Charting The Beatles

Some Beatles are more equal than others, or why there’s no yellow in Yellow Submarine.

We love data visualization. And we love The Beatles. Naturally, we’re all over New-York-based designer Michael Deal’s Charting The Beatles project — an infographic exploration of the life and music of the iconic rockers, from sales statistics to personal biographies to songwriting contributions within the band.

Deal envisioned the project as a collaborative one, so there’s a Flickr pool where others can contribute their Beatles-charting exploits. There, you can find gems like Kristen E. Long’s rather convincing visual argument for The Beatles’ superior popularity over Jesus.

Besides the incredibly detailed and scholarly data revealing anything from common Beatles wisdom to little-known factoids (Did you know Ringo Starr only ever collaborated on two songs, “Dig It” and “Flying,” and “Octopus’s Garden” was the only track he wrote entirely by himself?), the project bespeaks the very richness and expanse of The Beatles’ music-turned-movement.

Charting The Beatles is the hipster answer to Christian Swinehart’s wonderfully geeky infographic dissection of Choose Your Own Adventure books. And between the richness of factual detail and the universal cultural resonance of the subject matter, it’s among the most delightful visualization projects we’ve come across in quite some time.

via Information is Beautiful

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 6:00 am in culture, design, music and was tagged cool, crowdsourcing, culture, data visualization, design, music.

Charting The Beatles – brilliant http://ow.ly/Y4CI

This comment was originally posted on Twitter

brainpicker on January 19th, 2010 at 6:05 am

RT @brainpicker: Charting The Beatles – brilliant http://ow.ly/Y4CI

arnteriksen on January 19th, 2010 at 6:05 am

chads_eye_view on January 19th, 2010 at 6:06 am

Crazy – Charting the Beatles – http://bit.ly/6whzAD – (via @brainpicker)

roitsch on January 19th, 2010 at 6:07 am

msrobot0 on January 19th, 2010 at 6:08 am

RT @roitsch: The Beatles: Authorship and Collaboration as a visual chart – http://bit.ly/6whzAD – (via @brainpicker) #nice

tamimat on January 19th, 2010 at 6:09 am

tahilramania on January 19th, 2010 at 6:10 am

[...] by syamant on Jan.19, 2010, under Music New-York-based designer Michael Deal’s Charting The Beatles project — an infographic exploration of the life and music of the iconic rockers, from sales statistics to personal biographies to songwriting contributions within the band. Read more .. [...]

Visualising the Beatles - Sunona on January 19th, 2010 at 6:22 am