. Or a grid of line graphs showing time on the X.
Thanks Gregg for the excellent comments and for spotting the mistakes!
I am afraid I am not able to share the raw data yet.
Interesting comment about the base line. I will try it and add a 0 to see how it looks like.
The labels in bars are necessary and I agree with you about the absolute values. Part 1 was previously another graph explaining exactly that but it must be removed because of some disagreements with the data. I will keep experimenting.
Part 1 is definitely boring as hell in terms of colors. I will try something more appealing.
Manuel Frias
perhaps instead of the “1”, “2”, you could use an appropriate icon?
Thanks Fredda! I will try that!