[This is a guest post by Ping-Chien Huang*, explaining her Birth and Death Rate Word Map]

This “Birth and Death Rate Word Map” is actually my first infographic design project. It was the time I started to fall in love with infographics.

In this word-map, it tells the readers the birth and death rate in the year of 2010 (annual per 1000 persons) by using typography, size and color distinction.

I started with experimenting the type and figuring out how to show both statistics (birth and death rate) of the same country on the same map. I had country name typed out twice in different color, centered, and grouped together to make each of the countries independent. Though I knew that the country names in red might be hard to read when they were too crowded or too small, I focused on the white type since both were talking about the same country. Therefore. The readers can focus on the size of the typography and see the differences more clearly. I also highlighted the top 5 and the last 5 for both birth rate and death rate. It is where the readers can really see the connections and the distinctions.

After I have done all the birth and death rate statistics, I found something really interesting. Those big countries have neither high nor low birth and death rate such as Russia, China, U.S.A, and Canada, etc. I would not even pay attention to them on this map since they were not standing out and some were isolated from the big space.

I then decided to add another information that indicates the top 10 largest land areas by the volume of the circle. It also solved the problem of those floating types.

*Ping-Chien Huang (Vicky) is a Taiwanese-born Canadian who decided to pursue a career in art and design before coming to New York. She is currently a senior student in Parsons, and will be graduating in May 2013 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication Design. She believes that design is meant to help people and make our world a better place. In her works, she often tries to find solutions to raise awareness and explores different ways to approach a problem.

Written by Tiago Veloso Tiago Veloso is the founder and editor of Visualoop and Visualoop Brasil . He is Portuguese, currently based in Bonito, Brazil. Follow:







