Love them or hate them, the Beatles were one of the most influential bands of the last 50 years. They continue to gain new fans and influence bands to this day, as evidenced by the hype that surrounded the digitally remastered release of the entire Beatles collection last year. So this post is for you music lovers.

Designer Michael Deal has created a visual exploration of the Beatles through a series of infographics which charts everything from authorship and collaboration to self-reference and song keys. I am a huge fan of well designed infographics, and these are fantastic examples of how to do it right.

When you look at sections like Authorship and Collaboration Color patterns in the chart offer clues about the band’s gradual fracturing as each band member becomes more independent.

What you notice are things like how the red bars (jointly written songs) decrease in the second half of the timeline. Split-color bars slowly give way to solid bars of a single color as the band ages and matures. You also see how George Harrison began to compose more music as he matured as a songwriter, signified by the increase in green bars.

The site linked at the top of this post, takes you directly to the charts, where the designer explains in detail how the charts work. Each of the images below are about 17 inches wide and suitable for printing. Click on the image to see a larger view and then save it to your computer to print it at full size.