Making the Tableau 10 Torch Relay Viz

Yesterday (6/23/2016) many Tableau fans around world witnessed the launch event of the Tableau 10 International Torch Relay on the internet. Before the event, I was invited to create a viz to mark the historical moment. It is quite an honor for me to create this viz. It gave me the opportunity to be part of it. You can see the viz embedded in the following web pages:

http://www.tableau.com/about/blog/2016/6/follow-tableau-torch-across-world-55877
Below I would like to address some details of the design choices. The viz uses visual tooltips to view larger pictures of the torch bearers and also of the cities. Hover your mouse over the icons and torches to see them.

1.Picture editing using PowerPoint
We used custom shapes for the torchbearers and for the cities (with a torch sign). These custom shapes are created and edited using PowerPoint, which has more picture editing functions than we care to know. I mainly used picture composition for the torchbearer badge and created transparent picture for the torch.

2.Background Images vs Custom Shapes
 Initially I used custom shapes for the city pictures. But the resulting picture was kind of blurred due to likely compression. So, I chose to use background images for the city pictures and the result is much better. The picture resolution seems retained.

3.Animated gif in viz
Usually vizzes look static. Sometimes a little animation may help the theme, depending on the context. So for this exciting event, I decided to spice up  the viz with an animated gif.

Tableau dashboard can accommodate animated gifs in Web Object instead of Image Object. The web object needs a URL pointing to the gif. However I don't have a website to host the gif. Then I loaded the gif to Google Slides.
Then I added the Google Slides in a web object to the dashboard, using the technique described here. I used blank containers to hide the borders of the slide.

That's all. You can download the workbook here.