Information Design Watch
May 20, 2008, 9:34 am
Obesity, Organ by Organ
By Henry Woodbury
Click on a body part and get grossed out.
I must say that much of the effectiveness of this presentation is not in the virtue of the content, but in the visceral impact of the imagery. Organs, guts, that sort of stuff. Add to that the fact that the cutaway child, mouth agape, is illustrated to look ill.
May 12, 2008, 3:42 pm
How Time Travel Works
By Henry Woodbury
The Wikipedia entry on the 2004 film Primer provides this helpful diagram:
If I just had the time, I’d diagram Robert Heinlein’s By His Bootstraps.
May 5, 2008, 2:05 pm
Harvard Business Review Discovers “Emerging Science of Visualization”
By Mac McBurney
Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas, the two best-known creators of IBM Research’s Many Eyes, brief business execs on the benefits of collaborative information visualization.
Our research has found that the compelling presentation of data through visualization’s advanced techniques generates a surprising volume of impassioned conversations. Viewers ask questions, make comments, and suggest theories for why there’s a downward trend here or a data cluster there. That level of engagement could foster the kind of grassroots innovation CEOs dream of.
The article is available in the May 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review and for free online (at least for now):
You’ll also find Viégas and Wattenberg in MoMA’s Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition.
- History Flow, their 2003 visualization of changes in Wikipedia: http://moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/106
- Thinking Machine 4, by Wattenberg and Marek Walczak, shows a computer’s possible future chess moves. http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/#/283/
Finally, for even more info-vis star-watching, Viégas and two other designers will join John Maeda (an info design rockstar if ever there was one) later this month for IN/VISIBLE: Graphic Data Revealed. From the event’s blurb:
The visual ethics required in information graphics increase the designer’s burden from faithful executor to editorial arbiter. How do design choices affect the integrity of the data being portrayed?
If you see me there, say hello: http://www.aigany.org/events/details/08FD/
May 2, 2008, 10:02 am
A New (Old) Subway Map
By Henry Woodbury
The New York Times City Room blog reports that Men’s Vogue will publish an updated version of Massimo Vignelli’s iconic 1972 subway map:
With its 45- and 90-degree angles and one color per subway line, the 1972 subway map by Massimo Vignelli was divorced from the cityscape, devoid of street or neighborhood names. It was criticized because its water was not blue and its parks were not green. Paul Goldberger called it “a stunningly handsome abstraction” that “bears little relation to the city itself.”
New:
Old:
Part of a continuing series:
- New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards
- Looking at the Real Underground
- The Tube as Template
- Update: The Tube as Template