From there I looked for inspiration on cool calendar designs. The notion of color scaling was present in a few examples, and I also really appreciated the circular format in some. Years are cycles, plus a circle is an inherent shape in cars (tires, steering wheel, speedometer, knobs). My search led me to this lovely piece by Martin Oberhaeuser. With much respect to his design, I used it as a jumping-off point to transform the above table from Excel into something hopefully more elegant.
Using TrueCar’s color palette of a couple of blues, I made a color scale—lighter being better, and orange being the best—and inserted the actual percentage value within each cell.
For the chart to show the best month to buy, I combined a calendar and a column graph. And it validates the long-held belief that December is the best month of the year to buy a new car.
The most helpful data I thought we had was the one about the smartest month to buy a particular kind of car. While December remains the best overall month, if you’re looking to buy a subcompact, you should buy in June. Since I had a circular table already I decided to leave this one pretty straightforward.
Last, but not least, is the best day of the week to buy a car. There’s really only seven data points here so presenting the data simply seemed the way to go.
I actually designed the infographic as one long piece first, and then broke it into smaller graphics for social media sharing. As a whole piece I think it works really well. There’s a story that weaves it all together. I hope you enjoy it!
When tasked with creating an infographic about exotic car company ownership, what started as a simple timeline evolved into something much more ambitious. Through deep research into automotive history and exploration of various visualization techniques, I developed a detailed 24" x 36" radial timeline poster that tells the complex story of luxury automotive brands and their changing corporate parents over the past century.
Six years ago, back in 2014, I had the chance to sit down with Enzo Mari at his Milanese home. As with all former architecture and design students in Milan, I considered Mari a founding figure, a mythological man who set the basis of a specific approach to design, something every student at the Poli
The design blog that connects the dots others miss. Written by Roger Wong.
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