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A website dedicated to helping you make clearer, more informed decisions about the world.

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Founded by David McCandless, author of three bestselling infographics books, Information is Beautiful is dedicated to making sense of the world with graphics & data-visuals. We set out to explain, distill and clarify. All our visualizations are based on facts and data: constantly updated, revised and revisioned.

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Distilling the world's data, information & knowledge into beautiful infographics & visualizations.

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A collection of good news, positive trends, uplifting statistics and facts — all beautifully visualized.

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Unseen trends, uplifting stats, creative solutions - a new chart every day. From Information is Beautiful.

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With extraordinary emotional elegance, Rosen welcomes the layers of grief, each unmasking a different shade of sadness — sadness that sneaks up on you mid-stride in the street; sadness that lurks as a backdrop to the happiest of moments; sadness that wraps around you like a shawl you don’t take off even in the shower.

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"Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be," Joan Didion wrote after losing the love of her life. "The people we most love do become a physical part of us," Meghan O'Rourke observed in her magnificent memoir of loss, "ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created." Those wildly unexpected dimensions of grief and the synaptic traces of love are what celebrated British children's book writer and poet Michael Rosen confronted when his eighteen-year-old son Eddie died suddenly of meningitis. Never-ending though the process of mourning may be, Rosen set out to exorcise its hardest edges and subtlest shapes five years later in Michael Rosen's Sad Book (public library) - an immensely moving addition to the finest children's books about loss, illustrated by none other than the great Quentin Blake.

With extraordinary emotional elegance, Rosen welcomes the layers of grief, each unmasking a different shade of sadness - sadness that sneaks up on you mid-stride in the street; sadness that lurks as a backdrop to the happiest of moments; sadness that wraps around you like a shawl you don't take off even in the shower.

What emerges is a breathtaking bow before the central paradox of the human experience - the awareness that the heart's enormous capacity for love is matched with an equal capacity for pain, and yet we love anyway and somehow find fragments of that love even amid the ruins of loss.

This is me being sad.
Maybe you think I'm happy in this picture.
Really I'm sad but pretending I'm happy.
I'm doing this because I think people won't like me if I look sad.

Sometimes sad is very big.
It's everywhere. All over me.

Then I look like this.
And there's nothing I can do about it.

What makes me most sad is when I think about my son Eddie. I loved him very, very much but he died anyway.

With exquisite nuance, Rosen captures the contradictory feelings undergirding mourning - affection and anger, self-conscious introspection and longing for communion - and the way loss lodges itself in the psyche so that the vestiges of a particular loss always awaken the sadness of the all loss, that perennial heartbreak of beholding the absurdity of our longing for permanence in a universe of constant change.

Sometimes this makes me really angry.
I say to myself, "How dare he go and die like that?
How dare he make me sad?"

Eddie doesn't say anything,
because he's not here anymore.

Sometimes I want to talk about all this to someone.
Like my mum. But she's not here anymore, either. So I can't.
I find someone else. And I tell them all about it.

Sometimes I don't want to talk about it.
Not to anyone. No one at all.
I just want to think about it on my own.
Because it's mine. And no one else's.

But what makes the story most singular and rewarding is that it refuses to indulge the cultural cliché of cushioning tragedy with the promise of a silver lining. It is redemptive not in manufacturing redemption but in being true to the human experience - intensely, beautifully, tragically true.

Sometimes because I'm sad I do crazy things - like shouting in the shower...

Sometimes I'm sad and I don't know why.
It's just a cloud that comes along and covers me up.
It's not because Eddie's gone.
It's not because my mum's gone. It's just because.

Blake, who has previously illustrated Sylvia Plath's little-known children's book and many of Roald Dahl's stories, brings his unmistakably expressive sensibility to the book, here and there concretizing Rosen's abstract words into visual vignettes that make you wonder what losses of his own he is holding in the mind's eye as he draws.

Where is sad?
Sad is everywhere.
It comes along and finds you.

When is sad?
Sad is anytime.
It comes along and finds you.

Who is sad?
Sad is anyone.
It comes along and finds you.

Complement the absolutely breath-stopping Michael Rosen's Sad Book with Oliver Jeffers's The Heart and the Bottle and the Japanese masterpiece Little Tree, then revisit Joan Didion on grief.

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Michael Rosen's Sad Book: A Beautiful Anatomy of Loss, Illustrated by Quentin Blake

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"Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be," Joan Didion wrote after losing the love of her life. "The people we most love do become a physical part of us," Meghan O'Rourke observed in her magnificent memoir of loss, "ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created."

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The Shark Bay World Heritage site in Western Australia is one of most colorful and diverse landscapes in the world. Covering an area of more than 2.2 million hectares, it features rocky limestone cliffs, white bays, and rolling red sand hills, surrounded by turquoise blue waters. Photographer Jérôme Berbigier captures how this spectacular landscape looks from above, in a series of stunning aerial photos, aptly titled Shark Bay.

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The Shark Bay World Heritage site in Western Australia is one of most colorful and diverse landscapes in the world. Covering an area of more than 2.2 million hectares, it features rocky limestone cliffs, white bays, and rolling red sand hills, surrounded by turquoise blue waters. Photographer Jérôme Berbigier captures how this spectacular landscape looks from above, in a series of stunning aerial photos, aptly titled Shark Bay.

"Viewed from the sky, Shark Bay is a strangely organic landscape," says Berbigier. "It's like looking down a microscope at the cellular structure of the continent. Geology becomes biology, as the salty hollows, connected to the lagoons and sea, remind us of the beginning of life." Berbigier took to the skies in a small Cessna 172 plane, where he shot the rich colors and textures of the land below. The resulting series of images look just like vibrant, abstract paintings-the blue-green water merges with the multicolored land like paint on a canvas.

Berbigier's images manage to capture both the serene and palpable energy of the land, a place that's home to one of life's earliest forms. "The connection of land and life is evident in this ancient place," he says. "Once on the ground you can wander to the southern end of the bay where the stromatolites, one of the earliest known life forms on Earth, crowd together in the shallows."

We recently caught up with Berbigier to ask about his experience shooting Shark Bay from above. Read on for My Modern Met's exclusive interview.
How did you first get into photography? Do you remember the first landscape you photographed? Why did you decide to shoot your Shark Bay series from above? Can you describe your process for achieving your aerial photos? Why do you think you're drawn to capturing the land and the sea? Where would you like to photograph next?
A little more than a decade ago, I got into photography after the start of the digital era. With this came the first photography sharing platforms. A new way of discovering the work of thousands of creative photographers, only one click away. That really helped me with composition, in camera and post-processing techniques. Browsing, trying new things, publishing, and getting feedback. I have never used a film camera.

I don't, but I do remember the first landscape photograph which got me some attention. The photo depicted one of the rock pools around Sydney's beaches. A long exposure with a late blue hour atmosphere. A subject that has been over photographed, but this particular image had a very eerie and unique feel to it. The long exposure and dark blue light made it look incredibly surreal. I have a lot of long exposure photographs in my portfolio.

Australia has some of the most incredible landscapes in the world. It's one of the few remaining countries with endless, wild, and colorful landscapes. Shark Bay is a World Heritage listed site. The diversity of its landscapes within a twenty five kilometers radius makes it a must visit for aerial photographers. You won't find landscapes like these anywhere else. Funnily enough, I knew about the place long before I started taking photos, even before I knew much about Australia. I remember one of my school biology books had a picture of Shark Bay's stromatolites, one of the earliest forms of life on earth. I found it fascinating how the landscapes of Shark Bay seem to be alive, from geology to biology.

I flew on a Cessna 172. You can fly on larger planes, with the back door removed, but the large open window on the 172 was more than enough for me. Not having the door open also means you are less in the wind, sharper photos, easier to change gears if you need to. The plane flew mostly at 1,500ft, the perfect altitude for most of Shark Bay's landmarks. I used a Nikon D850 and Nikkor 50mm prime lens for this series. For aerial photography, you want high resolution and speed. Depth of field matters less as you often shoot straight down (looking at a flat surface). Some photographers hire super high resolution cameras (e.g: Phase One). For 1.5m prints, I had more than enough pixels on the Nikon D850 (46M). The prime lens helps with the speed and sharpness. I had a fantastic pilot, that makes a huge difference, he nailed all the angles for me, great communication. I also packed a drone, only two images in the series are shot with it. The drone is great when the plane isn't an option.

I am not sure, but nearly all my photos have land and sea in them. The sea makes it dynamic, you can photograph the same coastline 50 times and it will always look different with winds, waves, and tides. In Shark Bay, the colors are the most impressive where the land and the water meet. In the shallows are the highest contract and most beautiful patterns.

I wouldn't mind going from hot to cold, and head towards the mountains. Chile would be on the list, and Patagonia of course. But I also wonder how many incredible places are untouched in regions like the Middle East. Pakistan for example has incredible landscapes.

My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by Jérôme Berbigier.

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Interview: Capturing Naturally Organic Formations of Australia's Shark Bay From Above

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The Shark Bay World Heritage site in Western Australia is one of most colorful and diverse landscapes in the world. Covering an area of more than 2.2 million hectares, it features rocky limestone cliffs, white bays, and rolling red sand hills, surrounded by turquoise blue waters.