Approach

The goal was to:

"help increase the race's popularity around the world by creating an infographic-style visual to educate new viewers, highlight the magnitude of the event, and build anticipation for this year's race."

My approach was therefore to highlight the increased participation and success from competitors from countries outside Europe, and maybe inspire viewers from outside Europe to look out for competitors from their "neighbourhood" and cheer them on.

Rather than focus on individual countries, which may be too granular, I grouped countries together by continent, and analysed participation and wins by continents.

Time Constrained

I had only one evening to put together an entry. Having a time constraint can be good, and can mirror real working life.

I therefore wanted to keep it fairly simple, and as such, focused the visual around a single graphic, namely a stream graph, which was then supported by some key facts like the number of finishers from 1903 to 2022, and winners from various countries.

I felt the stream graph was a good option here as it allowed me to see the change over time in terms of numbers of finishers, with a further breakdown by the originating continent of the finisher, as well as acting like a timeline where I was able to add in those key highlights.

Execution

I created the single visual with vega-lite in deneb, then brought it into powerpoint, where I added supporting text and background graphics.

As it is an infographic, and not requiring any type of exploration or interactivity, I didn't feel the need to publish through Tableau or Power BI, as powerpoint actually gives me more flexibility.

Inspiration

I had a few sources of inspiration for this visual.

Visual Capitalist

The visual capitalist creates infographic style visuals for various industries and subjects. They often use stream graphs to show changes or developments over time

Retro Cycling Posters

I also wanted to take some inspiration from some retro style cycling posters like the below. I took the colour palette from this poster, and the lines across the bottom of the page.