Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

You could sift through piles of dense data sets in an attempt to understand the trends and discoveries that emerged in history, psychology, current events, and even fictional dragons in 2014. Or you could look at these infographics, which visualize otherwise overwhelming data as beautiful charts, graphs, and maps.

Co.Design's Infographic of the Day series regularly showcases the best in data visualization, and this past year saw many stellar examples of the power of the well-designed visualization to illuminate information about nearly any subject, from the serious (the daily activities of Congress) to the frivolous (a visual compendium of the world's best dogs).

We couldn't resist promoting Co.Design's own in-house data visualizations: the Great Wheel of Food Mashups and a map of each U.S. state's weirdest eating patterns (we're a bit food-fixated, apparently). Here, our favorite infographics from the past year.

Each year, the list of branded social media accomplishments grows longer, and the Shorty Awards are never far behind in recognizing them.

This year's roster of finalists, being announced today, includes nominees in categories ranging from "Best Brand on Vine" to the delightfully meta "Best Use of Social Media by One Brand Responding to Another Brand."

"New platforms continue to emerge and evolve at an unrelenting pace. While most struggle to keep up, Shorty Awards finalists are thriving in this environment," Greg Galant, executive producer and cofounder of the Shorty Awards tells Adweek. "We'll be celebrating their creations on every form of social media."

Check out the full list of finalists below....

Single page designs can be an excellent technique for tackling smaller websites, even those that you might not think could ever be done without multiple pages. There are tons of great reasons for using a single page site, from ease of maintenance to reduced bandwidth needs.

If you’re tackling a shorter site, one that would normally have a handful of pages, consider using a single page, and see if it will make the project easier and more user friendly. Read on for more information on the benefits, when (and when not) to use them, and some best practices you should follow....

Neon Luminance is a brilliant light painting concept created by photographers Sean Lenz and Kristoffer Abildgaard of From the Lenz multimedia productions.

The duo used high-powered Cyalume glow sticks of various colors dropped into the waterfalls of Northern California to create an amazing pallet of light paintings. They were able to then capture these brilliant exposures varying from 30 seconds to 7 minutes of submerged trails of light as these sticks floated through the water current. To accomplish the rainbow-like effect seen, they combined several sticks together experimenting with different patterns of illumination.

And for you environmentalists, don't worry no harm came to the surrounding nature in this process! The sticks which are buoyant, were never actually opened and all collected at the end of each exposure captured, thus eliminating any toxic gunk from entering the natural water supply....