Baby Proofing Your Home – An infographic by the team at Baby Care Journals

This infographic was submitted to us by Baby Care Journals.

There are a lot of indispensable tips here for ensuring that your home is ready when your baby gets moving. The illustrations are all very helpful in showing expectant or new parents exactly how these safety tips can be enacted around their home. Although it shares a lot of information, it’s also not too long — so it doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to get all of the info.

That said, this graphic could use a bit less text throughout. While it’s important to properly explain why/how to babyproof the home, with so many tips included it really gets heavy quickly. There are a lot of easy places to cut just a few words — and it really makes a world of difference. For example:

“Place covers [or sliding plates] over unused outlets[;] Use outlet covers or sliding outlet platesinstead of avoid [choking risks like] outlet plugs, which can pose a choking risk.”
or
“Don’t hang shelves or artwork directly over baby’s crib for obvious reasons.”

It would also be nice to see more numbers/statistics. Although morbid, numbers on this topic really would help to prove the point. For example, the stat about 2,000 children ages 14 and under dying annually is a good stat to help prove that proofing your house is really important. If there are similar numbers about how many children die or are injured from a few of the specific rooms/appliances mentioned (the stat about drowning is a good example), it would be impactful to include them.

In all I’d give this infographic a B — great info, good visual connections to the tips, but some more data and less text would bring it up considerably.

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This infographic was submitted to us by Rick’s Fencing.

There’s a lot of great information here about how to get your home looking great for spring (and into summer!). I like the lead-in with the outdoor scene and numbers representing each of the tips to come. For the most part, the visuals are working to explain without including too much text — the only exceptions are Repairing Fence Rails and Deck Cleaning (click here for more information on cedar decks). It would have been great to see each step that’s explained in Repairing Fence Rails show up as its own image. Similarly, the point about deck cleaner strength could have been shown with three annotated clocks — too strong, too weak, and just right, showing the associated lengths of time.

In fact, Fertilizing Your Yard could have illustrated crabgrass and fertilizer with pre-emergent for Early Spring, and broadleaf weeds and “weed-n-feed” fertilizer for Late Spring, too. The more work the illustrations can do to tell the story, the better!

Since there isn’t much data here, it’s hard to critique as a traditional infographic, but I think overall it does a good job of explaining how to get your spring ready the DIY way! I’d give it a B as a guide, since a few extra illustrations could remove some text.

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This infographic was submitted to us by Houseplans.co.

I love the creative graph that opens this infographic. It’s a great way of taking a classic bar graph and turning it into something that plays into the topic of the whole infographic. Data visualization is used at essentially every opportunity in this infographic, which we love to see!

The accuracy of the visualization is a little funky, however — in “What’s Fueling the Decline in House Size?” in the “Growth of Single-Person Households” section, 14% is shown as being about 1/3 the length of 28%, instead of 1/2. A similar problem happens with 8%.

I really like the home layout element, showing the anticipated rooms to be included in homes in 2015. The color coding of likelihood that each room would be present is really interesting and effective, and I appreciated the inclusion of the information about changing living rooms and growing family rooms.

In all I like the color palette and organization of the infographic as well, and like that it stays pretty concise while offering up a lot of information. If anything, maybe the typography could be played with a little bit more for increased visual interest. Overall I’d give this infographic a B+. It’s clear and concise, but the point of data viz is to accurately represent the numerical values visually — if the numbers are misrepresented, it’s not any better than leaving them unvisualized.

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This infographic was submitted to us by Houseplans.co. They also provided a description:

The Mid-Century Modern home style has seen a resurgence in popularity as homeowners increasingly appreciate its clean, elegant lines and integration of outdoor elements. This infographic shows how this futuristic style developed from the early ranch house plan.

It’s a little hard to judge this infographic as there is no data visualization. It’s a timeline with a breakdown of the elements that make up each style of ranch house, and while there are a few numbers, none of them are visualized. It’s very informative, however, and does leave me with a pretty clear sense of the distinctions between home styles.

The layout and color scheme are fairly simple so it is easy to follow the order of information in the design. One thing I was curious about was that the introductory paragraph refers to “the Mid-Century Modern home,” but that term isn’t used again later on. It’s a little unclear to which home plan that term is referring, since “mid-century” in terms of time would be the Modern West House Plan, but the phrasing in the intro seems to allude to it being the 21st Century Modern instead.

The data shown with 21st Century Modern could easily be visualized in an engaging way that makes used of the numbers. 10 homes, 10 home icons. 22 awards, 22 trophies. Instead, a single icon is used to represent each point, and the number is just written out. I think it would be interesting to see visually that Schnell’s Street of Dreams homes have won over two times more awards than there are houses.

In all I’d give this graphic a B+ as a tool for home style distinction, but a D as an infographic — the few numbers there are are not effectively visualized.

This infographic was submitted to us by Beckon Media Inc. in partnership with California Cryobank. They provided this description:

Every year it gets a little more expensive to raise a child. It cost over $200,000 today to raise a child from birth to 17!!

The concept for this infographic is based on the cost of raising a child in 2011 vs. 1960, the first year the U.S. Department of Agriculture first provided estimates of child-rearing expenditures.

The USDA puts out a great Annual Report called Expenditures on Children by Families each year, and after reviewing this document we began focusing on one specific area that sounded very interesting, which was Expenditures on children 1960 versus 2011.

The statistics have been broken down into budgetary components, we have also taken inflation into account by providing the 1960 amounts in 2011 dollars.

Under each budgetary component we have listed a possible expense that a family would incur and compared the cost between 1960 (with inflation) and 2011.

This infographic makes use of very clear data visualization and lots of white space to make the information easily accessible. I like how the pie charts are self-referential: each new “slice” starts where the last “slice” left off, so the viewer can see how much of the total cost of raising a child has already been accounted for by the previously listed costs.

It’s interesting to see all the costs adjusted for inflation — The Game of Life cost more than double what it does today, and Barbie nearly four times more! Since it’s common to reminisce about how cheap things were “back in the good old days,” it’s funny to see that in reality, some things were proportionally much more expensive. Not so for key items like gas, shoes, education, and mortgages, though…

In all I’d give this infographic an A! Although it sticks to traditional pie charts and bar graphs, they’re used to good effect, and the illustrations, data, and overall design style are all quite unique.

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This infographic was submitted to us by Slavens & Associates Real Estate Inc. They provided this description:

If you live in the heart of Toronto, you’d know the real estate market is selling like hotcakes. Having the right numbers and figures will help you make the right purchasing or selling decision. Slavens & Associates Real Estate Inc. brings you a visual report about the hottest property figures in 2012. Don’t miss out on that dream real estate listing!

This is a good report for anyone owning or looking to own a home in Toronto. It’s quick to breeze through and offers insight as to what styles of home have become more and less affordable. I’m glad to see that it is focused on numbers and avoids heavy blocks of text. However, the data viz seems a little random.

I’m not sure how the days are being represented in the average number of days on the market. And for the Average Sale Price to List Price Ratio graph, the distance between 99% and 101% is larger than that between 101% and 105%! For the July 2012 Home Price Index Increase, the circles ideally would be sized according to their percent increase, but instead they are all the same size. The bottom stat looks like it is a start to a bar graph, but the 52% isn’t really shown.

So on the plusses, we have a clear theme, clear and concise information, and data used. However, the data viz isn’t serving its purpose, and the design itself isn’t particularly engaging. Overall I’d give it a C+ — definitely a step in the right direction, but not quite displaying the intended characteristics of an infographic.

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This infographic was submitted to us by Big Steel Box, who provided this description:

Moving homes can be a big pain in the you-know-what. That’s why you need to make lists, stay organized and keep a calm head. The folks at Big Steel Box have prepared some helpful advice and a handy checklist to keep your moving day as relaxing as possible. Find out what you need to prepare for your next big move!

This graphic is full of great tips for making moving less stressful. Some are relatively common (confirming your moving date is DEFINITELY a must!) and some are nice and innovative. I’ve used canvas grocery bags, trash bags, pillowcases etc. to make moving in a car easier, but it’s something you might not think about until your trying to wedge the last box up against the curved ceiling of your car’s backseat. I’ve also neglected to label a few boxes out of the bunch before, which sure makes putting the boxes in their correct rooms impossible once you arrive!

While there are tons of great tips here, there’s no data, and no data viz. Checking out some moving surveys would be a great addition to this. What percent of people have accidentally left something behind in a move? What’s the first thing most people unpack? What percent of people hire movers as opposed to doing it themselves? A little bit of data would spice this up nicely.

Overall I’d give this a B+ as a moving tool but a D as an infographic, since there isn’t any data.

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This graphic was submitted to us by Rick’s Fencing.

There’s a lot of visual interest here with a mixture of illustrations and icons, a variety of font sizes and treatments, and a varied but coordinated range of colors. It makes it easy to want to see what’s coming up next in the design.

The benefits of solid patio covers are clear for a variety of scenarios and lifestyles, so it’s simple to discover whether a solid patio cover might work for the viewer.

Because the nature of this infographic doesn’t include any actual hard data, there’s no opportunity for data viz, which makes it difficult to judge as an infographic. However, it is a comprehensive tool for anyone hoping to determine whether they should consider a patio cover for their home.

As a tool for making a decision on covered patios, I’d give it an A! As an infographic, it would need some numbers and maybe a storyline — perhaps walking someone through the process of choosing a covered patio, sample price ranges, etc.

Infographic by EquityRelease.net

This graphic was submitted to us by EquityRelease.net

This is clearly laid out and tries to keep text to a minimum. The style isn’t overwhelming and the flow charts are easy to follow. It’s plenty informative and it ends with a nice example of a simple bar graph.

I do feel like there’s almost too much information here, though. It’s quite long infographic at over 9000 pixels full size, and although the text is not extreme, it does look rather heavy in places (How much will this cost?, Lifetime Mortgage vs Home Reversion Plan). Most of the individual elements are large enough that I can’t view them on my screen at one time. It’s nice to be able to read a chart all the way through without scrolling; perhaps scaling down some of the elements here would help with this.

I like the colors and the comprehensive nature of the information, but I think a bit too much was attempted here, and it winds up being a lot to digest. I’m sure that this infographic simplifies matters quite a great deal when compared to lengthy legal documents, but there should be even less text if possible and more visual representation. The bar graph I mentioned at the beginning is the only example of data viz, and is one of only a few numbers in the data that could be visualized.

As an infographic I’d have to give this a C, because there is only one example of data viz and it is just a whole lot to process, and whole lot of scrolling. Make it smaller and take out a few elements, adding in some visualizable data instead, and this could be a great infographic!

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This infographic was submitted to us by Rick’s Fencing.

Starting off with an illustration of a pergola and an accompanying description of what one is is a great opener, as it wouldn’t be good to assume that everyone knows what they are. I wish that there was more color in this top section, though, to draw the viewer in. Since it is all muted neutral colors, it doesn’t provide much visual appeal, even though the illustration is well-executed. Still, I’ll admit that I didn’t know what pergolas were, by name, before seeing this infographic, so I definitely learned something here!

It would be nice for the timeline if reference dates were given, and the allocation of space reflected the relative timespan between each event. As it is now, it appears that the same amount of time passed between ancient Egpyt and the 1st century AD as between the Renaissance and Craftsman homes! This would require rescaling the section but would provide some interesting context. A few more related points on the timeline

I love the use of data visualization in “Why Build a Pergola?” It’s great to see not only in what order of importance the survey answers are, but by what margin each one is more important than the next. For instance, the difference between the #1 and #5 answer for reasons to create an outdoor room is just 15% — all of these reasons were very important to those that answered the survey. However, the popularity of different types of outdoor shade varies significantly: the difference between the #1 shade provider and the #5 shade provider is a full 40%! We wouldn’t get that context without the numbers and visual representation.

The colorful illustration of the flowered pergola at the bottom is a great ending — though again, it does make me wish that the initial illustration were more colorful, as this final illustration is the point in the infographic with the most (dare I say it?) “pop.” The predominant browns throughout the top 2/3 of the IG get a little dull.

In all I’d give this infographic a B: a little more even dispersal of color and a bit more context for the timeline could really make this great!