Nielsen launches InfoGraphic Contest.

Nielsen has long been bringing our insights to life through compelling infographics, illustrations and charts. On February 28, Nielsen is taking a page from some of their clients and the industry and going open-source, launching a U.S. contest to find and celebrate innovation in data visualization using some of our recent consumer insights and social media intelligence.

WHO: Experienced and budding designers, artists, data scientists and laypeople from around the U.S.

WHAT: Nielsen is searching for innovators – passionate designers at the intersection of art and science – to compete in creating the most insightful, beautiful and intuitive visualizations of some of our data. For this inaugural contest, we are taking recent Nielsen and NM Incite http://www.nmincite.com/> media usage intelligence and setting it free. Your task is to help make sense of emerging trends and topics in that data—and to translate the data into a work of art that is creative, tells a story and portrays the data successfully and accurately.

WHEN: Launching February 28, submissions are due by March 29. The Judges’ Prize winner will be announced mid-April, while the Fan Favorite will be dubbed at the end of April.

WHERE: Visit Nielsen.com/dataviz2012 http://nielsen.com/dataviz2012> for contest rules and to submit your entry.

WHY: Beyond the recognition by your peers, we will showcase the best examples for our clients, some of the largest brands on the planet. PLUS, the Judges’ Prize and Fan Favorite winners will be awarded $2,000 in American Express gift cards, among other prizes. The winning design will also be featured at Nielsen’s Consumer 360 http://www.consumer360.com/content/c360/us.html> event in June, on the Nielsen Wire http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/> and on NMIncite.com http://www.nmincite.com/> .