The Ride of Your Life

The Ride of Your Life is a very cool, interesting infographic using the subway map design style to show the potential dark side of capitalism.  Created by Lazar Dzamic, Digital Planning Director at Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw in London and designed by Vladan Srdic, Partner and Creative Director at Studio360.

As a reader, you really need to look closely, and appreciate the level of detail and connections included in this design.  The overall message is that the dark side of Capitalism “can” lead to Misery, and the branches explore different aspects of business and personal life influences.

Lazar provided some behind-the-scenes information behind the making of The Ride of Your Life:

“The whole thing was inspired by two books that I would strongly recommend to any communications professional: Robert Cialdini’s ‘Influence: the psychology of persuasion’ and Oliver James’s ‘Afluenza’. Cialdini is a world renowned academic in social psychology applied to persuasion, while James is a psychologist dedicated to investigating the origins of what we also know as the ‘status syndrome’.

I was intrigued by the fact that people in liberal capitalist societies tend to feel less happy than in many others with significantly (sometimes shockingly) less wealth. Which made me think of the role of persuasion industries in that phenomenon.

I did the original drawing in one short but frantic session on the inner back cover of Cialdini’s book, but the initial structure has evolved over the last few months, to the one that you see here. The original title was ‘The architecture of misery’ but then I realised that I need a visual partner who will bring it to life. Enter Vladan Srdic, my friend and an incredibly gifted designer from Slovenia, and the ‘spiritus movens’ behind the design Studio 360 in Ljubljana. He not just brought the structure to life by replacing my pitiful clouds with the stylish metro map but also changed its title into ‘Ride of your life’ - which I infinitely preferred.”

Lazar was also gracious enough to share one of his early drafts so Cool infographics readers could see how far the final infographic had evolved from the initial idea.

Fantastic job Lazar for going through the whole process and making your thoughts become a reality.  I want to see the next version exploring the good side of Capitalism!