Having spent the last 6 weeks in Alberto Cairo’s MOOC, Introduction to Infographics, I am obsessed now with data visualizations and infographics that really tell a great story and use data in effective ways. It is much harder than it looks.

Today’s favorite is the data visualization of the Wealth Inequality in America. Unfortunately, even though it has gone viral, I could not find an attribution of who made it. If you find out please let me know.

What is stunning is the effectiveness of the simple bar chart. As much as I want to be creative with my work, working with data has really challenged me to reign it in and let the data speak for itself. This designer here builds up a visual vocabulary that makes it easy to remember one set of data from the next and sets up consistent parallels between the poor, middle class and rich so we can keep the reality clear. I learned a lot from the ending about the use of the shape of the bar chart as a visual reminder for the story, to drive home your point. Really impressive!