40 Useful and Creative Infographics

May 10 2009 by Jacob Gube | 86 Comments

Information graphics (or infographics) are graphical depictions of data and information. By presenting information in a compact and creative approach, infographics are able to quickly convey knowledge and engage its viewers.

In this collection, you’ll find forty beautiful and educational infographics, displaying the uncommon spectacle of "art meets science".

1. Coffee Drinks Illustrated

The proportion of ingredients for popular coffee drinks and their pronunciation keys.

2. Piggy Trouble

This infographic showcases the history of the Swine Flu, starting from 1976.

3. Best selling movies are not the most pirated ones

4. History Lesson: The Story of Beer

5. The Best Beer in America

The top breweries and beers in the U.S.

6. Making Sense of the Financial Mess: The Global Financial Crisis

7. 389 Years Ago

A rundown of the historic events in African-American culture.

8. Burning Fuel: The Average Car vs. The Average Human

9. Our Favorite Drugs

10. On Driving: Automobile History

11. TheGlobalWarming Infographic

An illustrated guide at how the Global Warming phenomenon works.

12. Periodic Table of Typefaces

13. SSSMOKIN! The Global Tobacco Trade

A packed visual piece on tobacco chemicals and tobacco trade worldwide.

14. Choose Your Weapon: The Global Arms Trade

15. Breakdown of Average Student Budget

16. Who’s Buying That?

A graphical representation of consumer spending across the globe.

17. Visualizing the US and China Trade Relations

18. Get to Know Your Street Vendors

The types of street vendors you may encounter in urban cities of the U.S.

19. Where we live

The distribution of population in the U.S.

20. Who’s Coming to America?

The top nationalities that immigrate to the U.S.

21. Global Internet Traffic Flow Map

An infographic on internet information flow around the world.

22. Classifying Experiences

This is in PDF format. An informative graphical piece on User Experience (UX).

23. Black Hawk Down

An illustrated guide to the events that happened in Somalia in 1993 when a U.S. helicopter was shot down by rebels.

24. A Year in Iraq

A visualization of fatalities related to the War in Iraq.

25. Glass Half Empty: The Coming Water Wars

An infographic on the global water shortage crisis.

26. The Magic Bean Shop & The Fries That Bind Us

A graphical representation of how Star Bucks and Mcdonald’s are proliferating across the globe.

27. Cover Drive

An informative piece on insurance.

28. What’s in the Customer’s Mailstream?

This is a PDF file, infographic on page 4. This piece shows a breakdown of what people get in the mail.

29. Flickr User Model

Networking connection of users on Flickr.

30. Disney World’s Huge Footprint

The cost in resources of Disney World operations.

31. Evolution of the Household – 1950′s to Present

32. The Pyramid of Internet Piracy

This is a PDF file. A piece on the structure of the people participating in internet piracy.

33. Making Sense of the Financial Mess: Where Did All The Money Go?

An illustrated guide on how the financial crisis started.

34. Consumers’ Savings Behaviors

35. A Visual Guide to Pissing Off The Financial World

An infographic on the history of AIG.

36. Anatomy of an Energy-Efficient Home

37. A Visual Guide to Inflation

38. Web Trend Map 4

A graphical representation of the top 50 most influential websites.

39. Employment-Based Immigration Chart

A visual guide on how to immigrate to the U.S. based on employment.

40. Where to Cut

Consumer spending trends juxtaposed with Indian consumers.

Resources on infographics

Information graphics – Wikipedia
Cool Infographics – A weblog in infographics
GOOD – Good is a magazine that often presents creative infographics.
Flickr Diagram Diaries group – a group on diagrams.
FlowingData – A site dedicated to the presentation of data

86 Comments

Ezra Sandoval

May 11th, 2009

These are great. I really enjoyed the variety and creative approach to the info graphics. It’s rare that I have to do anything like this, but the next time I do I’m going to definitely use some of these for inspiration.

Great post.

Sita

May 11th, 2009

really useful reference, thanks!

112mirabela

May 11th, 2009

This is a very nice and inspiring collection of infographics. Thank you. :)

Andrea Olivato

May 11th, 2009

Really nice one… Periodic typeface table is great :)

RAJ

May 11th, 2009

27. Cover Drive

An illustrated information piece on car insurance coverage in the U.S.

hiii thnx for posting my work here, but the topic is nt abt car insurance as mentioned in the post…
its abt an online survey on insurance
thnx :)

Matt

May 11th, 2009

Nice post, thanks for sharing! Good to see creative displays of data! As a note for some, on image 12, when you download the image via directly clicking it saves it as “Periodic_Table_of_Typefaces_large.jpg.jpg” and needs the extra .jpg stripped off in order to be viewed. Doing Save Picture As / Save Image As works fine.

Callum Chapman

May 11th, 2009

I love the illustrated coffee drinks! I’m forever looking at menus in cafés and thinking, how the hell do you pronounce that? So I always go for something I can say! Starbucks is the worse, they’re menu changes every time I go, but their drinks are so nice!

I have the periodic table of typefaces on my wall :)

Niels

May 11th, 2009

Very nice infographics! Thanks!

dr/roné/di/kristu

May 11th, 2009

Thanks for this compilation of wonderful eye catchers.

Kudos, I really appreciate it. :)

kixvix

May 11th, 2009

Cool! School textbooks should have this kind of infographics from now on. They make learning more fun (and easy!)

Thanks for the list. Cheers!

Tabiji

May 11th, 2009

Creative but useless to the average person.

jtj

May 11th, 2009

Very Creative and Inspirational… I love the way that information can be turned into art…

Ukwelii

May 11th, 2009

This is great collection. Excellent stuff. Stumbled for sure.

Thanks for sharing!

Loren

May 11th, 2009

thanks for sharing! these are a great resource for pretty much everyone!

Tobbi

May 11th, 2009

Wow, really great works

Ron Creel

May 11th, 2009

This is an excellent collection of what I consider InfoPorn. For lazy readers, such as myself, this is a great way to present useful information and show relationships.

See also: http://www.yourwritingdept.com/blog/?p=339 Infoporn: Presenting raw data with visually stimulating graphs.

Thanks,
Ron

Janko

May 11th, 2009

wow, what a great collection, nice idea to make such roundup!

Kort

May 11th, 2009

Really great collection here, I could spend hours!

Anthony Latona

May 11th, 2009

These are all excellent! I have to bookmark and come back a few time to get to all of them. Very cool information presented in very creative ways. Great post!

Jim Kast-Keat

May 11th, 2009

Love it! Great collection!

Sapnai

May 11th, 2009

Wow! Great! This page now is in my bookmarks :) Thanks.

Kris

May 11th, 2009

this is a great colection,also visit this—

http://icarograf.deviantart.com/gallery/#Infographic-F1

http://icarograf.deviantart.com/gallery/#Infographic-Micelanius

http://icarograf.deviantart.com/gallery/#Infographic-Sports

Ryan

May 11th, 2009

I love this stuff, thanks for collecting and sharing them.

squarerhino

May 11th, 2009

not sure what it is about this type of art, but it calms my soul

Jeff

May 12th, 2009

On Driving: Automobile History -> i just like to ask what software / image editing is used to make those boxes..

gb

May 13th, 2009

Great collection! I like 1.Coffee Drinks Illustrated.
Thanks!

dr/roné/di/kristu

May 13th, 2009

Back again to re-thank for your helpful links as well! Just stumbled upon after goign through my print edition of this posting.

Sneh

May 13th, 2009

Awesome Roundup! I love Infographics …. especially the ones that come in food magazines. They review a new place and showcase a centerfold of hand drawn map of that place with visual pointers “Wine Glasses for Wineries”, “Forks & spoons for Cafes”, “Ornate French Number Signs for Bed & Breakfasts” so on and so forth …. :-)

Ryan

May 14th, 2009

Does anyone know if they make any of these into posters?

Evan MacDonald

May 17th, 2009

This is great! Some seem to be interesting only for the information displayed. some only seem to be interesting in the way it’s displayed, some are great on both accounts!

Ryan Glover

May 17th, 2009

I wish you could get some of these as prints, especially the coffee one.

svario

May 21st, 2009

if u really like this kind of stuff… well you really don’t want miss this.Is a laboratory of the Polytechnic of Milan, which produces stunning infographics, visualmaps and infovis:

http://www.densitydesign.org

check also their flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/densitydesign/

and try this great interactive infovisualization:
http://madrid.citymurmur.org/

gamesfreak

May 21st, 2009

this is awesome!! what info graphics!! what illustrations! mind blowing! brilliant detailing!

Vahid

May 27th, 2009

Thanks! Cool pics!! Very good Visual Thinking samples.

Daniel Hertzberg

May 28th, 2009

Very inspiring. Thanks so much for grouping these all together. If only Starbucks made that coffee graphic earlier…

Edo

June 1st, 2009

Very Nice!

Brad

June 4th, 2009

Anything Good Magazine puts out is amazing.

Paul Horn

June 4th, 2009

Hey thanks! I appreciate the inclusion but compared to the other 39 examples — I’m not worthy!

Some of these are head-exploders. In a good way.

Mark Alan Effinger

June 7th, 2009

Brilliant!

We’ve been fortunate to spend some time with Http://www.Xplane.com. It’s great to see many of Chairman Dave Gray’s concepts realized in these infographics.

Add http://www.Lilipip.com and http://www.CommonCraft.com, and you’re on a visually dynamite roll. A Pacific Northwest Roll at that (sounds very, uh, sushi, don’t it?)

Thanks for the phenomenal resource, Jacob!

Mark Alan Effinger

June 7th, 2009

Brilliant!

We’ve been fortunate to spend some time with http://www.Xplane.com. It’s great to see many of Chairman Dave Gray’s concepts realized in these infographics.

Add http://www.Lilipip.com and http://www.CommonCraft.com, and you’re on a visually dynamite roll. A Pacific Northwest Roll at that (sounds very, uh, sushi, don’t it?)

Thanks for the phenomenal resource, Jacob!
Best,
Mark Alan Effinger
http://www.RichContent.tv/search

Vardai

January 19th, 2010

Amazing collection ! Thanks for hard work to get these in one place.

Keith

January 25th, 2010

I love the beer design, great works!

Anders

April 15th, 2010

Strange. I though most of these did not fit the description “By presenting information in a compact approach, infographics are able to quickly convey knowledge…”. The coffee one (no. 1) was pretty quick to convey information, but the other ones? For example, the “Who’s coming to America” (no. 20): What does the graphic do? The bars there doesn’t help at all to compare the countries without looking at the numbers on the bar. As far as I can tell, the coutries aren’t ranked in any other way. And why are the “other countries” not divided into bars like the rest; it stretches over four bars in width with no space? Also, the bars leaves out much of the information that’s listed next to the flags. A good designed table would much quicker convery this information and make comparising easier. And there are also a number of graphs that could convey the same information much better.

So, artistic and creative? Yes, maybe. But conveying information quickly in a compact way? Not so much. In my opinion.

Claudio

June 2nd, 2010

Is the 37th a “Creative Infographic”? Ufff….

Dr. Jochen L. Leidner

June 14th, 2010

Most of these are very educational, and indeed well-presented. One criticism I’d like to throw into the discussion is that a lot of them are quite crowded/overloaded.

I recommend the book by Tufte, “The Visual Presentation of Information” for advice…

-Jochen

Perphic

June 15th, 2010

Great collection of information graphic. Great work! Really enjoyed them.

Photo Club

June 15th, 2010

31. Evolution of the Household – 1950’s to Present – looks awful and not informative at all… Scrolling up and down is frustrating :(

Liked “Coffee” one very much! :)

Ligia Kempfer

June 15th, 2010

Great post! Thanks for sharing it.

Artaberry

July 21st, 2010

creativity at its best!!

Garrett Davis

August 13th, 2010

How much fun would school be if all lessons could be aided with a visual graphic like these?

Erick Recors

September 24th, 2010

Anyone know a good infographic designer? We are looking to get some done

piru

September 27th, 2010

I was just wondering if there are people or firms who are specialized in infographics, and do people search directly for this… i’m really interested

ezrockstar

October 19th, 2010

Thank you for your hard works

Ratesman

November 29th, 2010

Very nice infographics! Thank you for your hard works.

Rohini M Kulkarni

December 2nd, 2010

Lovely! Makes understanding things and how they work very easy. Easy to learn and remember.

Antonio César

January 13th, 2011

Muito legal. Curti demais.

Cgbaran

January 16th, 2011

Excellent roundup thanks

RichardStep

January 21st, 2011

I am really beginning to dig these types of data representations… now to just get started on MY skills! (or lack thereof lol) Thanks for putting this together!

pakdezaki

January 30th, 2011

Amazing picture. Infographic can speak a thousand mean than word. I love all picture above..

oLi

February 3rd, 2011

I like ths one:

http://www.theafghanconflict.de/

paul morris

February 26th, 2011

and here is my attempt at illustrating the rather complex process for offsite search engine optimisation (SEO) aided and abetted by PacMan – http://www.searchmuse.com/blog/2011/2/5/pacman-seo-infograph.html