Chart Porn is throwing a contest! I am tired of seeing economic and political terms like “socialism”, “communism”, “fascism”, “tyranny”, “nazi”, “muslim”, “democracy”, “globalism” and others tossed around with no regard for their actual meaning. So I’m reaching out to the design community to help end the confusion.

Prizes:
1st place: $250
2nd place: Copies of all four Edward Tufte Hardcover books (1,2,3,4)
3rd place: A copy of John Wade’s “How to Design Cool Stuff”, and the “Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics”.
4th place: A copy of Matt Taibbi’s “The Great Derangement”.

Note: Several of the designs may also be displayed/distributed in Washington DC at the October 30th Rally to Restore Sanity/Keep Fear Alive event.

Description:  Create an infographic that compares different economic and/or political systems.

I’m leaving it completely open to the designers to decide how they want to organize it, how snarky to make it, what political or economic terms to include, and how to do the comparisons. But here are some suggestions to get you started: What are the systems’ defining attributes? How stupid do you have to be to confuse these issues? What are the worst examples of why this is bad (Stalin/Hitler/Pol pot)? Include odd little known relevant facts (health care isn’t free in China/number of people Stalin had killed/tax increases that led to original tea party)? Why it is incorrect  to use this label for the United States? Which are economic systems vs political systems or both? Different formats?: maybe a double sided reference card (one side economics, one politics) to hand out to tea party protesters? A flowchart for identifying differences? Heck, if you want to, go ahead and create an infographic showing how Obama really is all of these things at the same time. In other words: get creative.

Deadline for Submissions: October 15, 2010.

Judging: All prizes will be awarded based on my completely subjective opinion as to which are the best designs.

Technical submission requirements: Submissions should be in Illustrator, Photoshop, or PDF format and must be emailed to dustin@chartporn.org. (If you do something really wacky like a video or interactive tool, get in touch and we’ll work it out.)

Detailed contest rules: Read them here.

Confession: this contest was partly inspired by Adam Sacks’ below design:

note: The inclusion of the above books as prizes in no way indicates the authors’ endorsement of this contest – they are just great books that I thought would make great prizes.