Economic and Financial Geographies

The new global wealth machine - the new way money makes the world go round.

How Americans spend their money.

Where does the US budget go? The answer can be found here.

The US economy since 1920.

The complex world of media company ownership .

Global corporations and their connections.

Financial Crisis

Changes in the market capitalisation of the US' top financial institutions from the New York Times. A similar interactive graphic from portfolio.com.

Also from the New York Times, a timeline of the financial crisis.

A flow chart explain financial crisis from mint.com.

The Financial Times' walk down Bank Street.

Graphs and explanation from the BBC.

Visualising collateralized debt obligations (CDO) with Paddy Hirsch, the Senior Editor of Marketplace

The value of mortgages held by US banks that are 90 days late from And Still I Persist. It uses the amazing tools from Gapminder.org.

Bird and Fortune explaining the subprime crisis.

Historic Maps

Maps are probably the oldest type of geographical visualisation. For me, old maps are always interesting and are often works of art rather than a functional representation of space. Here are some links to online historic map collections:

British Library maps from their mapping history exhibition
US Library of Congress map archive - mainly of the US but includes some beautiful maps of the world (see above)
Historic maps of cities
Old panorama maps
History of cartography - maps through history
Princeton's map archive - some great stuff for teaching globalisation
Osher map library
Stuckenberg Map Collection
Ryhiner Collection
Tohoku University
Historic maps of China
Historic maps of Africa
Norman B. Leventhal Map Centre
Hipkiss's scans of old maps

Other:

Map of cannibalism
Satirical maps from WW1

Doing Good with Kinetic Typography

Kinetic typography is all the rage amongst designers (expect to see it in lots of adverts very soon). Essentially it is text that moves to achieve:

- Literal illustration of language
- Rhythmic embellishment of language
- Personification of language
- Polymorphous disruption of language

(more on the theory here)

By animating the text a message becomes both clearer and, more importantly, incredibly powerful. The classic examples include scenes from films (Pulp Fiction and Devil's Advocate - warning strong language).

As well as more popular uses, a number of animations have emerged with a more normative goal:

Empowering women in developing countries:


The Universal Declaration of Human Rights:


The hidden cost of the Iraq War:

The Growth of Walmart

Some interesting videos charting the growth of Walmart in the US.

Toby Segaran's version
One from Flowing Data (an excellent source for all kinds of visualisation material)

Economic Geography - world economic activity

G-Econ (Geographically based Economic data) is a Yale project mapping the location of economic activity.

Using economic data for each 1 degree by 1 degree square of the Earth's surface they have created a series of globes highlighting economic activity across the world.

G-Econ homepage
G-Econ on Flickr