6 ms·

Kurzgesagt Information Design

102 points by cpg 12y ago

andrea_s 12y ago
The infographics are really nice, but what's with the looming globe? This has to be the most invasive and annoying piece of useless UX I've ever seen... (note that two links in the fixed menu on the left send you to the same target you'd reach by clicking the globe!). Other than that, this is really cool...
- coldnebo 12y ago
  Er, the visual design is cool, but there are a lot of little things wrong with the info graphics. E.g. Showing Neanderthal to recorded history time range with a satellite above the middle of such time range is artistically valid, but misleading in information design and visualization. Sometimes, the infographics are completely wrong. The "weird no time zone" before the Big Bang is complete bullocks -- the whole page has built the expectation of meaning in the relation of how much time has passed between marks -- implying that the universe has existed for longer "with time" than "without time", which is scientifically meaningless. I'd like to like this site, but it makes strong data statements without citing any sources and the visual design potentially misleads as much as it informs.
  - Svip 12y ago
    You should probably watch that video,[0] the narrator explains pretty decently what is going on. [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0
- ryannevius 12y ago
  Almost posted the same thing. It regularly gets in the way of videos, and infographics. At one point, I even though it was a part of various images. It needs to go.
ctchocula 12y ago
Edit: I was looking at the pictures rather than watching the video. The audio explanation does give a fair treatment of the subject matter. --- It's a nice idea, but the pictures about ISIS are a bit disturbing. I think it might be a good idea to stick with science and topics that aren't controversial, because otherwise it seems a bit like propaganda. Maybe I'm not used to viewing such media, but it feels like if you gave me a piece of text, I could read it and decide for myself whether or not it makes valid arguments. However if you give me a piece of art, you are basically telling me a story whose validity I have no way of discerning (within the framework i.e. without having to do extra research). Having (what I presume to be) the ISIS emblem and a bunch of skulls around it seems like it's telling me "these guys bad", "those guys good", which is a bit authoritative for my taste and feels like it's from a dystopian classroom where we are told what to think. Everything is black or white. You're either with us or against us. There is no room in such a worldview for nuance. Perhaps this is a consequence of the medium, in which case established science (as opposed to politics) would be the topic of choice.
- themartorana 12y ago
  "There is no room in such a worldview for nuance." Not everything needs room nuance. It seems to be a theme is some places, HN being one, where there is a need to not assign morality as fact. But at the extremes, we are allowed to collectively decide something is good or bad as an absolute, and agree that anyone that disagrees is disturbed in some way. Slavery was wrong, all throughout history. Hitler was evil. I know the arguments for allowing space for nuance or the dangers of assigning morality absolutely. Normally I agree. But sometimes, something is so close to absolute that we can discard any margin of error, because it doesn't change the conclusion. We should almost always be careful to challenge or leave room for challenging our preconceived notions. But sometimes, just sometimes, there really isn't a need. Edit: at least that's my opinion.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >Hitler was evil. Evil is a religious idea. Hitler was a man, not some devil. Those kind of after-the-fact statements are just cargo-cult that tend to obscure real historical understanding. Even if one means it well ("if we all repugned by such evil, we will avoid it") it doesn't work that way in actual life, for it tends to stick to some people and events and ignore others. One has to understand "evil" (historically) not just loath it, in order to avoid it. And he has to place it in it's context and consider whether his side was just as "evil". Fact 1: Before there was an official war Hitler was quite beloved in the West (including the USA), both as an ally against the communists and as an example of a strong "man of the state" against the "enemy within" (leftists, unions, liberals, etc). And they did know how he got in power and what his beliefs were. Fact 2: Hitler wasn't some lone evil guy who brainwashed a nation. Similar ideas about the historical role of Germany, of the German people, etc, including anti-semitism were held by many German people even before Hitler became known, including prominent philosophers like Heidegger and Carl Smitt, artists and so on. Fact 3: Anti-semitism was ripe in the US too, as was tons of other kinds of racism (not just against blacks. KKK was also against Hispanic, balkan, etc immigrants). Hitler himself wrote that he took the idea of the concentration camps from the US confinement of Native Americans ( http://www.issuesandalibis.org/campsa.html http://www.issuesandalibis.org/campsa.html -- random reference to the first link I found, there are tons of works on those camps you can look up). Fact 4: Focusing just on some historical events (the Holocaust) misses the bigger picture, of western powers holding BILLION of people as slaves in their colonies, including millions of deaths, lynchings, official executions, maimings and the like. The US didn't have colonies at the time, but they had millions of blacks they brought to serve them. Fact 5: People who consider Hitler evil (and why not!), leave the people who dropped two atomic bombs on civilian cities -- on men, women, chidren, babies, elderly etc -- scot free. They even ignore that the Japanese were already destitute and surrendering, and revert to their BS patriotically edited "history" to justify something which was merely a live test for the weapon and a "message" for the post-war times. Just an example -- one can find equally horrible acts by the English, Belgian, French, etc, including the Japanese themselves in China and Korea.
Aeolus98 12y ago
Their Youtube channel [0] is excellent, they really grab the attention of someone young about a large variety of topics, and they really make you want to keep watching their videos. [0] https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt
- Perseids 12y ago
  Also, in contrast to their website, their Youtube channel only contains educational videos and no promotional material. They also have a German channel [1], which unfortunately is not up to date with the English one, though. If you like this kind of dense educational videos I can recommend C.G.P. Grey's [2], Crashcourse's [3] and Henry Reich's [4] channels. I'm fascinated by this new avenue of educational material as it can provide the best parts of both books and tv if done well: You can pause and play back any parts you have difficulties to understand or want to think through more thoroughly and you have the benefit of both visual and auditive information channels in parallel. For example of the latter, take a look at this video [5] - describing the same concept (expansion of the universe does not have a center) in book would have been much more awkward. Also, the pure speed of the videos makes them more entertaining than any TV show could, because TV has to aim for the lowest common recognition speed at every time. E.g. [6] would never be possible on a streaming media. [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/KurzgesagtDE https://www.youtube.com/user/KurzgesagtDE [2] https://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey https://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey [3] https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse [4] https://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics https://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics and https://www.youtube.com/user/minuteearth https://www.youtube.com/user/minuteearth [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4c-gX9MT1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4c-gX9MT1Q [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37yJBFRrfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37yJBFRrfg
  - TheHippo 12y ago
    Same people that are making crashcourse: Sci Show (www.youtube.com/user/scishow)
  - speeq 12y ago
    Veritasium does some great videos too: https://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium/videos
cpg 12y ago
What I originally came across was the Ebola video [1], but now I see they have more things in their excellent YouTube channel, as others pointed out. I was mostly interested in was the presentation style, more than the somewhat odd collection of topics (or their bias or lack of it). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRv19gkZ4E0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRv19gkZ4E0
KhalilK 12y ago
The most astonishing part for me, is that those videos are made using Adobe After Effects, the amount of effort and patience it takes to work with a clusterfuck of shape layers and compositions is simply amazing! Kudos!
- duncanawoods 12y ago
  Are there any svg based animation tools that you can recommend please? I crank out SVG but I'd like to be animate it easily for little things like the gifs on the Atom site. https://atom.io/ https://atom.io/
  - KhalilK 12y ago
    Animatron[0] jumps to mind immediately, I hope it does the job. 0.http://animatron.com/ http://animatron.com/
cirosantilli 12y ago
I wish the website pages would load a bit faster.

102 points by cpg 12y ago

The infographics are really nice, but what's with the looming globe? This has to be the most invasive and annoying piece of useless UX I've ever seen... (note that two links in the fixed menu on the left send you to the same target you'd reach by clicking the globe!). Other than that, this is really cool...

coldnebo 12y ago
Er, the visual design is cool, but there are a lot of little things wrong with the info graphics. E.g. Showing Neanderthal to recorded history time range with a satellite above the middle of such time range is artistically valid, but misleading in information design and visualization. Sometimes, the infographics are completely wrong. The "weird no time zone" before the Big Bang is complete bullocks -- the whole page has built the expectation of meaning in the relation of how much time has passed between marks -- implying that the universe has existed for longer "with time" than "without time", which is scientifically meaningless. I'd like to like this site, but it makes strong data statements without citing any sources and the visual design potentially misleads as much as it informs.
- Svip 12y ago
  You should probably watch that video,[0] the narrator explains pretty decently what is going on. [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0
ryannevius 12y ago
Almost posted the same thing. It regularly gets in the way of videos, and infographics. At one point, I even though it was a part of various images. It needs to go.

ctchocula 12y ago

Edit: I was looking at the pictures rather than watching the video. The audio explanation does give a fair treatment of the subject matter. --- It's a nice idea, but the pictures about ISIS are a bit disturbing. I think it might be a good idea to stick with science and topics that aren't controversial, because otherwise it seems a bit like propaganda. Maybe I'm not used to viewing such media, but it feels like if you gave me a piece of text, I could read it and decide for myself whether or not it makes valid arguments. However if you give me a piece of art, you are basically telling me a story whose validity I have no way of discerning (within the framework i.e. without having to do extra research). Having (what I presume to be) the ISIS emblem and a bunch of skulls around it seems like it's telling me "these guys bad", "those guys good", which is a bit authoritative for my taste and feels like it's from a dystopian classroom where we are told what to think. Everything is black or white. You're either with us or against us. There is no room in such a worldview for nuance. Perhaps this is a consequence of the medium, in which case established science (as opposed to politics) would be the topic of choice.

themartorana 12y ago
"There is no room in such a worldview for nuance." Not everything needs room nuance. It seems to be a theme is some places, HN being one, where there is a need to not assign morality as fact. But at the extremes, we are allowed to collectively decide something is good or bad as an absolute, and agree that anyone that disagrees is disturbed in some way. Slavery was wrong, all throughout history. Hitler was evil. I know the arguments for allowing space for nuance or the dangers of assigning morality absolutely. Normally I agree. But sometimes, something is so close to absolute that we can discard any margin of error, because it doesn't change the conclusion. We should almost always be careful to challenge or leave room for challenging our preconceived notions. But sometimes, just sometimes, there really isn't a need. Edit: at least that's my opinion.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Hitler was evil. Evil is a religious idea. Hitler was a man, not some devil. Those kind of after-the-fact statements are just cargo-cult that tend to obscure real historical understanding. Even if one means it well ("if we all repugned by such evil, we will avoid it") it doesn't work that way in actual life, for it tends to stick to some people and events and ignore others. One has to understand "evil" (historically) not just loath it, in order to avoid it. And he has to place it in it's context and consider whether his side was just as "evil". Fact 1: Before there was an official war Hitler was quite beloved in the West (including the USA), both as an ally against the communists and as an example of a strong "man of the state" against the "enemy within" (leftists, unions, liberals, etc). And they did know how he got in power and what his beliefs were. Fact 2: Hitler wasn't some lone evil guy who brainwashed a nation. Similar ideas about the historical role of Germany, of the German people, etc, including anti-semitism were held by many German people even before Hitler became known, including prominent philosophers like Heidegger and Carl Smitt, artists and so on. Fact 3: Anti-semitism was ripe in the US too, as was tons of other kinds of racism (not just against blacks. KKK was also against Hispanic, balkan, etc immigrants). Hitler himself wrote that he took the idea of the concentration camps from the US confinement of Native Americans ( http://www.issuesandalibis.org/campsa.html http://www.issuesandalibis.org/campsa.html -- random reference to the first link I found, there are tons of works on those camps you can look up). Fact 4: Focusing just on some historical events (the Holocaust) misses the bigger picture, of western powers holding BILLION of people as slaves in their colonies, including millions of deaths, lynchings, official executions, maimings and the like. The US didn't have colonies at the time, but they had millions of blacks they brought to serve them. Fact 5: People who consider Hitler evil (and why not!), leave the people who dropped two atomic bombs on civilian cities -- on men, women, chidren, babies, elderly etc -- scot free. They even ignore that the Japanese were already destitute and surrendering, and revert to their BS patriotically edited "history" to justify something which was merely a live test for the weapon and a "message" for the post-war times. Just an example -- one can find equally horrible acts by the English, Belgian, French, etc, including the Japanese themselves in China and Korea.

Aeolus98 12y ago

Their Youtube channel [0] is excellent, they really grab the attention of someone young about a large variety of topics, and they really make you want to keep watching their videos. [0] https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt

Perseids 12y ago
Also, in contrast to their website, their Youtube channel only contains educational videos and no promotional material. They also have a German channel [1], which unfortunately is not up to date with the English one, though. If you like this kind of dense educational videos I can recommend C.G.P. Grey's [2], Crashcourse's [3] and Henry Reich's [4] channels. I'm fascinated by this new avenue of educational material as it can provide the best parts of both books and tv if done well: You can pause and play back any parts you have difficulties to understand or want to think through more thoroughly and you have the benefit of both visual and auditive information channels in parallel. For example of the latter, take a look at this video [5] - describing the same concept (expansion of the universe does not have a center) in book would have been much more awkward. Also, the pure speed of the videos makes them more entertaining than any TV show could, because TV has to aim for the lowest common recognition speed at every time. E.g. [6] would never be possible on a streaming media. [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/KurzgesagtDE https://www.youtube.com/user/KurzgesagtDE [2] https://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey https://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey [3] https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse https://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse [4] https://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics https://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics and https://www.youtube.com/user/minuteearth https://www.youtube.com/user/minuteearth [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4c-gX9MT1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4c-gX9MT1Q [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37yJBFRrfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37yJBFRrfg
- TheHippo 12y ago
  Same people that are making crashcourse: Sci Show (www.youtube.com/user/scishow)
- speeq 12y ago
  Veritasium does some great videos too: https://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium/videos

cpg 12y ago

What I originally came across was the Ebola video [1], but now I see they have more things in their excellent YouTube channel, as others pointed out. I was mostly interested in was the presentation style, more than the somewhat odd collection of topics (or their bias or lack of it). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRv19gkZ4E0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRv19gkZ4E0

KhalilK 12y ago

The most astonishing part for me, is that those videos are made using Adobe After Effects, the amount of effort and patience it takes to work with a clusterfuck of shape layers and compositions is simply amazing! Kudos!

duncanawoods 12y ago
Are there any svg based animation tools that you can recommend please? I crank out SVG but I'd like to be animate it easily for little things like the gifs on the Atom site. https://atom.io/ https://atom.io/
- KhalilK 12y ago
  Animatron[0] jumps to mind immediately, I hope it does the job. 0.http://animatron.com/ http://animatron.com/

cirosantilli 12y ago

I wish the website pages would load a bit faster.