Closing ceremonies are this weekend, which means the Olympics are almost over.
As many readers/skimmers/aggregators of Chartsnthings might know, the New York Times graphics department published one or two things about the Olympics recently, and I’ll try to post little tidbits where I can instead of making a few massive posts.
What better place to start than in the Olympic pool, where we last left our flags on our Speedos? (Sorry about that one.)
Yesterday the graphics desk published the third in its “How to Win” series; here, Shan Carter and Joe Ward explain the handoff in track relays. (You should really be checking those out, btw.)
Shan sent along one of his first passes at the 3D track, which I believe he made using Modo. This only reinforces my current belief that 3D rendering is a basically a series of inexplicably magical dials.
Here’s his final rendering from the published graphic.
Part of this blog is intended to show the processes behind our work, including bad ideas. (Especially bad ideas.) But screw-ups don’t happen just in charts. For example, here’s a recent, not-really-verbatim conversation I had with my colleague Graham Roberts as we looked at visualizing swimmers for an upcoming Olympics project:
GR: “We need a decent way to identify these guys.”
KQ: “What if we put a flag on their bathing suits?”
GR: “Like on their Speedos? Wouldn’t that be weird?”
KQ: “Not really.”
GR: “Really?”
KQ: “Let’s just see what it looks like.”
[5 minutes later]
KQ: “So, no flags, huh.”
GR: “Yeah.”
The Teardrop Shot, Up Over the Giants
PepsiCo is dropping Lil Wayne as a Mountain Dew spokesman because of “vulgar lyrics” referring to Emmett...
Nina Totenberg, NPR
We want to hear from women: What’s your note to self – a piece of advice that’s helped you at work? Share your...
The First Lady and 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick, Kaepernicking for Let’s Move! Active Schools.
Happy Star Wars Day! (We’re still not building a Death Star: http://wh.gov/Ptti)
Responsive Inspector (beta) released!
A Chrome extension to help diagnose and visualize responsive media-query breakpoints and effects in a...
