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Sometimes you don’t need many words to say a lot. Ask Matt Shirley, Instagram’s favorite chart and graph creator who has been making one a day for the past… we've lost count!

Matt’s colorful designs have gained him quite a following online with a 400k-solid fan base and you can totally see why. Charged with humor, candidness, and a perfect ability to communicate things in a clear and simple manner, they serve as a reflection of the times we are living in.

Whether it’s sitting in a traffic jam, working from home, attending a Zoom meeting, or surviving March madness, these are just the tip of the iceberg of Matt’s ingenious designs that make you totally relate. Psst! After you’re done, be sure to check out our previous posts with Matt’s charts and graphs here, here, and here.

More info: Instagram | MattShirleyCharts.com | Facebook | Twitter | Patreon

#1

Remember Waiters?

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Sum Guy
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's always nice to see an article about someone you have been following on Instagram for a while

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#2

Lockdown Circles. Came Up With This While Talking To Someone Important To Me About Work Life Right Now. It’s Tough Out There.

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Robert T
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Should be a "time spent on Bored Panda" beteen "inability to focus on work" and "guilt for doing no work"

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To find out how the creator of the widely popular charts and graphs is doing at the moment, Bored Panda reached out to Matt Shirley for an interview. “It's actually quite difficult to keep up with current events that might make for good charts without it driving me crazy,” he told us when asked how he keeps his charts ever-relevant.

“I tend to not pay attention to the news too awfully much because I find that it's not exactly great for my mental health, so I have to pick and choose the types of current events I talk about with my charts,” Matt explained.

#4

I Think This Is The Most Annoying Thing That Happens At A Grocery Store

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María Hermida
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

They are not dumb. They are machines. If they act dumb is because the designer or the person who programmed the software are dumb and didn't think of all the options.

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Gary
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Those machines are doing people out of jobs for corporate profit by getting customers to do the job for free. Refuse to use them.

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Solidhog
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Why they still use these machines still baffles me. It reduces the amount of customers you can serve and they lose so much money through theft. Why would any business carry on using them?

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María Hermida
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The money they lose though theft if much less than the money they had to pay on salaries, medical leaves, insurance, etc. Machines don't need weekends or holidays, don't get sick, don't go to the toilet, don't take a break for lunch, don't take time off to look after their children or elderly, don't complain and don't ask for their rights. In the long run, a machine is infinitely cheaper than a human. In short: money, as usual.

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Shelby P
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

or the other side of this cycle, when you've run out of room in the bagging area and so you start putting things in your cart and the machine is yelling at to to replace item removed from bagging area.

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Jerry Conaway
Community Member
2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The only thing about these machine that pisses me off is at WAL MART they have a person stationed at the door to riffle through your stuff after you have checked out. I have told a couple of them that if they are concerned about people not checking out their items, the should have a human cashier doing it.

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María Hermida
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Well, honestly, unless it's a security person or a police officer, I wouldn't let anybody touch my shopping. If you think I've stolen something, prove it or call the police.

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tomruns12
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I havent seen a machine that has this problem in over 5 years.

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Daniel Atkins
Community Member
2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

When they first came out Walmart had uncooked bacon labeled as fragile and you could not proceed until you removed the bacon.

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“In general,” Matt said, “I like to do things that are light-hearted so it's natural that some of the more light-hearted news stories are right up my alley. And then, of course, I can always draw off my own experiences, whether it's working from home or dealing with isolation or my thoughts on anxiety.”

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#6

After A Week Off I’m Back With Another Chart About Sleep.

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Kristal
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Unfortunately. People forget that most services/businesses are a 24 hour operation; airports, goods deliveries (truck, train, plane, boat), emergency services, etc. Pretty much everything 'daytime society' needs to function, night shift people provide.

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When Matt started his Instagram account @mattsurelee, he was doing charts on white boards. “This worked great at first, but eventually I found that I would often make mistakes that were almost impossible to fix on a white board and I moved to more graphic design charts.”

The graphic design charts gave him the flexibility to do multiple drawings in a day and reuse the templates, “so I don't have to measure and draw the same pie charts or tables over and over again.” Plus, Matt likes the variety of colors he can use digitally.

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“I absolutely didn't expect anything when I started. But it's very nice to find out that other people see the world in the same way I do,” Matt said humbly.

Incredibly, just like on the day he started, Matt is still making at least one graph per day. “If these charts see the light of day is another story. A lot of them turn out to be not up to snuff and are hidden away somewhere on my computer,” he added.

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#9

Moving Is Fun. Personal Update On My Patreon If You Want To Read It (Link In Bio)

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Sonia Bailey
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

As someone who hads moved house recently, I can attest to this chart's accuracy!

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#10

TV, Why Are You The Way That You Are?

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Ozacoter
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Also why are movies so f*****g bad with noise? The music and sound is really loud but the dialogs are usually very low. Thats the reason why I usually watch everything with subtitles so I dont need to bmhave a headache to understand the dialogs.

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Also, Matt’s amazing book “A Visual Learner's Guide to Being a Grown-Up” has just come out like a day ago, giving his fans a real treat in Matt’s signature tables, lists, and charts for all the visual learners out there. Check it out right here.

“Additionally, I am in the very beginning stages of working on an idea for a board game and have a couple of new Instagram accounts that should come out soon,” Matt said, so stay tuned!

#14

Sa(N)ta(N)

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River Webb
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

santa's a creep, he sneaks into your home while you sleep and basically stalks you all year

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#17

Why Are We Like This

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Kristal
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Okay but what if Doing the Thinking is required? Like researchers :D

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#18

🚛🚙🚗🚕🚎🚜

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#19

I’m Doing A Q And A For @writers.blok Tonight At 6pm Pt. If I Could Procrastinate It I Would.

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𝙸'𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚘𝚋!
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My issue is that I know it's easy and I fully understand what I need to do... I just don't want to do it 😂

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#23

I Wrote A Book! It Comes Out April 6th And It Includes A Ton Of New Charts For All My Visual Learning Friends Who Would Rather Look At A Venn Diagram Than Read Words. I’m Extremely Proud Of It And Can’t Wait For People To See It.

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Ozacoter
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We need a colour for crying and another one for "not feeling an adult"

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#26

My High School Science Class

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Ozacoter
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2 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I agree. I loved my science subjects in school and found them fascinating but 90% of what we learned was useless. Non biologists/geologists do not need to be able to recognize all the different kinds of rocks or knowing the structure of vegetable tissues. They need to learn first aid, nutrition, sex education, how menstruation works, basic anatomy, why antibiotics dont work in viruses, why vaccines are important etc.

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#27

I Asked You Guys One Word To Describe The Folks From Your State. This Is What We Game Up With.

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Julia King
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

As a New Yorker I can say that you are right about us. We are very loud.

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#28

Lots Of Requests To Post This. Tag A Coworker. (Btw This Was A Commission, If You’d Like A Custom Chart Email Me: Mattsurelee@gmail.com, I Have Some Spots Open)

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Indra Servo
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

the nicest & smartest employee usually resign in 1 year because they can just search for better job

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#29

I Made This Chart And 21 Others For @adamgrant’s Excellent New Book “Think Again” That Comes Out Today! I’m Truly Honored He Asked Me To Contribute And I Can’t Wait For Everyone To Check It Out.

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River Webb
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I once heard a fact form my cousin's brother in law's sister's bestie way back in 2013 and I still stand by that fact to this day

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#30

Was Thinking About Anxiety This Weekend And Made This Anxiety Bar Chart.

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Note: this post originally had 116 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.