What Would Jennifer Do

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

The original 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.

A Nigerian prince asked me to post this graphic I worked on this week with Karen Weiss and Kenton Powell. Please send him money. He will pay you back, I promise.

Statistics are easy— all you need are two graphs and a leading question. Is Facebook driving the Greek debt crisis? DID YOU KNOW: M. Night Shyamalan is behind the decline of newspapers?

Had a lot of fun working on these guys with the .Etc team. They are my favorite part of the back of the book.

UPDATE:
These charts is getting an insane amount of attention. Thanks for all of the RTs, links, tumbles, facebooks, favs, and blogs. It’s gotten to the point that this page has quadrupled the amount of hits of any other chart/illustration/design we’ve published online. We’re not above pandering and now that we know you guys will link to anything about data expect more bars, pies, and feverline punchlines.

This week’s feature about the mortgage crisis by Peter Coy includes a few conceptual graphics. Visualizations don’t always need to be about numbers—often a complicated idea can become less intimidating when communicated with a simple visualization.

This trick is especially helpful when working against a 24-hr news cycle and you feel like you’ve read this story all year long and you’ve exhausted all the interesting relevant data in previous coverage. Sure, the numbers *may* be the same but the analysis is fresh.

THIS IS NEW NEWS PEOPLE. BREAKING. EXCLUSIVE HERE FIRST: WE ARE SCREWED.

This week I worked with the delightful Daniel Grushkin on his feature BBW story about Bokan Mountain. Worth about 9 BILLION DOLLARS it’s full of precious heavy rare earth elements in Alaska.

While we were chatting it was clear this was going to get nerdy fast. The periodic table of elements is beautiful (and if you’re not familiar with how it was originally created I recommend this radio lab episode). I was fasinated that these rocks’ values go beyond their innate market price and their applied uses range from iphones to night vision goggles to Priuses.

Cobbling together notes from a U.S. Energy Department report I created this word map of they heavy rare earths and their applications.

But as I started to design the chart in InDesign two things were clear:

1. The chart was better as a hand drawn graphic…
2. This idea is basically a big fuck you to the reader. I mean really. This is getting crazy.

So, I went back to the periodic table. Of the 17 rare earths, we had photos of 16 (sorry Pm). By placing them on a simple grid and a black background it somehow made the rocks SEXY. Also, bringing back a hint of the word map was important—a few choice words gravitating towards their element made them sexy AND smart rocks.

So if this isn’t evidence that I over think things I don’t know what is. Time to relax and start a new issue.

-jd

The past few days my twitter feed has consisted of three things:
1. The Yankees
2. Steve Jobs RIP
3. Help Amit Gupta!

So, I guess the Yankees lost a game or something. Then, Steve Jobs died far too young and sadly we couldn’t do anything about that.

But then, there is Amit- one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. His enthusiasm makes the world seem a little more fun, a little less depressing, and a lot more awesome.

And now very suddenly he’s battling leukemia.

I’m tired of talented wonderful people dying of cancer.  Do not stall. Get a Q-tip, stick it in your cheek and mail it back. The process is free and you can sign up right here. International friends check out this list of registries here.

For those of you who are kinky and like to swab in public with friends then there’s a party October 14th in NYC. More info here.

Please help get the word out any way you can.

Last week I worked with Jesse Drucker, Bloomberg tax expert, on a graphic about how U.S. corporations lobby for tax breaks by hiring lots of former congressional staffers to lobby for them.

Jesse and Richard Rubin did a great deal of reporting and provided a rather extensive excel document of about 160 staffers, who they lobby for, who they used to work for and other details. This makes my job infinitely easier- now *all* I have to do is sift through this document, edit and redesign the information to tell the most interesting story.

Again, I restructure the data in .dot- a language Omnigraffle can read so we can get a quick visual impression of what is going on.

The first question was how to organize the people. By lobbyist? By company? By former job in the government? Organizing by lobbying company to politician seemed to be the most comprehensive and obvious direction to go in since it gave us a sense of which companies hire the most from the government; however, after listening to Jesse talk it was clear the personalities involved were a key part of the story.

So, we ended up editing down the 160 staffers to the most influential 60. Then, we flipped how to organize the data- instead of connecting everyone to the lobbying company—we connected the lobbyists to the politicans they were formerly employed by- grouping some key people by noteworthy finance committees. Then, color coded the lines by the lobbyists’ clients.

After I’ve arranged the people in omnigraffle I dump the pdf into illustrator and do some very basic styling.

Then comes indesign and the real graphic starts to show itself. Simple, smart labeling and keys for complicated graphics can mean the difference between a well articulate chart or a babbling data wank.

Related: The Insider Guide to Insider Trading Graphic: A Process

The How To issue of BusinessWeek is a good issue. A really good issue. Maybe even a great issue.

A collection of solutions and expertise from THE EXPERTS about how to decant wine with a blender (by Nathan Myhrvold), how to interview someone (by Errol Morris), how to mentor (by Andy Grove)…

and (above) how to network (by Dennis Crowley).  This graphic is TOTALLY FACTUAL AND BASED ON TRUE STORIES, YES? It’s the back page of the issue and I love the back page of magazines. It’s first thing I flip to after the cover so I was excited to get a chance to have at it.

As always, the cover is impossibly great and weird.