Posts Tagged ‘Visualization’
Now see here…
Readers know that your correspondent is intrigued (OK, to the point of obsessed) with data visualization. Previous missives have featured hero examples (like this one and this one) and compelling collections (like Flowing Data and Information is Beautiful). Readers will also recall that your correspondent has a soft spot for the periodic table (as, for instance, here, here, or of course here)…
Now, from Visual Literacy, a synthesis of the two– “A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods“:
Mouse over any of the “elements” (on the original) to see to an example of the approach in question. Very helpful… and very cool!
Update to the Periodic Table of Typefaces: From Julian Hansen, a (very amusing) flow chart for picking the type style appropriate to any need. And from Typography for Lawyers… well, precisely that (replete with cautionary examples).
As we remind ourselves that our mothers were right, that appearances do matter, we might lay a particularly elegant wreath for Donald Deskey, who died on this date in 1989. An inventor (e.g., the laminate Weldtex) and designer, Deskey championed Art Deco (he designed Radio City Music Hall, for instance) and probably did more than anyone else to make industrial design a profession (he was a founder of the American Society of Industrial Designers and of its predecessor, the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen). His impact survives him; among his lasting designs: the goose-necked street lamp that he designed for New York City…
…and the Crest toothpaste tube, designed for Proctor and Gamble.
Victorian visualization…
Tableau De L’Histoire Universelle depuis la Creation jusqu’a ce jour
…a fold-out print depicting all of human history from the time of creation (4693 BC = Adam & Eve; the great flood = 3300 BC) up to the date of publication (1858 by Eug. Pick, Paris). Vignettes of historically significant people, places and buildings etc are arranged along the borders.
Earlier posts (e.g., here and here) will have tipped readers to your correspondent’s weakness for charts and visualizations. A wonderful collection at Bibliodyssey reminds one that interesting infographics have a long and storied history… and that earlier examples can be a mesmerizingly beautiful as their successors…
Tinted drawing showing the comparative lengths of rivers and heights of mountains worldwide. The first text page in this volume has the legend for this sheet.
In: ‘General Atlas Of The World: Containing Upwards Of Seventy Maps…’ by Adam & Charles Black, Sidney Hall and William Hughes, 1854; published in Edinburgh by A & C Black.
See them all at Bibliodyssey’s “Victorian Infographics.”
And for readers who are also listeners to This American Life, may enjoy This American Infographic– a project of E. J. Fox to create a visualization for every episode of that extraordinary series; e.g., Episode 5:
As we chart our progress, we might pause to celebrate a different kind of visualization coup: it was on this date in 1944 that Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat– based on a story by John Steinbeck– premiered at the Astor Theater in New York. Starring the divine Tallulah Bankhead (along with William Bendix and Walter Slezak), Lifeboat was remarkable for confining all action to the space of the small boat awash in the ocean…
and for including the director’s trademark cameo in a newspaper ad for weight loss that one of the characters reads.
