I’ve been reading [read as: listening to the audiobook of] The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick the past few days. It is an awesome read (listen) so far. In one section he talks about language and the creation of Morse Code, or more specifically, that the letter “t” was the most used letter in the english language…or was it “e”? Either way that got me thinking about the English language. What letter came in second? Third? How many nouns and adjectives? And so forth. Now I am not the best linguist in the world (specifically struggling with punctuation, spelling, and… well, most of it) but I’m curious. So here is a little glimpse at the breakdown of the second edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary.

Based on the numbers given in 

How many words are there in the English language?

From oxforddictionaries.com

Based on the numbers given in: Traffic Talk: Do semi trucks get fewer speeding tickets than cars? How can cars and trucks share the road more safely? From MLive.com

This is the first project I worked on for Pear Analytics. I set out with not much direction as to what the end result should be. I started by comparing different CMS’s, in a Drupal vs. Joomla/Drupal vs. WordPress way. However, Drupal is not  used as much as other CMS’s and specific data was hard to come by, not to mention trying to collate the information across these three platforms. It could have been done, but not within the time frame we were given. The decision was made to focus on the growth of Drupal over the past few years, which seemed like a more achievable result. After combing through some more Drupal statistics (who uses Drupal, how many Drupal sites are there, how many of those are in Alexa’s top 100 websites, version updates, core updates, Drupal themes, Drupal 7 compared to other versions, etc.), I found that the simplest way (or more so, the most easily understandable way) would be to focus on the increase in the number and type of modules Drupal had to offer. I found that it showed the growth and increasing robustness of the community, since most of the modules are created by users or third party groups/developers. Now, finding out the total number of modules and their corresponding category (administrative, utility, content display, etc.) proved to be the challenge. I ended up using Archive.org, a website and service whose mission is to archive the Internet. More specifically, I used their WayBackMachine to collect the data on Drupal’s module page in years past. This gave me the totals for how many modules were listed in each category by year.

[It should be noted that this did not give me the exact number of total modules each year; since some modules were in multiple categories, they were counted once for each category they belonged to. Also, the module page was not archived on the same date every year or even every month. So I chose a month (July) that had been archived most frequently over the years, or the next closest month, if July was not available.]

Next came organizing the data. Nothing too fancy here. This was a quick process of inputting the data for each year into a Google Docs spreadsheet, adding up the totals, getting all the percentages and counts, and double-checking the results.

Then came trying to represent this visually in a way that everyone would understand quickly, without knowing much, if anything, about Drupal or its modules, and that over the years there has been a significant increase in type and total count of modules. I would love to show you the preliminary sketches, but sadly, my bag that contained my sketchbook, laptop and a myriad of other important things was stolen. So, I cannot show you the sketches, as they are probably in a landfill by now after the thief (or thieves) threw it away, since it had no monetary value to them. Bastards.

Anyway, what I can show you is the first “complete” version of the infographic.

Drupal Modules Infograph v2.1

The first thing I learned after this design was completed was to check the width of the posting area for the intended website before starting your design, so your canvas size in whatever illustration program you are using will match up. This will greatly help you size things much more reasonably. If you are working on a project for the web Viewing the “source” or code of the web site from your internet browser is an easy way to get a rough idea. Look for “width” using the “find on page” command(usually command or control + F). This version was far too long to be readable, and then far too large to easily navigate once enlarged to its full size. This would have resulted in people having to download the infographic to their computers to view it properly, which I feel is an unnecessary step and would most likely result in less views and less sharing. Click on the image, then zoom in and you will see exactly what I’m taling about.

The second thing I learned is a bit less tangible. Infographic design need to be understandable quickly, or you will lose your audience. The first version is understandable…eventually, but you need to study it for too long to do so. I spent way too much time on the design by myself. Without having someone else look at it from time to time, you can lose yourself in the design. It makes sense to you very quickly, but that’s because you designed it. I found that having someone else  look at your design from time to time and asking them, “Does this make sense to you?” (without helping them) or “Tell me what this says to you” was incredibly helpful. Having input from other people helped me complete the second version in one-fourth the time as the first, simply because I mocked up two preliminary designs, asked a couple of people which one made more sense, developed the one they chose, asked again, made some changes per their comments, and BAM! Infographic done. Of course, you need these people to actually be around or within reach of an email or instant message to do this, but I highly suggest it.

The third and fourth things I started to learn on this project was the gradient tool in Adobe Illustrator and myPANTONE. The gradient tool is awesome; it helped give the background more depth. More to come on this, since I am still learning about its functionality. myPANTONE is a small application, downloaded from pantone.com (after you create a free account), which creates palettes that are easily used in Illustrator. The feature I am most in love with is the imagePALETTE builder. You import an image, and, as the name indicates, it builds a palette out of the colors. In this case I used the client’s homepage to get base colors for the palette. A few color tweaks here and there, and the infographic was branded with their site’s exact palette. I highly suggest trying it out. It’s perfect for creating a base palette for your design.

One more thing, Illustrator DOES have a spell check function. Use it! It may mean the difference between delivering an awesome product, and having your client look at you like you never finished 3rd grade. A seriously embarrassing moment.

In the end we went with the design below–the client is happy, we’re happy, and best of all, the infographic makes sense.

Growth of Drupal Modules Final

Infographic courtesy of Duo Consulting.

Fun news part one: I will be spending more time in the coming weeks, months and the rest of my life learning more about design, making designs interactive, organizing data, mining data, (I will be trying my damnedest to learn Python), and trying to turn this into an actual business, with the whole LLC bit and everything that goes with that. Let’s hope this does not turn into a ridiculous headache.

Don’t forget nuclear energy is usually relatively safe. The radiuses below represent the areas in case of a radiological incident. The emergency planning zones (EPZ) represent the radius of impact from a possible radiological incident. While there have been studies around the issue of health risks for populations living near nuclear power plants, this map does not try to represent those. Possibly later I will add that as a layer once I have done more research on the topic. If anyone has done that research I would be happy to utilize that information.

Note: I will update this post with more words tomorrow or the next day. Sorry about the brevity, lack of explanation or links to sources and other supplemental material, they will come shortly.

Jef McClimans  |  March 31, 2011 |  thebizjam.com

Sources

10-mile and 50-mile emergency planning zones: http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/emerg-preparedness/faq.html#11

Sorry, I lost the exact page where I collected the population data: http://www.census.gov/

Plum and ingestion exposure pathways: http://www.co.wayne.ny.us/departments/emermgt/07WGGlossary.pdf

List and locations of nuclear reactors: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/list-power-reactor-units.html

[Click to enlarge.]

Source:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Supplementary Materials: CERCLIS3/WasteLAN Database

Download sources in .xls format 2006 2008

Sites include improperly zoned landfills, municipal wells and wellfeild sites, sites with improper construction or maintenance that held hazardous chemicals, direct runoff, wind-blown dust, tracking of spilled material, and contaminated soils by vehicular traffic from hazardous waste processing sites, ect. Lookup sites near you

Hazardous materials include volatile organic compounds (VOCs), polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs),polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), trichloroethene (TCE), ect. More information

Heath risks from these include the usual Eye, nose, and throat irritation;  headaches, loss of coordination, nausea, damage to liver, kidney, central nervous system. Some are suspected or known to cause cancer in animals and humans. More Information

I found this data set on infochimps.com, a wonderful resource for data sets.

A special thanks to Erwin Erkfitz for some design help. Check out his work here.

To sign up go to their have an invite page and try using one of these codes as an invite code “aboutfoursquare” or “networkeffect” currently space is limited at this point. If neither of those codes work add you email to the “get notified” field and they will send you a code or notification when you can acces the site.

Here is an in depth, and by “in depth” I mean a 30 minute look at Memolane and how it functions.

Thanks Jorel for sending me this.

Tools Used: Google Labs Ngram Viewer

2010 resident population 308,745,538

2000 resident population  281,421,908.

Rate of US population change between 2000 and 2010.

2010 apportionment gains and losses.

2010 Congressional Seats gained and lost.

US popultion growth in the las 100 years.