On the 27th September the ICA in London staged the inaugural Information is Beautiful Awards, a celebration of the best work in data visualisation and infographics. Here are the winning projects from the night…

Anatomy of a Virus by Patrick Clair, Scott Mitchell (video below).

Staged in partnership with market research company Kantar, the awards were set up by data journalist and information designer, David McCandless, whose informationisbeautiful.net has been reporting on data visualisation since 2009.

There were six main awards categories, with a bronze, silver and gold awarded in: Infographic / Information Design; Data Visualisation; Interactive Visualisation; Data Journalism; Motion Infographic; and Tool or Website.

Over 1,000 projects were entered and judged by a panel including: musician and artist Brian Eno; Paola Antonelli, senior curator at the Museum of Modern Art; Maria Popova, editor of cultural curation site BrainPickings.org; and Simon Rogers, editor of The Guardian Datablog. Visitors to the IIB site were also invited to vote for the Community Award, and their votes also contributed to the final totals.

Motion Infographic:

Gold: What is the True Cost of War? by Peter Jeffs, Tom Stevenson. Narrated by Tony Benn this short animation examines the cost of the UK’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan.

Silver: Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Virus by Patrick Clair, Scott Mitchell.

Bronze: The seventh billion by economist.com.

Interactive Visualisation:

Gold: Notabilia by Moritz Stefaner, Dario Taraborelli and Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia. This interesting site visualises various “deletion discussions on Wikipedia”.

Silver: The American Energy Spectrum Infographic by Hyperakt (Deroy Peraza, Eric Fensterhei).

Bronze: The Evolution of the Web by Hyperakt (Deroy Peraza, Eric Fensterheim).

Tool or Website:

Gold: AntiMap by Trent Brooks. AntiMap is a creative toolset for recording and then visualising a user’s own data, via the AntiMap Log smart phone app (below, top) which can be synchronised with the AntiMap Video desktop application (demo shown, below).

Silver: FF Chartwell by Travis Kochel and FontFont.

Bronze: Gephi by Mathieu Bastian, Sébastien Heymann, Mathieu Jacomy.

Data Journalism:

Gold: CNN Home and Away by Stamen Design LLC. This sobering infographic plots US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, against a map showing the location of each of the soldiers’ hometowns.

Silver: Public Spending by the UK’s Government Departments, 2010-2011 by The Guardian Data and The Guardian Graphics teams.

 

Data Visualisation:

Gold: Infographics in Context (Interest #4 – Refugees and Immigrants) by Peter Ørntoft. “The focus of the interest deals with whether or not the Danes think it’s ethical to wear religious symbols in public professions,” writes Ørntoft on his website (where another six examples are shown). “I have used the looks and appearances of traditional religious symbols to design the diagrams explaining the data.”

Silver: Look At The Sky: Belief and Science by Carla Fernández Arce.

Bronze: Lunar Calendar by Dimitre Lima.

 

Infographic / Information Design:

Gold: Cover Mania by Michele Mauri. This infographic, which appeared in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra and can be seen in its entirety here, shows how The Beatles became the ‘most covered’ band ever.

Silver: Envisioning Emerging Technology by Michell Zappa / Envisioning Tech.

Bronze: CV by Paulo Estriga.

The Information Is Beautiful Awards is the world’s first global awards for data visualisation and information design, out to celebrate and honour the incredible creativity that’s emerging in this growing field.

Congratulations to everyone who got involved with this fantastic new emerging award. I have been blown away by both the entrants and the success this young and vibrant event. And next year promises to be even bigger and better.

Tom Kelly-Lord