Timeline

VISUALIZING SEQUENCES.

Space travels 54 years of exploration. Click on the image for a larger version. By Sean McNaughton, Samuel Velasco (5W Infographics), Matthew Twombly, Jane Vessels and Amanda Hobbs for National Geographic magazine.

Decay Fruit soon displays the passage of time. Slowing down this process is the subject of a lot of research.

Cell line An African-American woman’s stem cells (taken without her knowing in 1951) have had a huge effect on medical science. Click on the image for a larger version. By Walbaum, for WIRED magazine.

Cellphone history By Fremtidens Business.

Routine Wendy MacNaughton captures the anxiety of the creative process.

Time-lapse Flowers opening. Click on the image to see the video. I think it’s worth it.

Building a massive container ship. See the video here: https://bit.ly/3aab4WR

The view from my New York studio, which was a room in my apartment. (I’m not there any more, but I miss it.)
Click on the image to see the video.

Eight by Eight: Issue 12

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME IN PRINT.

Time for another issue of Eight by Eight magazine, full of great content for the football (soccer) fan. Design and illustration of peerless quality is expected now, and here it comes. Below, some spreads from the issue. Subscribe here: https://shop.8by8mag.com/collections/subscribe

Below is a very big bar chart about the best supported teams in Europe that I put together for this issue. (A thank you to the super-talented Grace Lee for design improvements.)

Professor Grimwade, from the University of Eight by Eight, doing his teaching thing. Pay attention, no cheating!

Leonardo who?

THE FIRST, AND THE GREATEST, GRAPHICS DIRECTOR

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was so ridiculously multi-talented, that it’s hard to believe he existed. Leonardo often wrote backwards for reasons that are not entirely clear, perhaps as he was left-handed, it meant that he didn’t smudge the ink. Anyway, a genius of his magnitude can do whatever the hell he wants. The Vitruvian Man (above) is just one of many iconic images Leonardo created (the Mona Lisa is top of that list). The drawing is based on the relationship of ideal human proportions to geometry, as described by the Roman architect, Vitruvius, who considered them to be fundamental to classical architecture.
References to the Vitruvian Man appear all over the place. An example: NASA’s extravehicular activity (EVA) arm patch.

From the Codex Leicester (also known as the Codex Hammer), which is owned by Bill Gates. 18 sheets of paper full of ideas and observations about topics like water, geology, and light from the moon.

“Salvator Mundi,” sold for $450.3 million on November 15, which is a new world auction record for any piece of art.

We all know about Leonardo’s many inventions: flying machines, solar power etc. In an era of conflicts all over Europe, it’s not surprising that war machines were on his mind. Hence this design for a giant crossbow. Note the size of the operator.

Had this weapon ever been put into use, the results would have been interesting.

Perhaps it’s time to get your Leonardo action figure. The quote on the box says it all.

Photographs above © Sergey Novikov/123rf, Burmakin Andrey/123rf

Global

OWNING PLANET EARTH.

Black and white world Nendo’s Corona globe is the one that I want. goo.gl/qg3nmk

Dymaxion This magnetic folding globe uses the projection that was invented by Buckminster Fuller (see below). goo.gl/YhaVhZ

The Dymaxion (or Fuller) map projection (1943) portrays land areas without obvious distortion, and it doesn’t split the continents.

Pin it Mark where you’ve traveled with the Here Countries Globe, which comes with 50 red pins. This globe also uses a triangle-based projection. goo.gl/5Pxqwi

Bean bags Why not sit on the Earth or on the stars? goo.gl/EUfWHD

Moon lamp A LED ring rotates around a lunar globe to recreate the phases of the moon that we see from Earth. The accurate surface detail is based on topographic data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. goo.gl/kmYdxT

Square world Download the template and make an Earth cube: goo.gl/cYyDmN

Earth cake Bake an edible depiction of the Earth’s interior: goo.gl/bGuwuj

Previous posts about globes:
The 42nd Street globe: https://wp.me/p7LiLW-17y
The globemaker: https://wp.me/p7LiLW-qD
Mega-globes: https://wp.me/p7LiLW-3D

Aerial visions

BERNHARD LANG REVEALS THE PATTERNS WE MAKE.

With their straight-down viewpoints that create almost two-dimensional scenes, Bernhard’s photographs reveal surprising insights about our effect on the planet. Above, Adria, an Italian beach resort. Below, fish farms in Greece.

Suburban houses in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

The “Mar de Plástico,” a massive greenhouse complex in southeastern Spain.

Rowers near Munich, Germany.

Industrial storage in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Miami, Florida.

A marble quarry in Carrara, Italy.

Tulip fields in the Netherlands.

See many more images on Bernhard’s website: http://www.bernhardlang.de

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blangphoto/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Photography-Bernhard-Lang-251075035099935/

All photographs © Bernhard Lang.

Symbol art

CREATIVE PICTOGRAMS.

In my office, I have a beautiful soccer ball, designed by Ryan McGinness. And no one is kicking this “Bucky Ball” down the VisCom corridor.
I will never even take it out of the box. Ryan uses pictograms creatively in his artworks and installations: http://www.ryanmcginness.com

Sign Trees (2015), a set of reflective signs shown at the Silas Marder Gallery in Bridgehampton, New York.

Wayfinding (2017), an art installation at a Detroit skate park.

Hand-crafted symbols have a lot of appeal, as you can see in the examples below.

Balloons Masayoshi Matsumoto’s animals. https://www.instagram.com/isopresso_balloon/


Flowers Insects by Raku Inoue. https://www.instagram.com/reikan_creations/


Axes These hatchets are hand-painted by Peter Buchanan-Smith. http://www.bestmadeco.com

Breakfasts Instagram users submitted their favorites, and Reina Saur made 100 of them out of paper. One each day, until the project was completed. A selection of them are shown below.

http://www.reinasaur.com

DNA

PRINTING THE GENOME, AND THE DOUBLE HELIX STORAGE SOLUTION.

The Wellcome genome bookcase 118 books, each a thousand pages long, contain the 3.4 billion letters of DNA code that make up the human genome, displayed in a type size of 4.5 pts. The bookcase is part of the Welcome Collection in London.


Photograph by Russ London.

The books are numbered for the 22 pairs of chromosomes, plus X and Y. Below, the male karotype.


National Human Genome Research Institute.

Ultimate storage Our DNA carries all this information with an incredible degree of compactness. As a result, researchers are developing techniques to use DNA to store data. A single gram could potentially hold 215 million gigabytes. The artificially created strands can be read by sequencing machines. Another big plus is that DNA has the potential to last for hundreds of thousands of years, if stored correctly.

Below, the first published illustration of the double helix (in “Nature,” 1953), illustrated by Odile Crick. She was married to Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of the DNA molecule with James Watson.

A more developed version from “Nature” in 1968.

A replica of Crick and Watson’s original DNA model.


MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

Crick’s original drawing.

Data storage footnote Back in the early 1980s, 10 megabyte storage was really something (and really expensive).
That’s about $10,000 in today’s dollars.

This computer from the late 1970s cost $24,000 (adjusted for inflation).

Color wheels

TRADITIONAL THEORY FOR ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS.

Above,“Farbkreis” from “The Art of Color” (1961), by Johannes Itten, a Swiss painter and theorist who taught at the Bauhaus. This 12-hue circle is made up of three primary, three secondary and six tertiary colors.

“The Color Star” (1986) has eight disks with cut-outs that can be rotated over Itten’s star to compare colors.

Now we have so many excellent digital color aids, like Adobe Color: https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/

But… I still remember art theory classes way back in art college. They were not that easy (we used to moan about them), but in retrospect, it was important knowledge. The basic concepts: primary, secondary, and tertiary colors (primary and secondary mixed). Hue, saturation, temperature, and so on. I know I sound like a dinosaur (and I do certainly fit that description), but I wish my students had a color theory class. These are valuable lessons to learn.

Color Wheel 101: Complimentary colors are opposite each other. Analagous colors are next to each other. White, which represents all color, is in the center.

Some historical examples:

From “The Natural System of Colors” by Moses Harris, 1776.

From “Theory of Colors” by Johann Wolfgang von Geothe,1810.

From “The Principles of Harmony and Contrast of Colors” by Michel Chevreul, 1839. A 72-part circle.

“Color Panel” by Wilhelm von Bezold from “The Theory of Colors in Arts and Crafts,” 1874.

There are many online color wheels like this one, in RGB: goo.gl/xeK49A

And analog ones are available, like this: goo.gl/CQjvDd

A previous post about the color books used to choose CMYK colors in the pre-computer era: https://wp.me/s7LiLW-cmyk

Jack Medway

A CHANGE OF INFOGRAPHIC IDENTITY.

Above, Professor Jack Medway, a leading authority on data visualization and infographics. Below, his famous blog.

For IC14, the Dutch infographics conference, the organizers decided (correctly) that as I had presented at the six previous conferences, it was time for someone new. Then Frédérik Ruys had the idea that I could still be part of the program if I appeared as someone else. A change of identity began there. Frédérik created a blog so that I could rant on about infographics for a few weeks before the conference. As an opinionated professor from the (fictitious) University for the Graphic Arts in London. The blog title was my chance to make an over-the-top statement, which later became the more focused “Infographics for the People.”
It’s still online: http://www.jackmedway.co.uk

There was even a Facebook page for Jack.

Below, the conference program, with two very big data viz names in front of me.

I promoted a fake yet-to-be-published book: “Information and Art” on the blog…

…and referred to my real self in one of the posts.

On the day of the conference, I appeared on stage after being given a new look (and a lot more hair) by a professional makeup artist. A video of the transformation (in reverse) is here: goo.gl/d27R8Q

Some people were fooled, some were skeptical, but it was a lot of fun. I even criticized my real self during the presentation. “I’m sick of hearing Grimwade’s opinions on infographics. What makes him such a big authority?” (To be honest, that has a ring of truth about it, so let’s move quickly on.)

Why Jack Medway? Jack is a form of John, and I lived for a number of years in the Medway Towns, which are a group of towns on the River Medway in Kent, a county in south-eastern England.

UGA is a reference to UCA, the University for the Creative Arts, which is the modern name for the place where I studied Graphic Design. I used Walthamstow Town Hall as a stand-in for the UGA campus. (Photograph by Russ London)

Pop-up

MASTERFUL PAPER ENGINEERING BY PETER DAHMEN.


Above, a promotional piece for Lexon, a creative printing company. (Graphic design by Bigwave Media. Image courtesy of Highcon.)

Peter starts working with rough prototypes as he develops these precise folding designs. “Don’t give up if you fail. I fail a lot of times.”
And it’s all about the reveal of the design: “I’m most interested in the movement. Make the movement the beautiful thing. I call it the magical moment.”

Below, six personal projects.

Flower & Crystal. The client was Highcon for the trade show Print China 2015.

A color version for the trade show DRUPA 2016 in Düsseldorf.

Also for Highcon.


For Volksbank Vorarlberg.

“For Iggesund Paperboard, I created a greeting card, which is also a foldable decoration. It can be used to create thousands of different snowflake images. In total, 44,716 different snowflakes. (If you are interested in the mathematics behind this project, you can download a PDF file with the exact calculations here: https://peterdahmen.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/snowflake-calculations.pdf.)”

Peter’s website has many examples, and tutorials if you want to try making something yourself: https://peterdahmen.de/en/

A video interview: https://vimeo.com/98760774