newly ancient

Of all the ways to represent a year, this is by far my favorite. What better way to represent a year than to show a year? A calendar is an ancient idea, yet it is still relevant today. It can show both the big picture and the individual components of a year very well. Be warned though, producing a calendar of the past year is not an easy task. However, with a little bit of work, you can duplicate my annual calendar style.

1. Track your schedule using Google Calendar or a similar calendar application. Include your school or work calendar in it, and update the calendar as days are added or removed.
2. Add the Holiday feed for your region to your calendar.
3. Add a calendar widget to your blog.
4. Fire up your favorite graphics program, which supports symbols.
5. Draw a small square and fill it with a color.
6. Convert the square to a symbol. In Adobe Fireworks, this can be done by right clicking the square and selecting Convert to Symbol with the default options.
7. Draw an equally sized square and fill it with a different color.
8. Convert the square to a symbol.
9. Draw another square the same size as the first two and fill it with a different color.
10. Convert the square to a symbol.
11. Draw a transparent square the same size as the first three.
12. Convert the square to a symbol.
13. Browse to January 1 in Google Calendar.
14. Browse to January 1 in your blog calendar.
15. Choose the most suitable option from the following:
    • If you wrote a post on that day, duplicate your first symbol and put it in a suitable location.
    • If you went to school (or work) on that day, duplicate your second symbol and put it in a suitable location.
    • If you wrote a post and went to school (or work) on that day, duplicate your third symbol and put it in a suitable location.
    • If you did nothing on that day, duplicate your fourth symbol and put it in a suitable location.
16. Look at your calendar, and see if anything especially noteworthy happened on that day (such as graduation or a favorite holiday) and put an appropriate icon on the day. Good sources of icons are IconBuffet and Silk.
17. Repeat steps 13 through 16 for every day in the month. Align the squares to the grid, making sure edges match up.
18. Repeat step 17 for each month, placing a small space between months.
19. Copy each of your first 3 symbols to the bottom of your calendar and create a key.
20. Add embellishments as is necessary for visual appeal.

Why use symbols? If you want to change the color of a square, you can just edit the symbol and all of the squares of the same type will automatically update.

Hopefully, you can see an interesting pattern of you year. Which symbols did you use the most? What months have the least posting or the most? The results might surprise you.

Download an archive of my design file.

This is the fourth installation in a series upon how I produced my annual report. I encourage you to check out parts one, two, and three.

First of all, I would like to apologize for not continuing this series last week. Unfortunately, my mother needed me and family always takes precedence.

What we read is incredibly influential in how we think. For that reason, I find it very helpful to keep track of exactly what I am reading and be ready to present where I gained knowledge upon any one subject. This is one of the primary reasons I love RSS—it allows me to have a centralized location for everything I read. For instance, I usually read the paper in a hard copy format. However, I still subscribe to the RSS feed so that I can mark items as read. That way, when I look back I can track all of my reading.

Since I have all of my reading in a centralized location, lots of interesting possibilities can be found. Google Reader especially excels in this area, by coupling Google’s extensive search experience with savvy UI design. Trends are easily accessible and display a myriad of information upon the past year. What’s more, I can search everything I have read in RSS. Coupled with last.fm and Google Web History, I can effectively look up every article, song, or comic I have ever read or listened to. It’s like having the fastest detective and best statistician in the world on a commission, but free. Unfortunately, the presentation does have some flaws. As important as what I read is, I think this was the weakest chart in my report—it didn’t convey as much information as I would have liked it to. Still, if you would like to duplicate this imperfect attempt, by all means try and refine it.

1. Sign up for Google Reader and put every RSS feed you can in. Anything you consume, whether it be through Twitter, print media, or elsewhere should be your feed reader to achieve effective results.
2. Categorize your feeds with tags. Tag, tag, and tag some more. This step is crucial to figuring out trends in your reading.
3. Every 30 days, visit the Google Reader Trends page and take a screenshot.
4. At the end of the year, take a look at the data you have: how many items you read, percent of feeds you read, etc. See what information jumps out at you.
5. Compile that information into a spreadsheet, using your monthly screen shots of the trends page as the source.
6. Generate a graph of that information, using your spreadsheet application of choice. Do not have any labels or writing of any kind.
7. Copy the generated graph into your graphic design program of choice.
8. Add relevant labels and apply savvy design principles, particularly regarding color and typography.
9. Embellish as needed with additional trinkets and clarifying information.

Hopefully, you should now be looking at an accurate picture of your consumption habits over the past year. There should be a healthy mix of what you read and how much if it you did. Throughout, you should consider your thesis (objective): what do you want your audience to gain? Chances are it isn’t that you do most of your reading at 6 am. Rather, in most cases you want them to gain an understanding of the perspective you are coming from—communicating your reading habits can be highly effective at this, but only if you do it the right way. When choosing information design, don’t be afraid to experiment, but always keep your objective in mind.

By presenting your reading habits visually, you can also gain a lot of insight for yourself. This can be used to change what you subscribe to, or when you read it. For instance, I tend to do most of my reading in the morning. Since my school start time is getting earlier, I know I will have to be waking up earlier to stay on top of my feeds. I also noticed I am a little top heavy with education and technology. Armed with this information, I am spicing things up with more humor, as well as injection of politics and design. Graphing your reading habits gives others an insight into who you are and gives you an insight into how to modify your consumption habits.

Download an archive of my design file.

This is part 2 of a series upon how I produced my annual report. Stay tuned for parts 3 and 4.