Category: Infographics

October 17, 2016

Jaime Serra’s game-changer

TWENTY YEARS AGO, I SAW THIS MAP AND I KNEW THAT INFOGRAPHICS WERE ENTERING A RICHER PHASE.

Genocide in Rwanda. (Click on the image for a larger version.)

Back in 1996, when Jaime put this graphic on my desk, I could see that the gap had been bridged from the computer-generated graphics of that time back to our rich, artistic infographic heritage. Art and information were brought together in a beautiful form, with function intact. As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the milestones of late twentieth-century information design. Jaime went on to produce numerous award-winning graphics at Clarín (see below), and many of you know them very well, but this one is really where it started.

Here are Jaime’s thoughts about the graphic. Written a few weeks ago, with the hindsight of the years in-between.

“Some background to the subject: In 1994 the Rwandan government, controlled by the Hutu community, were responsible for the murder of between 500,000 and one million Tutsis, equivalent to 75% of the population of that ethnic group.

A year after the genocide, a Clarín team traveled to the refugee camps in the area. The infographic contribution to the coverage was just a small locator map. But it grew into a page in the Sunday magazine, mainly because of the graphic treatment. Pre-dating my better-known works such as “La Balena Franca” (Editor’s note: Gold medal winner at the Malofiej Awards.), this map was one of the first examples where I was able to capture my personal graphic style in a complete and radical way.

ARGENTINA

A year earlier, I had arrived in Argentina to create a graphics department at Clarín, a daily newspaper with the most readers in the Spanish-speaking world. At that time, there were no infographics in Argentine journalism, and although that was on the one hand a serious handicap, it also meant that I had the freedom to rethink the foundations on which we had built the profession in recent years.

Back then, the general style of infographics was always the same, regardless of the subject. A somewhat cold, sterile style created with vector software. I was convinced that we were wasting a primary way to attract readers—aesthetics. So ready to take some risks, I gave Clarín a complete style manual that would be rigidly applied, while also starting a concept which I called “aesthetics and ethics” for the numerous exceptions where the graphic style manual would not be used. This idea was not a style, but rather the absence of it. Each infographic would be treated according to it’s subject matter. Using this approach, the Clarín team created, more or less successfully, each individual infographic, whether it was about rubber, Houdini, or the Anne Frank House.

Looking back, I think that this was the natural evolution of my understanding of the components of infographics (illustration, information and design). Clarín was the place where my previous work and the new path came together. (Click on the infographics for larger versions.)

A clear precursor is the double-page spread (below) on the 1992 Olympic Games for El Periódico de Catalunya (where I had worked before moving to Clarín). It won my first Gold Malofiej medal. The illustrations that explain the sports of the ancient Olympic Games are hand-drawn with a scratchboard technique, using a stroke and color inspired by images of ceramics from ancient Greece. Peter Sullivan had made the point about hand-drawn elements in his book “Information Graphics in Colour” (published by IFRA in 1993), but I don’t think that many people followed the path he was suggesting.

While I was using the idea of a stylebook and the option to go outside it, I had another thought that would take me further: Could I use my own style in infographics, the same as I used in my most personal work, without compromising the information, and perhaps even improve it?

So with a graphic style influenced by illustrators like Henrik Drescher (http://www.hdrescher.com/), designer David Carson’s work in the magazine Ray Gun (http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/), and Anselm Kiefer (an artist who still fascinates me today), the strong content of the Rwanda map was an opportunity to explore the answers.

NEW YORK

John remembers the time we met in his office in Manhattan. I took a trip there to get a reaction to the work I had done in my first year of Clarín. That was how I met, among others, Charles Blow, graphics director of the New York Times; Joe Zeff, graphics director at Time Magazine and John, graphics director at Conde Nast Traveler magazine.

To be honest, I had never heard of Blow or Zeff. It was how they worked that interested me. But I knew John’s work very well, although I did not really know Condé Nast Traveler, apart from the infographics. If Carson, Dresher and Kiefer were the role models for my style, Grimwade was my main reference for infographics. My objective was to apply my personal aesthetic to the communication skills that I had learned from observing how these graphics directors worked.

STILL RELEVANT TODAY

At the bottom of the Rwanda map is a hand-drawn date. It’s the year that I made it: 1996. Twenty years later, I wonder (and I asked John this recently), who would be interested in it? His answer: many people, and for me it is more than enough that he thinks it still seems relevant.

(Another editor’s note: I called this blog “Infographics for the People” to draw our attention to the need to add warmth to information presentations, and generally engage the public. Jaime was doing that decades ago.)

sketchbook_ruanda

STYLE SKETCH

In addition to making sketches to plan the layout and content of the infographic, I also made drawings to find the right tone. In my sketchbook, I made this montage with photocopies of two very similar black women. There was no racial difference between Tutsi and Hutu. They are two divisions within the Banyarwanda ethnic group. After the genocide, they were eliminated from a national document which was cut and re-joined with staples. Most of the countless murders that were documented were carried out with machetes. The geographical scale is in French: Rwanda had been a Belgian colony, and this seems to suggest the dimension of human and social costs.”

See more of Jaime’s brilliant work, and the process behind it, here: http://jaimeserra-archivos.blogspot.com.es

October 13, 2016

Infographics for aliens

FIRST CONTACT PROBABLY INVOLVES SOME INFORMATION DESIGN.

They have green eyes on stalks, and huge brains, but will they like our infographics? This is a question that is often on my mind. The most important graphics of all time could be the ones we’ve attached to a spacecraft, or beamed into space.

Let’s take a look at three classics. (All are from the decade of the interstellar graphic, the 1970s.) And anyway, it’s a good excuse to use NASA’s retro logo.

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INFOGRAPHIC PLAQUE

Pioneer 10, launched in 1972, was the first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter. By 2003, it was 7.5 billion miles (12 billion kilometers) out into space, when contact was lost. This gold-anodized aluminum plaque is attached to it, thanks to the efforts of Carl Sagan. The design is by Sagan’s wife, Linda Salzman, who had a tight deadline. There were only three weeks between the original idea and making the engraving. So perhaps we should make some allowance for that. (Incidentally, Pioneer 11 also carries a plaque.)
There was a lot of debate at the time about the nude figures. Some people wanted them to have modesty rectangles added. Others felt that although they were supposed to be “representative of all mankind,” they only represent Caucasians. And then there’s the “We come in peace” gesture, which unfortunately means “Go to hell” in Greece and Turkey. If the aliens take this sign the wrong way, we can perhaps expect a visit like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxVxtvJWoqs

pioneer10_plaque

A MESSAGE TO THE STARS

In 1974, the Arecibo Radio Telescope aimed a radio message at the star cluster M13, which is 25,000 light years away. Why there? Because it was in the sky at the time of the broadcast. The 1,679 binary digits (approximately 210 bytes) took less than three minutes to send. Obviously, the information is in black and white, but is colorized here to show the different components. Carl Sagan was involved with this one too.
It will only take about 25,000 years to get to M13, and 25,000 years after that before we get an answer. Unless the aliens are way ahead of us in terms of technology.

radio_message

THE GOLDEN RECORD

Another Carl Sagan-led project. Voyager 1 and 2 both carried a 12-inch disk, complete with cartridge, needle and diagrammatic instructions on the cover for playing the record. Of course, the aliens who capture Voyager in their tractor beam may not need those if they happen to have a compatible stereo handy. It’s very much an idea forever rooted in 1970s technology. The record contained spoken “Greetings to the Universe” in multiple languages, animal sounds, music, and a mixed-bag of images (see examples below). Quite what our bug-eyed potential friends will make of them remains to be seen. Voyager 1 is currently about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from Earth. And it will be 40,000 years before the spacecraft gets close to another planetary system, so perhaps we don’t need to worry.

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Fetus diagram.

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Children with globe.

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Demonstration of licking, eating and drinking. This one scares me, and probably our alien audience too.

October 10, 2016

The rough idea

PLANNING INFOGRAPHICS WITH SKETCHES.

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I mentioned my reasoning about rough sketches for infographics in an earlier post (http://johngrimwade.com/blog/2016/09/26/when-infographic-dinosaurs-roamed-the-earth/), and it’s not a very original idea, as I pointed out.

I’ve never considered myself to be very good at drawing, and I definitely don’t make these sketches so that they can be considered as art. A few friends have had one framed, and although I must admit that I am flattered, I’m also slightly uncomfortable with the idea. In my mind, they’re just the first stage of an infographic process. No more, no less.

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angkorwat_rough

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October 6, 2016

Atlas heaven

A RECENT ADDITION TO MICHAEL STOLL’S IMPRESSIVE COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL INFORMATION DESIGN.

I don’t cry often, but when this gem finally arrived on my desk, I nearly did.

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The Atlas to Alexander von Humboldt’s “Kosmos,” by Traugott Bromme. Stuttgart: Krais & Hoffmann, 1851

THE SEARCH

“It began after I heard a radio discussion about the influential German geographer and explorer, Alexander von Humboldt. Although the publications containing his findings dealt with geographical, botanical and weather related topics, there were very few explanatory graphics. Humboldt clearly didn’t intend “Kosmos” to be a textbook for use in schools and universities, even though it was a summary of the talks he had given over the years. Nevertheless, the public recognized the exceptional content of the book, although they probably didn’t understand the details as well as they might. There was a demand for a more popular and explanatory version. Traugott Bromme’s atlas was a companion volume that responded to that need.

After almost a year of searching (these things can take a while), I stumbled upon a copy that was up for auction. No one (except me) made a bid for it, probably because the listing describing the item contained many spelling errors.”

MY OWN COPY.

“The atlas measures only about 13 by 11 inches, is leather bound, and except for the foreword (which was set in movable type), all of the 42 pages have maps, diagrams and charts. They are steel engraved in such impressive detail, that you need a magnifying glass to discover the smallest spills of lava or rocks, thrown out by a volcano. Then you realize that all the engravings were water-colored by hand. You can feel the passion and dedication of the author and the publisher.

These two plates are my favorites”. (For larger images, click on the examples.)

The design of the Earth.

“An elegant symmetrical layout, with integrated descriptive text elements. In the top center of the page, Bromme explains, in two lines of text, the visual effects of a curved surface. A sailor approaching a harbor first sees a mountain peak before he sees the shore, harbor walls etc. The two lines of description curve with the diagram. We know this convention from the way river names are shown on a map, but here it is used to link the words to the image. The colored chart at the bottom tells us immediately how the Earth’s surface divides between land and sea, and how many square miles of land are in each continent”.

A comparative overview of the biggest lakes on Earth, in relation to the Black Sea.

“Each lake is precisely outlined, with its size in square miles, position above sea level, length and width, major inlets, and location so the interested reader can find it on any map. You could almost miss this, but the lakes carry small numbers, which rank them by size, and they are subdivided into Western and Eastern Hemispheres. A nice addition is the small circle, that appears several times, to indicate how far you would be able to see from a ship’s crow’s nest.

I don’t think the slow food movement results in great food all the time, but I do think that, on this occasion, a slow, and well-conceived, design and production process resulted in a wonderful atlas”.

See the full atlas here: http://www.e-rara.ch/zut/content/titleinfo/2551486

You can even download the whole book as a pdf from this site.

Michael teaches media theory and infographics at the Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, where he is head of the information design study track in the Department of Design. He has amassed a broad collection of historical information design, that is completely made up of original books, maps and posters. In the digital age, with images at all kinds of sizes all over the internet, he feels it is very important to go to the source and see historical infographics in their original context.

October 3, 2016

Nigel Holmes on humor

A WARMER APPROACH TO INFOGRAPHICS.

kisses

(From Wordless Diagrams: https://www.amazon.com/Wordless-Diagrams-Nigel-Holmes/dp/1582345228)

It’s turned out to be quite a lot of work putting these posts together. Perhaps, upon reflection, a twice-a-week schedule was ambitious. So today, I am very happy to turn the blog over to Nigel Holmes, especially as I consider this a must-read piece. With bells on! No one can make the point about the use of humor more convincingly than him.

In Nigel’s words:

“I’ve long advocated using a touch of humor in information graphics. It’s a way to make friends with readers/viewers/users, helping them to relax when confronted with a string of numbers or obscure scientific concepts. I have tried to make reading and understanding graphics a pleasurable experience instead of homework. If I can raise a smile, I’ll be half way to helping readers see what I’m trying to explain. Many academics and data visualizers hate this approach. They insist on “just the facts.” Any deviation from or addition to the facts is wrong, wrong, just plain wrong! They even invent pseudo-scientific theories that sound important: “optimal data-ink-ratio,” and “chartjunk.” (The same purists do allow elegant design…but that’s another story, one that often results in data art, with no discernable meaning. That’s what I call chartjunk.)

I’m not suggesting that all infographics should be funny. Or any of them, actually. Humor might be the wrong word here. I’m referring more to “good humor”—a good feeling, a sense of friendliness and approachability. Of course some subjects, by their very nature, are serious; there’s no room for humor (of any kind) if the graphic is about cancer, or slavery, or terrorism. But do we have to be so damn serious about everything else? Are we never allowed to help readers understand a subject by making graphics more approachable—by including an element that evokes a smile? Just because a thing is serious, does that automatically make it authoritative? Just because a thing is light-hearted does that mean that it’s not?

strugglesfluid2

(From the New York Observer, left. The Atlantic, right.)

brooklyn_jobs2

(From the New York Observer.)

fall_leaves2

(From U.S. Airways magazine.)

virgins

(From Glamour magazine.)

In the 1930s, Irving Geis used gentle humor in most of the business charts he did for Fortune magazine (and also in his illustrations for Darrell Huff’s still-relevant 1954 book “How to Lie with Statistics”). Geis based the design of most of his Fortune charts on Otto Neurath’s method of lining up little pictograms in place of abstract bars, but he mildly criticized Neurath for insisting that the pictorial symbols remain static images. Geis wanted to “activate” his own pictorial symbols—to give them some life, some humor. Neurath never used humor, because he wanted to demonstrate that his charts were “statistically accountable.” In other words, he was already breaking enough new ground* with his iconic work, and perhaps he thought that touches of humor would dilute it.

geis

What Geis did was to give us all permission to use humor—where appropriate—in serious publications. I followed his lead (it’s all been done before, folks!) when I arrived at Time magazine some 40 years later. I brought with me my own humorous influences, including Edward Lear’s limericks, The Goons (a BBC radio show from the 1950s), Monty Python, Dada—all of which I now realize are based on a sense of the absurd, even nonsense: not exactly examples to emulate when trying to explain things clearly! But there’s nothing wrong with letting your mind wander away from the subject, even into nonsense territory. Looking at data and numbers in different and unexpected ways can lead to a way of presenting data in different, and unexpected, and memorable ways.

paychecks

(From Time magazine.)

In the recent past, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert (and today, John Oliver) have shown us that making fun of politicians and others is the best way to explain what they are up to. John Oliver calls his work “investigative comedy.” We laugh while watching their shows, but we remember the facts. Ridicule is a powerful teaching tool. Adding humor to information graphics isn’t the same thing as the ridicule on fake TV news shows, but it’s related. As long as we remember that the story behind the data in an infographic should never be hidden by humor, but rather can be amplified by it, humor (and approachability) can be that same powerful tool, and one that we designers shouldn’t be shy to use.

Footnote: *OK, all you infographic historians, Neurath wasn’t the first to use rows of pictorial symbols in place of abstract bars. He had a good look at early examples of this kind of statistical visualization (see his autobiography “From Hieroglyphics to Isotope”). However, he and his artist-collaborator Gerd Arntz perfected the art, and their work from the 1930s still looks surprisingly modern.

SOME RELATED LINKS.

Irving Geis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Geis

“How to Lie with Statistics”: https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474992676&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+lie+with+statistics+by+darrell+huff

“From Hieroglyphics to Isotope”: https://www.amazon.com/Hieroglyphics-Isotype-Visual-Autobiography/dp/0907259448/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475174891&sr=1-1&keywords=from+hieroglyphics+to+isotype+a+visual+autobiography

“The Goon Show”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goon_Show

September 26, 2016

When infographic dinosaurs roamed the Earth

YES, THERE WERE SIGNS OF GRAPHIC LIFE BEFORE THE COMPUTER.

A very long time ago, I carried around a bag of technical pens, french curves, ellipse templates and shiny drawing instruments. And somehow I used them to make the examples shown here. All of my early work was produced in black and white. Sometimes I almost thought that the world was really monochrome.

Then came color. Gouache and paintbrushes. The airbrush process (seen here) alternated between euphoria and misery (when the equipment suddenly malfunctioned). The outline of this archer was drawn on a film overlay with a technical pen.

My next infographic phase involved producing “mechanicals.” Artwork that was made up of layers of film over a keyline base layer. Countless hours were spent cutting rubylith film with a sharp knife and peeling away the unwanted areas, or filling in areas with black ink. Adhesive registration marks kept it all aligned, and you needed a lot of them as there was often a substantial stack of layers. The last step was to make a mind-blowing guide for the print technician to piece it all together. Infographics people would impress each other with statements like, “That’s nothing. I did a map yesterday with twenty-two layers”.

Here’s an example of a markup that would guide the technician who put together the color separations for printing. How it was done correctly always amazed me. I have a sense of wonder about it to this day. In a later era, but before I had a computer, I sat with the technician as the graphic was assembled on a computer monitor.

This 1988 spread from Condé Nast Traveler magazine was produced as a mechanical.

Below is a color guide used to revise the graphic after the first set of separations. It accompanied the proof version, which had overlays B and C attached to it.

In the pre-computer era, you could not easily make changes once you were into the artwork phase, so you had to be sure you had a good plan. Or risk a nervous breakdown. The process of making a rough sketch carried over into my computer-generated world. The following statement is not a revelation (many designers much younger than me use this method), but drawings are a great way to both work out ideas, and get feedback from your editor or client, who knows the sketch is the language of a flexible idea.

A rough assembly in Illustrator (or InDesign or Photoshop), with real components, is not the same thing. People can feel intimidated about suggesting changes because you’re presenting something that looks like a finished item. At least, that’s my opinion.

This book is well worth exploring:

https://www.amazon.com/Infographics-Designers-Sketchbooks-Steven-Heller/dp/1616892862

September 22, 2016

Masks on or off?

Masks_headline_1

VISUALIZING CHINA’S AIR QUALITY DATA.

Beautiful Chinese woman wearing a white face mask against pollution or disease

(Photo: iStock.com/BarnabyChambers)

On a trip to China a few months ago, I fortunately did not see much of the legendary smog. However, I was told that, in Beijing and Shanghai, it’s a very good idea to have a mask handy, especially in the winter months. People regularly check the air quality levels (and the forecast) on their phone, or other device.

caqi

I downloaded this iPhone app, “China Air Quality Index,” just in case. Never really needed it though,

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Data history: Below are the difficult days of December 2015, compared to the better days of May 2016. Sent to me by Wendy Huang, and Nicole Cheng, former VisCom M.A. students, who live in Beijing.

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Information online: We seem to be good in Ohio. This is yesterday’s data for Columbus from the Real-time Air Quality website, which is based in Beijing. The world-wide database has air quality metrics for many locations. See if you need to wear a mask here: http://aqicn.org/

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It’s easy to see the value of data visualization that helps with daily life. And, of course, this is just one of many, many everyday examples. I’ll be talking about several other ones in the future.

Footnote: Nigel Hawtin, an infographic friend from the U.K., told me about this project after he saw the original post. It’s the work of RCA masters student, Yijin Huo. Vases that are glazed according to pollution levels in Beijing.

This is the color of the classic Ru porcelain vase.

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And these are pollution-colored ones. Matched to samples of the Beijing sky.

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There’s more information here: https://www.fastcodesign.com/3061434/infographic-of-the-day/these-vases-are-stained-to-match-beijings-polluted-skies

September 19, 2016

Three-dimensional

SETTING THE STANDARD FOR 3D INFOGRAPHICS.

I’ve admired Bryan Christie Design’s work for a long time, and I’ll be featuring examples from their medical and scientific portfolio in future posts. (http://bryanchristiedesign.com) This architectural project features the subdued palette and sophisticated rendering that is the studio’s hallmark. It appeared in WIRED magazine’s Design Issue in May. (The inset diagrams on the second spread are by Jason Lee.)

See the online version of the project here: https://www.wired.com/2016/05/new-sfmoma/

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The Bryan Christie style was a breakthrough after the early years of gaudy, every-color-under-the-sun 3D graphics, and still no one does this restrained approach better. Other people’s renderings appear at first glance to be taking a similar track, but upon close inspection, they usually lack the finesse in color and lighting, and (most importantly) do not work well as information graphics.

Working on the rendering in LightWave.

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Rough versions to fix the viewpoint.

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Renderings of the selected view.

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The final version shown larger.

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In Bryan’s words, “We received the 3D file from the architects and had to make many edits so that we could manage it in our software. Files from sources like this are always very, very heavy and detailed—way too detailed for our needs. (We tend to keep things as pared down as possible). Many angles were sent to the art director, and she choose one. From there we started refining the art. Close to deadline, (as is always the case) the editors decided that they wanted the graphic to show more of the art that’s in the museum. So we had to scramble to build the additional pieces in 3D. It was a nightmare because WIRED had to check on permissions for the works.”

3d_person

This small person is standing on a table in the Bryan Christie studio. He’s escaped from the rendering, thanks to a 3D printer. And he’s important because a sense of scale is vital (see the previous post). Sometimes, when we’re looking at infographics, it seems as if the world is completely devoid of people. That situation is improving, but there are still many examples where the simple addition of a person, or some point of reference, would help us to better understand a size relationship.

September 15, 2016

Lunch (to the same scale)

AN INFOGRAPHIC DISCUSSION IN THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. WHERE ELSE?

Whenever I have lunch with my friend, Nigel Holmes, the infographics master (more about his work in future posts), we meet at the same location: the Heartland Brewery, which is in the Empire State Building. Why? Because it is the perfect place for a discussion about diagrams. After all, we’ve both used the iconic skyscraper so many times to give a sense of scale in our graphics.

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A detail from an Everest graphic designed by Nigel. (Click on image to see full graphic.)

An excerpt from Nigel’s “The Surplus and the Debt” movie. (Click on image to view animation.)

And details from two of my graphics:

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See the full graphics here:

johngrimwade.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/abyss.jpg

johngrimwade.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/bigdig.jpg

September 12, 2016

The Hollywood effect

HOW MOVIES INFLUENCE THE REAL WORLD OF INFORMATION DESIGN.

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I love Hollywood. Every blockbuster fantasy film contains intricate data visualizations and info-interfaces. Huge floating displays, packed with every type of information. Charts are building all over the place, with menus, icons, rotating globes, multiple camera feeds, dashboards, and so on. Even science fiction films that get a mediocre review are a complete hit for me, providing that there’s the usual CGI vision of a future filled with infographics.

The problem is that, obviously, it’s all just for the effect. The creators can do pretty much whatever they want. Nothing is on screen long enough for us to really analyze it. We just see a few key words and the very convincing-looking visuals that go with them. Most of it is very beautiful too. It’s the info-driven world of tomorrow.

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So what’s the problem with Hollywood doing its thing? Of course, inside the movie theater it’s all perfectly fine, but in my world, every part of a presentation should be delivering something worth absorbing. I think there is a carry-over from Tinseltown to the real world of information design. There are so many graphics (especially in corporate areas) that are just an exercise in infographic styling. I’ve been asked many times to do this kind of thing myself. (Full disclosure: I’ve gone ahead and done my share. Apologies for that.) A lot of clients think that as long as the visualization looks like it is in the language of information graphics, then everything’s great. Unfortunately, there is often not much happening in terms of clarity or explanation.

But… I still love those movies.

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