What Would Jennifer Do

Now that BusinessWeek is blogging, I’m also doing some illustrations for the internet. Today, your morning Coffee App.

Quickie graphic with Karen Weise this week on Facebook’s IPO and what to expect next.

The original here.

Fact: is required by information graphics law, that every graphics designer loves airplane safety cards.

I drew a few myself this week… but why are you looking at my illustrations when you could be gazing into the eyes of two copulating planes?

My New Year’s resolution is to spend more time online and less time outside and I got a binary joke in the magazine this week for a story on Code Academy. Where’s my certificate of nerd authenticity?

Who doesn’t love the stipple portraits in the WSJ? You? Really!? Then you haven’t seen Laura Holder’s tumblr, “As Seen in the WSJ“. Salami, crystal ball, sunchips, Snookie, they cover it all.

That’s why this week I was so glad to finally have an excuse to work with the one and only Kevin Sprouls to create this GIANT STIPPLE of Larry Kirshbaum (above). What’s black and white and on FIIIIREEEEEEEE?!

Story here.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

It seems I do a network chart about once a month. Really pleased how this one came together in all of 12 hours.

This week’s issue includes our second annual HIGHLY ANTICIPATED BBW50 TOP PERFORMING COMPANIES.

Since this data is unique to Bloomberg I thought I’d explain some of the process that went into visualizing the data.

The BBW 50 is an evaluation of the S&P 500 companies based on four factors:

• 1-year risk-adjusted returns as of Dec. 31, 2011
• 5-year risk-adjusted returns as of  Dec. 31, 2011
• Consensus analyst recommendations
• Projected earnings growth

Thank you excel. 

In addition to annotations for a few select companies this feature includes brief interviews with CEOs from Chipotle, BiogenIdec, and Coca-Cola so it doesn’t just become some big data dump.

This left us with the back page. Though I had blown our ratings-data-wad on the gatefold I still had a spreadsheet full of performance based numbers. Along with editors John Tozzi and David Rocks, we tried a variation of a few indicators.

At first it seemed obvious to use 1-year and 5-year risk-adjusted returns… and that’s because it is obvious. Above, 5-year (red) was always bigger than 1-year (blue) which is terribly boring and more importantly, priceline.com (our number 2 ranked company) dwarfed our top rated company, Mastercard. That would be a terrible way to conclude the feature.

Once we got sales figures from the past year it was clear that this would make an interesting metric to test our ranking. You start to see the BBW50 rankings reward consistent growth over sheer size.

I love excel. And contrary to these screenshots, I do use WindowsExcel thanks to the pied piper of Gateway computers, Evan Applegate. Unfortunately, not even WindowsExcel can handle detailed scatter plots. Sure, it can show me a pattern or outliers, as it does above. But I have NO IDEA which company is which. And, until I learn R or can write in action script I am left with googling “scatter plot excel labels” and low and behold, a script exists to do such a trick.

Made by Marthias Brandewinder it magically outputs everything with labels and even lets me code company by sector.

As an added bonus I layered on predicted percent changes in earnings per share for each company. Though, the variation here isn’t dramatic you immediately get a sense for which company has the best potential to boost profits. I’m looking at you, Cabot Oil & Gas.

A skew here, a gradient there, and suddenly you have a sexy S&P 500 centerfold.

I was going to make this a pretty detailed post about art directing at a magazine and how it’s not about hiring 12 individual illustrations—it’s about how all of the artwork relates to one another as a reading experience but I don’t think I’m up for an educational post. I don’t feel like I have the authority to remind other illustrators of this when I forget about it myself.

You see, most illustrators are working in a vacuum… even though their artwork won’t be. The rare art director will share a layout with you, the illustrator, and work collaboratively. That is great– really great. Still, illustrators have no idea what comes before and after their illustration in a 70 page magazine. Usually, that’s not something the freelance artist has to worry about… unless of course if what comes before or after your artwork looks similar to your sketches. It’s these very special moments when that art director inexplicably rules out your *favorite idea* for another sketch. Whatabitch.

Such was the case the other week for Businesweek’s Stay at home Dad feature story. Originally, I created a series of detailed characters I was rather excited about. Normally, I don’t get so detailed and this new set of icons had a lot of personality. Unfortunately, BusinessWeek was also running other small ornate drawings on the previous pages. So, in an effort to create more contrast between these two features my tiny illustrations were reduced to something more bold, graphic and designerly: ICONS. Not to be confused with tiny drawings.

In the end, the graphic icons are much better but I still mourn the loss of the detailed man sewing.

I had far too much fun drawing fat ankles for this week’s Businessweek. Inspired by every episode of Biggest Loser

In addition to making charts I also add arms and legs to inanimate things for a living.