2026-11-01 03:39:16
The Visual History of Halloween
There’s a section in my book, Cool Infographics, that focuses on an infographic design concept that I established called Online Lifespan. I designed the infographic, The Visual History of Halloween, in 2010, and it continues to be relevant 16 years later. It even outlived the client website it was designed for. The FrightCatalog company was acquired and their website was shut down in 2016! However, the infographic continues to drive traffic every year in October.
Excerpt From Cool Infographics:
Online Lifespan is the amount of time that an infographic remains relevant to audiences.
From a designer’s perspective, it generally takes the same amount of time and effort to fill an infographic design with current, trending information as it does to include information that can have long-term value to the readers. In a financial sense, it costs about the same to design an infographic that will only be popular for one week as it does to design an infographic that will be useful to readers for a year or more. The infographic design will be roughly the same size, with a similar amount of illustrations, text, and data visualizations.
If the objective of the infographic project is to drive traffic and build links to the company website, you don’t want an infographic that will be outdated or forgotten a week after you publish it. Many designs can have significantly longer lifespans. The History of Halloween in Figure 3-10 from FrightCatalog is an unusual case. The infographic is a timeline of events that have led up to the modern day Halloween holiday, so even though its online lifespan will be many years, it’s mostly only relevant during the month of October. This actually works nicely for the publisher, an online retailer of Halloween costumes, because it adds visitors and traffic to its busiest month…every year.
Not a fancy or complicated design. However, it is easy to read, informative, and the topic and data are evergreen.
Click HERE to see the high-resolution version.
2026-06-03 04:51:43
I’ve started a new Cool Infographics video series on YouTube. In each episode, my co-host Jarred Romley and I will discuss an infographics design and cover the pros and cons of the design, how to make it better, the design tools used, and finish with some Cool Picks each time.
Over the course of my career I’ve learned that every design could be improved and teach us lessons. We’re going to review and critique some the the best and the worst infographics. Communicating with infographics requires a special set of skills, and we can learn a lot by looking at the designs, the tools they used, how they were published, and how audiences responded.
Cool Infographics VideosLike and Subscribe on YouTube
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Share with your co-workers and friends
Each episode has a few easily shareable shorts. You can find them on YouTube Shorts, Facebook Reels or LinkedIn Videos. Help spread the word by liking and sharing the short clips.
Submit your ideas
Send us links to data visualizations and infographics you think we should discuss. You can add comments on the videos or reply to this email. I read them all.
2026-03-18 01:29:39
Evelina’s chart of The Authors of the Best Dataviz Books, combines the dataviz community’s published book authors to show which field everyone has come from. A good example of showing how diverse communities can utilize and benefit from data visualization. I made the chart under the Math, Stats, & Engineering section. Do you see other names you know?
Since you're reading this newsletter, you likely work with data visualisation and storytelling. But how did you get here? What's your background?
Probably only a handful of you can say you have a formal education in data visualisation—maybe even a bachelor's or master's degree. Most of us have taken a more winding path of study and work experiences that brought us to where we are today. I worked with data analytics, public speaking, nonprofits, and event management, before all these experiences led me to data storytelling.
At the very beginning of my visualisation journey, I was curious about everyone else’s paths. So I created a chart (very meta, I know!) about the diverse fields that people in our community come from. While it’s somewhat biased—based on published book authors—it gives you an idea of how many different disciplines can lead to dataviz.
Found on The Plot by Evelina Parrou
2025-12-13 01:51:50
Can I predict the Apple product releases coming out in March based on their history of product releases? I think so. Based on my Apple Release Pattern charts, I predict Apple will release new iPads, iPhone 17e, MacBook Airs, and it’s a long shot for an updated Mac Studio and/or MacBook Pros.
Apple traditionally doesn't release any products during December, so all of my Apple Release Patterns infographics are complete and up-to-date for 2025. You can see them all on the InfoNewt site, and that’s where I continue to maintain them and post updates as Apple releases new products and updates.
You can see that some products, like the iPhone, follow a fairly regular and predictable release schedule. Other products, like the MacBook Air, are much more unpredictable.
2025-10-30 09:55:53
Scorigami: Visualize Every NFL Score Ever is a fun interactive infographic were you can see every final NFL score in history and how often each score occurs. PerThirtySix took the inspiration from Jon Bois coined term “scorigami” and is updated weekly.
You can view all team or use the controls to narrow down the visualization to just the teams and years you want to see. It’s fun to play with.
A scorigami is a final score that has never happened before in the history of the NFL. The term was coined by Jon Bois and narrated in a 2017 video called Every NFL Score Ever (highly recommended, Jon Bois is one of best storytellers out there!). Since then, scorigami has entered the football lexicon and has become a fun way to track the history of the NFL.
Found on PerThirtySix
2025-10-15 02:42:28
The Planetary Society has a great collection of infographics and data visualizations about NASA and the U.S. Space Program.
Founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Louis Friedman, and Bruce Murray, The Planetary Society is the world’s largest and most influential non-profit space organization. With a global community of more than 2 million space enthusiasts, they promote their mission to “Empower the world’s citizens to advance space science and exploration.”
