My energy drink habit runs like a work schedule: on the clock Monday through Friday, completely off on weekends. To show it, I didn’t need a chart — I needed five empty cans and two empty spaces.

For this project I wanted to represent a statistic using everyday objects, in the style of what’s sometimes called a “real-life” or “physical” infographic. Reading through FREEYORK’s roundup of real-life infographics pushed me toward using the actual object tied to my data rather than a stand-in — the piece points out that this style of visualization leans on photography instead of purely digital tools, and that context and symbolism end up carrying more weight than precision. My cans aren’t a metaphor for anything; they’re literally what I’m measuring, which felt like the most honest version of “connected to the statistic” I could make.

The closest precedent I found was the Sugar Stacks series, which stacks sugar cubes per beverage brand to show sugar content can by can. I considered doing something similar with sugar or caffeine content, but the pattern I actually cared about wasn’t what’s in the can — it was when I drink them. So instead of stacking, I laid my week out in a line: Monday through Friday filled, Saturday and Sunday left empty.

That absence is doing the actual work in this image. A bar chart would show two bars at zero and move on; leaving two visibly empty slots in a physical row makes the break in routine feel more like what it actually is — a genuine stop, not just a low number. The brand switches between Celsius and Alani Nu day to day, which I didn’t bother color-coding, because the point isn’t which one — it’s that there’s a can there at all, five days running, and then nothing.

Key: Each can = one energy drink consumed that day. Monday–Friday: Celsius or Alani Nu (brand varies by day). Saturday–Sunday: none.

References

Matthews, F. (2015, March 29). 21 best real life infographics. FREEYORK. https://freeyork.org/people/21-best-real-life-infographics/