Information Overload (Show and Tell)

My example of a bad infographic certainly isn't terrible, and it probably does as much right as it does wrong. It shows corporate bankruptcies in recent history, and uses sinking ships to represent failed firms. The bigger the ship, the bigger the failure, and the ships are even color coded by industry (that's the part I like). But here's the problem: The ships themselves are really just window dressing for data that could be easily explained in a simple bar graph.  There's an entire chart included at the bottom that correlates the type of ship (dinghy, tug, yacht, etc.) with the size of the failure -- but this is completely uneccessary because that very information is already written numerically on the chart.  The variation in boat types might add visual interest, but it's a mistake to attempt to force correlation with data that's already clearly laid out.

Here's my example of a good infographic, which I dug up at www.infosthetics.com but originally came from Wired. It's a visual representation of the 311 calls received in New York over a period of 24 hours.  Interesting subject, and quite easy to understand once you become oriented to the layout.