How not to display information

[essentialsaltes]

The accompanying info-graphic doesn't seem to be online, but TIME has an article about the quality of wine in the different states, now that there are active wineries in all 50. The graphic shows a map of the US with each state linked to a bottle icon indicating general quality. Each state is also colored a different shade of red.

#1: the icons and coloring show the exact same information.
#2: three of the four icons are quite similar, with the only difference being the shape of the mouth of the little anthropomorphic wine bottle. The 'undrinkable' bottle is slumped over with X's for eyes. Good job on that, at least.
#3: the mapping between the icon quality and the color density/saturation is not intuitive.

Dark burgundy:excellent
Fire engine red: bad
pink: good
tan: undrinkable

(Sucky illustration for TIME by Knickerbocker.)

Comments

[freudinshade.livejournal.com]

I have to say, I love reading negative reviews and some of the ones in the "50 American Wines" thing linked in the sidebar are highly amusing doozies. For example (from the Indiana wine):

The first comment from the wine-tasting party that wasn't a cry of excruciating pain was, 'I feel it in my colon.' This wine hurt my ears. It's raw. It's sweet and sour and thick and seeking revenge. It smells like something bad happened at the frat house that no one wants to take responsibility for. Until we tasted the wine from Cape Cod, we thought this was some kind of Platonic ideal of bad wine.—by Joel Stein