Scandalous Infographics
There are a lot of really amazing things I get to design at NYMag. There are also a lot of ridiculous things I get to think up and make real. Like the True Blood Sex Index, which charts who’s had what kind of sex…and just how much. So there were brilliant parts of my day last week where my fellow designers sat around helping me brainstorm what would represent what (there’s a master Word doc that will one day unfortunately re-surface I’m sure).
During the process, I did a lot of fun research though. I relied heavily on both thenounproject.com and a book by Rudolf Modley entitled Handbook of Pictorial Symbols, which is an icon-lover’s dream. I also did a lot of iterating and tweaking. Things like adding a curve to the top of the fangs, changing the direction of the blood on the teeth to point towards where the first blood drop was dripping off. Every single icon went through about 6 or 7 minor versions to end up with the icon set that went live. It’s reassuring that I work with people who care enough to tweak and show me how to make my icons better…even if they are for a True Blood sex chart!
Update: I corrected the title of Modley’s book that I mistakenly use in a haste to get this post up. Thank you commenters!!
The evolution of the fangs icon.
The final True Blood sex icon set
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July 14th, 2011 at 7:24 pm
Hi, Jen,
Those are some very nice icons that you’ve made. I just came across your post because it had a pingback on my own post on Modley’s pictorial language. I just wanted to say that Modley’s book is not entitled The History of Economics (that’s our website), but Handbook of Pictorial Symbols. Besides Modley had a very nice Visual History of the United States that is worth seeing. If you’re intestested in visual representation of pop culture, I also came across these nice visual representations of the Beatles’ music. http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2010/01/19/charting-the-beatles/
Pretty cool.
Keep up the good work,
Yann