Infographic: Box Office Blowouts

Those who closely watch box office returns were no doubt impressed in 2019 when Avengers: Endgame brought in staggering amounts of money in ticket sales, almost $2.8 billion. With a budget of $400 million, its actual return on investment was 698%. That’s a sizeable return, but it’s hardly a record.

When low-budget art house/indie movies and documentaries hit big, their returns quickly soar into the thousands of percents. The 2007 horror movie Paranormal Activity is a prime example of that, earning almost $200M on a scant $15K budget, or a 12000% return on investment.

On the flipside, when movies with an average size budget (by Hollywood’s standards) bomb, the loss is staggering. To see the all the biggest box office returns winners and losers, check out the nearby infographic Illuminate has created.

Infographic bearing box office return on investment data

Do you have a set of data or a process that would benefit from visualization? Drop us a line!

Data courtesy InsiderMonkey.com

Custom Icons: Why Create Them?

We all use icons, but not all icons are created equal.

A hodgepodge of stock icons you found on the internet will likely hurt your presentation deck or infographic more than they will help it. They don’t fit with each other, they don’t support your brand, and they tell an incomplete story. The result is a lower opinion of – and therefore lower engagement with – the information you’re presenting.

Here are a few good reasons for designing visually unified iconography for your marketing & presentations.

1. Greater Cohesion

Unify your piece with icons that are all in the same visual style, a style that supports your brand and/or the message you’re conveying.

2. More Specificity

Icons that are custom-designed for your specific use tell a richer, more precise story, which better educates your audience.

3. Increased Interest

Novel imagery captivates in a way that stock icons cannot. Beauty will keep your audience focused on your important content.

Tell the whole story with custom icons, tell it beautifully, and you’ll see better results.

Want to see more examples of our work? Click or tap here.

Ready to get started? Drop us a line.

Infographic: A Glance at U.S. Freight Railroad Safety

The 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio – and the environmental disaster that ensued – brought the topic of railroad safety to the center stage of American politics. Cries of crumbling national infrastructure suggest the railroads are becoming less safe, but as shown in the nearby infographic, the statistics tell a different story.

click image to see full size

This concise – and beautiful – infographic conveys trends in railroad accidents since 2015, a breakdown of the causes and related casualties, and the financial impact of such incidents. It also compares the statistics of toxic spills, by type of transportation. The data show that while improvements can always be made to enhance safety and reduce accidents, freight rail continues to be a statistically safe means of transportation toxic materials.

Did you enjoy reading this infographic? See more Illuminate infographics here!

Data courtesy the United States Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Our Recipe for the Perfect Infographic

In case you were curious about our approach to creating beautiful infographics, look no further. This is a concise overview of our method, starting with your raw information and finishing with a captivating, intuitive and fun-to-socialize infographic. The stuff we love doing is all the steps in the middle.

Analysis is like discovery: we learn about the information you wish to share, so that we fully understand it. It helps us collaboratively figure out which components are key ingredients, which add a little spice, and equally important, which to leave on the shelf.

Storytelling is where we map out the progression of information, organizing the elements in the proper order. As with the baking analogy in this piece, we often build a meaningful analogy around your information at this stage, to frame the information in an accessible way. If there are ways we can bring unique perspectives or voices to your piece, that nuance makes the final product all the richer.

In the Design phase, the story comes vividly to life, tailored to your intended audience. We source (or shoot) photography, craft illustrations of all kinds, and in the case of interactive infographics, we build digital experiences that all convey your data in a clear and concise manner.

At the end, you’ll have the perfect infographic that is easy to understand, easy to socialize to your audience, and one that you’ll be excited to share.

If you have a process or a set of data that would benefit from visualization that tells compelling stories, we’d love to hear from you.

LaBelle Winery: Educating About Winemaking

Winemaking Infographic

LaBelle Winery in Amherst, New Hampshire prides itself on being a winery that educates its guests while serving them some of the best wine and food in the region. To help further their commitment to education, we created a large infographic display that explains their step-by-step process to winemaking, from tending their grapevines all the way through to serving a glass in one of their tasting rooms.

To create this piece, we had to break down each step of the process to understand and make clear what happens in each. This included examining every part of the sophisticated bottling and labeling equipment.

This piece appears in two places at LaBelle: one on the wall in the vestibule of their Derry, NH restaurant, Americus, and another in the gallery space of The Bistro in their Amherst location. While guests wait to be seated or while enjoying a meal, they can learn how the wine in their glass was created.

The Attention Span

The attention span of your audience can be a major obstacle in ensuring your insights are heard, understood and embraced. It’s a delicate balance between capturing the full story and keeping people engaged. By creating beautiful, concise executive decks and compelling explainer videos, we can help present your story in a way that does both.

See more of our work here.

Beer: Interactive Infographic

Click on any of the hotspots below to learn more.

Ten Years of American Beer

In this sample, the hotspots reveal visualized data. This allows viewers to drill down and learn more about each point in the infographic in an exploratory, non-linear fashion. Depending on the study type and the assets on hand, you could also provide open end responses or verbatims, images of the provided stimulus, video highlights from field work, or explain key findings from the study.

In the event you have a great deal more information to share on a certain point or points, hot spots can link to full pages, each with their own text and media. This ability enables your infographic to become a hub for a wealth of beautiful, easily shareable information.

For sensitive and proprietary data, we can enable password protection for the entire experience.

Rise of the Cobots

As artificial intelligence makes robots smarter, they are learning to work together with humans to perform more sophisticated tasks. This collaborative approach, cobotics, isn’t just becoming more integrated in advanced manfacturing, either. Cobots are assisting doctors in healing patients, bringing precision to farming and agriculture, and even aiding in law enforcement. But don’t worry; the machines aren’t coming for all the jobs. In fact, AI, machine learning and cobotics has yielded a net increase in jobs.