Information IS beautiful
With the recent release of The Visual Miscellaneum, David McCandless’ graphic review of current events, we have another excuse to explore our ongoing romance with those wonderful enhancements to the printed (or digital) page, infographics.
McCandless, a London based data journalist and information designer has poked a sharp stick at politics and world affairs and given us a gorgeous and provocative exploration of what he’s uncovered. McCandless is an influential contributor to the passionate attachment we seem to have with visual data and his captivating and concise renditions are arguably some most successful in the medium today.
Our fascination with visual data is not new. Since before recorded history we’ve been drawn to communicate ideas visually, initially due to necessity and perhaps later due to economy. This wonderful shorthand often conveys a great deal in a rather compact space but also can promote a greater, more organic and esoteric comprehension through the effective use of colour, shape, texture and the exposure of inherent relationships.
Successful execution of these illustrations can breathe a new clarity and comprehension into a dull and lifeless collection of raw facts and figures. They can stretch our mind to grapple with detail in a delightful and captivating way or hit us with an inarguable fact. They are often illuminating, sometimes provocative and at their best bring clarity and support to information.
One of the most succinctly effective early examples of complex information displayed in a visual manner is Charles Joseph Minard’s portrayal of Napoleon’s costly invasion of Russia. Minard has noted the advance and return of the army in a linear manner reflecting the geography traversed in the campaign while noting temperature and progression of time at the bottom. Through the dramatically diminishing shape he has efficiently conveyed the terrible sacrifice in this venture – the loss of 412,000 soldiers, more than 97 per cent of the original force.
Information graphics can be particularly effective at efficiently conveying scale and relationships when they remove themselves from a linear format and embrace more dynamic shapes. This 2007 poster designed by Peter Crnokrak of British studio The Luxury of Protest graphs the more than 85 recorded covers of Joy Division’s seminal track Love will tear us apart. The radial approach is not only aesthetically pleasing but also displays a wealth of data, including time since original recording, recording artist, release name/date and label.
Perhaps it’s our short attention span in this age of information, but I would venture that the majority of us prefer glancing at these engrossing and dynamic visual bites to scrutinising charts of data and pages of statistics. Morgan Clendaniel, deputy editor at GOOD Magazine explained the appeal of infographics in her magazine in similar terms, “We always found that there’s info lurking behind everything in the world. You’ll read an article, but you won’t see the data behind it – nor would you want to. Nobody wants to read an Excel file.” Indeed.
This visual obsession with data has even spilled into the corners of private life. There is currently an ongoing trend to document and dissect one’s personal life in a graphical manner. Nicholas Feltron has been chronicling the minutia of his life for a number of years in his beautifully elegant Feltron Annual Report. Similarily, a number of individuals have created visual curriculum vitaes, like Ritwick Dey’s Life Map which charts 18 years of his life in a colourfully stratified linear progression. Our improved ability to access and record data seems to have only fanned the flames of our fascination with information and the delight in displaying its intricacies and secrets.
The tantalising aspect of visualising data is that its challenges can prompt us to explore more creative and unconventional solutions to promote clarity. These graphics are not merely a rendering of supplied material but a probing under the crust of fact to better illuminate what appears on the surface and expose the correlations and patterns that make up its guts. Infographics have evolved to become much more than a visual accompaniment to a written article but the fundamental discourse itself.
Further reading:
Sep 29th
2010
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