Graphic detail | Visualising mobile media

And the winner is...

A contest on infographics on mobile news trends, sponsored by The Economist Group, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Visual.ly.

By K.N.C.

AS THE amount of information in the world soars, it is outstripping our ability to comprehend it. Yet it has also ushered in a quasi renaissance in infographics; new methods for visualising data that tell a compelling story.

To encourage these new informational bards, The Economist Group ran a contest this autumn with the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Visual.ly, a firm that provides online tools to present data. People were invited to produce an infographic from a Pew report on news consumption on mobile devices.

The judges have returned from their labours and announced a handful of winners. One well-structured entry came from Jen Lebeau and Amy Li in San Francisco. Together they created an overview of the trends in a clean, easy-to-read format (see an image of the infographic at the side; click here for a full-sized version). The colors are soft and simple, with plenty of white space between informational elements.

Among the interesting data points that it shows is that roughly as many people use their gadgets to play games as to consume news. This is frightening for news editors, who would rather not consider that their headlines must vie for readers' attention with "Angry Birds". Strikingly, tablets in every instance are the preferred media-consumption devices compared with smartphones. Yet worryingly for media companies, the data show that few people click on ads and most barely even notice them.

Other winnings entries chosen by the judges include ones by Máriusz Bari, ElkanoData (an information design agency in Barcelona), Brittany Furbee and students from West Virginia University’s Visual Journalism class. Our congratulations go to them, and our thanks to all who submitted entries.

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