10 + 1 ways to visualize lyrics

Really good songs have usually really good lyrics. And good lyrics stay with you. When we were at school we doodled them on our books and carved them into the desks. What do the digital natives do? Here are the best ideas (and, incidentally, really good songs for the most part) we found around the web:

1. Pick a photo, apply a vintage effect and write the lyrics in helvetica

Paris by the Friendly Fires (the Aeroplane version featuring Au Revoir Simone  kicks major ass, too)
(visual first seen at letlooselove, our title inspired by this)

2. Make a flowchart*

Should I Stay or Should I Go by The Clash
(visual first seen at Urlesque)
*but be careful not to be trapped on an infinite loop

See 9 more ways after the jump

Color & gender

As we have mentioned before, color always raises issues of common understanding between genders. Do women and men see and understand the same colors? Do men like purple? And which color do women dislike?

According to John Hallock’s study, men seem to tolerate more than women achromatic colors, such as black, white and gray, whereas women prefer softer, less bright shades of colors. And I am not even mentioning what may seem purple to a man, could be grape, plum, eggplant etc to a woman.

See the results of the study after the jump

A riddle for 2010

Can you remember what happened on the Internet in 2010?

The following illustration challenges our memory and our ability to decipher images.

Syzygy, a UK based digital agency, commissioned artist McBess to create a poster,  illustrating 20 things (from industry events to web projects) that ‘happened’ on the Internet last year.

Can you spot them?

Women overanalyze, men oversimplify

Colors, that is. It might be true biologically that men and women perceive the same colors visually. The way they name them, though? Well that’s another (gender? sociological?) story. The chart below, by Stephen Von Worley, shows how differently men and women process and name colors. On his website, Data Pointed, there is an interactive version of the chart.

The chart includes vertical color zones (each “column” contains the same color variations). The larger the bubble, the more common the name used (i.e. “blue”, “red”). It also includes two large horizontal zones: the top contains names that women chose to describe colors, and the bottom names selected by men.

As can be seen, and as we all suspected, women overanalyze colors, whereas men oversimplify them.

Notabilia: Wikipedia Memorabilia

We mentioned earlier the fast reflexes of Wikipedia editors. Sometimes, though, discussions on article deletion last forever. Notabilia is a visualization exercise that keeps track on the longest discussions that eventually lead to article deletion.

It is notable both for its aesthetic beauty and its informative results:

This spiral pattern signifies an (almost) unanimous decision to delete an article. These are, obviously, the shortest discussions of the lot, when a conclusion is reached fast and easy. An ideal discussion of this type, in which there is a total agreement among participants, will approximately look like a logarithmic spiral.

This S-shaped pattern signifies discussions that alternate between relatively long periods of “delete” votes and “keep” votes. The line appears dotted, with green and red areas alternating. Apparently, there seems to be a tendency of editors of the same view to flock together – or for people to change their mind as new information on the issue emerges.

This almost-straight-lined pattern signifies a truly controversial discussion. Both views have strong advocates and a decision is reached with great difficulty. These are the longest discussions of the lot.