David McCandless is something of a rock star in the world of information design. He’s a data journalist and information designer based in London. He’s also the author of the book and blog, Information is Beautiful. He issues “design challenges” and he recently announced the Hollywood Budgets Design Challenge. Basically, David released a huge data set about Hollywood movies over the last 5 years, including information such as budget, genre, and story type. I wanted to talk to David about this particular design challenge, but I also wanted to get his take on information design. Note: the design challenge is now closed, so it’s too late to enter, but we’ll add an update when the winner is announced.
You can hear the full, uncut interview below, or download the MP3. [runs 15:53]
Play audio:
If you enjoy this interview, you may also want to check out my interview with Fernanda Viegas on the Many Eyes project.

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Edward Tufte.
That is all …
I second Alfonso’s Tufte recommendation. The Visual Display of Quantified Information is a must-read for those interested in data/info literacy.
This iib is a wonderful find Spark team.
I'm more excited about seeing the data visualization results than the Oscars.
One thing though, I found the communication connection of this segment a bit difficult to hear.
This begs the question: are there technologies which'll convert
a unique interview like this one to transcript.
Sort of like Zenph does for archival recordings.
Thanks for the inspiration.
Yeah, not a great connection for sure. We did experiment with transcripts for a little while, for featured interviews like this. I'll raise it at our next story meeting. thx!
Shortlist is up for Design, Interactive and Napkin,
People are so talented, a joy to look at.
http://www.informationisbeautifulawards.com/
Thanks for the heads up!