Blogathon 2009: Infographics Part 2: The New York Times gets it right

While I found the CBC’s efforts lacking, the New York Times uses “interactive features” very effectively.

For instance, this infographic from last year uses area and two states to visualize the loss of over $88 billion in value during the collapse of the US banking system. It’s very effective, conveys the massive drop in value well, and frankly, it works better with an animated transition than a static image would have.

This is an important point: just because you can make something “interactive”, it doesn’t mean you’re not better off with a nice, standards-compliant JPEG. (Hey, how’s it going, Canadian Press?)

On the other hand, there really isn’t a better way to represent the data available than how the NY Times has here. Colour me impressed.

Related posts:

1. Blogathon 2009: Infographics, Part 1: Why the CBC sucks
2. NY Times on AOL search log leak
3. Blogathon 2009: The Typography of Idiocracy
4. Interactivity != better