Category: Infographics

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

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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.

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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.

 

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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Atlas heaven

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

Quotemark1  I don’t cry often, but when this gem finally arrived on my desk, I nearly did. QuoteMark2

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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.)

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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”.

 

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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.

Nigel Holmes on humor

A WARMER APPROACH TO INFOGRAPHICS.

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(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?

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

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(From the New York Observer.)

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(From U.S. Airways magazine.)

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(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.

 

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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.

 

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(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

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“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

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“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

 

When infographic dinosaurs roamed the Earth

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

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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.
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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.
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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”.

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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.
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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.
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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.

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Masks on or off?

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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.

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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

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.”

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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.

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.)

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

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And details from two of my graphics:

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See the full graphics here:

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The Hollywood effect

HOW MOVIES INFLUENCE THE REAL WORLD OF INFORMATION DESIGN.

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(From “The Avengers.” © Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures. See more at: http://cargocollective.com/jayse/Avengers)

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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(From “Oblivion.” © Universal Pictures. See more at: http://www.gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX)

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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(From “Oblivion.” © Universal Pictures.)

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(From “The Avengers.” © Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures.)

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(From “The Avengers.” © Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures.)

StarTrek

(From “Star Trek Into Darkness.” © Paramount Pictures. See more at: http://www.rudyvessup.com/star-trek-2-holographic-glass-ui/)

Pictograms on poles

MY (HEALTHY) OBSESSION WITH FLAGS.

I used to collect full-size flags. My hallway looked like a corridor at the United Nations Headquarters. So it struck a chord when I saw Oscar Pernefeldt’s design for a world flag. Why don’t we have a flag that represents the idea of Planet Earth? The closest thing out there right now flies over U.N. buildings. Designing a flag that represents our world is a noble idea, and will be useful when we are moving freely around the galaxy. Talking of warp factor 10, a much larger area is represented by Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets symbol. Clearly inspired by the earthbound United Nations.

The International Flag of Planet Earth, by Oscar Pernefeldt. From the website: “Centered in the flag, seven rings form a flower—a symbol of the life on Earth. The rings are linked to each other, which represents how everything on our planet, directly or indirectly, are linked. The blue field represents water which is essential for life—also as the oceans cover most of our planet’s surface. The flower’s outer rings form a circle which could be seen as a symbol of Earth as a planet and the blue surface could represent the universe.”

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United Nations. Olive branches and azimuthal projection.

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Not the Klingons’ favorite flag.

Back to Earth

The Flag of Europe represents the European Union.  A design by Rem Koolhaas in 2012, (really just a concept), was dubbed the “barcode.” It includes all the colors of the (then) 15 EU member states’ flags.

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Perhaps the world’s most unusual current flag shape comes from Nepal. The other day, a Nepali-born taxi driver was pointing this out proudly to me. (Yes, I talk to cab drivers about flags.) No traditional rectangle here. Centuries ago, it was two separate pennants.

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Then there’s the square Swiss flag, so often represented as a rectangle (it matches the others better that way), and that mistake drives eight million people crazy.

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Flags are pictograms on poles. At least, they are in Grimwade’s world.