Behold the Winning Entry in GE’s Visualizing.org Census Data Challenge

Visualizing.org– GE and Seed Media Group’s open community of data viz designers and devotees – just announced the winner in its latest challenge, “Visualizing the 2010 Census.“

Teaming up with the Eyeo Festival – an upcoming confab exploring art, interaction and information and their intersection in mind-blowing new fields like 3D printing – Visualizing.org dangled a free pass to Eyeo, plus travel and accommodations courtesy of GE, in challenging designers to create the best interactive portrait of the United States, based on 2010 Census data.

Not that the Census needs much incentive to attract data visualizers: its data is open and public, and though the diennial headcount doesn’t always get a lot of attention, its results touch every aspect of modern American life and influence how our Congressional districts are drawn, how public expenditures get divvied up, and everything in between.

Check out the images below, of winner Jan Willem Tulp’s visualization, “Ghost Counties,” which focuses on homeowner data from the Census to create an arresting perspective on the subprime mortgage crisis. Like the best data visualizations, they have an artistic beauty separate from any informational utility. To learn how the striking forms below illustrate housing data by county and by state, click here.