I recently bought a copy of In/Visible: Graphic Data Revealed.

It's quite good, especially for the NYT-philes out there.

The best thing was this quote - towards the end of the book, which comes as a bit of a shock after the general celebration of visual reasoning.

The book details a panel discussion. The chairperson says "a good friend of mine told me ... a picture's worth a thousand words but it takes words to say that".

I thought that was an excellent quote.

There is a stack of interest (about time) in what visual information can do. Lots of people are getting very excited. Coffee table books are even coming out. The game is afoot.

But.

There is a challenge for information designers to know when to let prose communicate.

It is a challenge to designers to write better (or write).

It is a challenge to all designers to integrate with all parts of their business better - and not just do the 'pictures'.

Or - to do the pictures but to realise that other modes of communication are as important and indeed complimentary to what they are doing.

In print media, where no sound is available, visual articulation of data can sell a complex idea that may be secreted in the text, retrievable only after a satisfying read.

At a conference last year, I chatted to Hans Rosling and when I asked about causation and correlation in information visualisation, he got happily irate. He said "graphics and data-vis will show you the overview - they will show you where to investigate further - but they will not do all the work required of understanding a subject".

Designers sometimes lock themselves away from the client - especially in the bustle of editorial set-ups where draughtsmanship requires some quiet. But don't do it. The readers need a multimodal way of understanding the story.

Research into Information graphics we did at BBC News after 9/11 indicated that the simple graphics were popular. The ones that had a map to show where. A photo for some colour and actuality. A basic diagram to show detail of what had happened. These were much more effective that the map-photo-diagram-3d hybrids that tried too hard but couldn't do any of the jobs required.

So back to text. 

Should designers understand their place in a predominantly text based culture? 

Should we be the best behaved people at that party if we want to keep getting invited? 

Or should we listen to those who say rock the boat and rebel?

I'd say if you do want to shout from the barricades, try using some words and not just pictures.

There has been a bit of a fuss about the Hong Kong based Apple Daily's use of video reconstructions around the Tiger Woods events.

I like them. They are Impro-graphics - they totally make stuff up and they revel in that. They are what the celebrity/prensa-rosa press would love to be - totally fantastical improvised fun.

The reason that people are uncomfortable about them is that they are used to portray the 'facts' in the T Woods 'story'. (There may well be a bunch of those 'quotes' by the way - it's that kind of post.) 

This is a fantastic way to do speculative celebrity entertainment. It is the real life cartoon rendering of the gossip pages - come to life -  in a suitably unreal 3d veneer - it is perfect for the unreal portrayal of the totally made up that most celeb papers/magazines are. 

They pitch their stories into the fantasy mind of their viewers - who do not for one minute care about the facts - they just want to make believe - and these nutty 3d mirages allow precisely that. They let the audience pretend (Russell Davies talks nicely about pretending in this post/talk)

Now, the use of this tech in News/ factual graphics is another matter - I don't believe it really has a place.

I think that the difficulty is that Apple Daily is also an imparter of facts. And the use of this fun stuff sits uneasily with that. Most dumbing down accusations come with uneasy juxtaposition of different stuff for different audiences - not the stuff in itself.

It is all a matter of the intention of the designer. The celeb graphics are obviously stupid - they are what they are - and they are a bit of a laugh. But 3d graphics purporting to tell the truth about news events stray into difficult territory. To render in 3d you need to render everything - and it is often that the news designer doesn't know everything. The use of 3d requires them to ad lib - as they cannot use the nuances of a pencil sketch.

This site puts it well - they expand on a premise in the sound book The Experience Economy - that of the Fake Real, Real Fake etc

– Real-real: is true to itself; is what it says it is

– Real-fake: is not true to itself; is what it says it is

– Fake-real: is true to itself; is not what it says it is

– Fake-fake: is not true to itself; is not what it says it is

I think that the 3d work looks fake so should only be about the fake stuff - play it for laughs - as that is what our perception systems do when we see 3d used for News stories - we know they are not real and it seems funny that someone out there thinks that we might be fooled.

(It seems also that Apple Daily is coming under alot of pressure for its 'video reports'. You will need to use the translating function I imagine.(from Infographics news).)

 Gert Neilsen also comments about this.

 

This CO2 bubble chart is a typical Guardian bubble chart style. It is a decent chart and the colours are very engaging. Nice.

Then there was this one a while ago.

This one is less a graphic - more an op-ed piece  - don't get me wrong - it's good to have visual op-ed (ask the NYT) but this graphic uses info-design vernacular (insinuated comparative volumes and presentation of hierarchy/ colour code) to make it's fun point - ( maybe I need to lighten up ). But in being accessible and fun, it failed to tell us how many people are on different wages etc - the list on the page is v interesting - answers the 'where am I?' question.

But the following is really not that good - some cut out shapes with a few volumetric bubbles - it's like some clip art got published accidentally - the pictographic effect may be fitting in tone for this data blog ares but it is a bit lazy looking - give us a list instead. (Does though make the one above look a lot more humane with plenty of people and faces.)

 
Is there an assumption that any data is worth visualising? 

Probably - but in my view,  information on it's own is not beautiful - but the articulation and editing of information certainly is in with a chance.

So come on Guardian - do the good stuff.

This month's graphic for WWII Magazine looks at the lesser known MP3008. It was a German submachine-gun, drafted into minimal use at the end of the war. It was an insalubrious end for the fine craft heritage of German WWII weaponry - although this attention to technical detail was not tenable.

The graphic started life as a general family tree of many other submachine guns. This type of weapon was invented in WWI, but many variants were used in WWII. I wanted to show the main developments, color coded by country.

As soon as i decided that the MP3008 was th focus I deleted all guns not related. This meant getting rid of the US Finnish and Russian guns - which i am sure i will come back to.

I then thought to add data on the global resources available to build weapons, but it split the page too much.

The magazine editor Bill and his staff felt that the page needed a focus. They felt that a system diagram such as a family tree did not give the reader enough of a starting point.

There was far too much working this out on the page - something I am trying to get away from - that is what sketchbooks are for!

Al these are trying to resolve the need to point at the Main Object - the MP3008 - which is on the left - not the normal place people start to read.

Then, I decided to add detail on the operation of the gun - this added a new variable to the graphic - already tense with competing focal demand - especially the UK and German Timelines, which were not quite working out - until below:

Below is the art file I send to the magazine - it looks a little naked.

This piece had people in it like many of the newer ones. I wanted to show the progression from static warfare to mobile SMG warfare - to the fellow crouched down, waiting for it to stop. I quite like the place-holding sketch - maybe i should have kept it?

Drawing the weapons

I started off doing line drawings with a plain white fill.

I then wanted to fill them, bringing them a more informal style, with some fairly broad brush strokes - away from the technical illustration gradients and 3d renders that permeate elsewhere.

Colour coding

I kept some of the principles of the assigned colour following the relevant parts throughout. I also started to use 'bitten' lines - with white either side to direct the label better.

Designnet is South Korea's top Design magazine, so I was pretty flattered to be interviewed for their Information Design special report in the recent issue.

Nice to see the articles prominently featured.

Me in South Korean.

Bit of a rubbish photo but you get the message.(better ones to come)

Below are the comments I sent about each included spread.

It was a challenge to sum up one insight about each article - but here goes (I have linked to the blog entries)

Subject: Flak Fills the Sky
Client:  WW2 Magazine
Date of Issue: September 2009
Description: At a glance, the magazine reader can sense the subject from the compositional essence of the gun crew on the 'ground' and the data in the 'sky'

Subject: The Spitfire's Finest Hour
Client:  WW2 Magazine
Date of Issue: November 2009
Description: : The main illustration signposts the subject matter, using technical drawing for the planes and expressive humane lines for the people.    

Subject: The Norden Bombsight
Client: WW2 Magazine
Date of Issue: January 2009
Description: The colour-coding of the line-drawing introduces a consistent syntax for the rest of the spread.

Subject: The Birth Of The Assault Rifle
Client: WW2 Magazine
Date of Issue: November 2007
Description: Multiple variables are presented on the 'range graph' while sensitive use of color draws attention to the key data.

Here is some of the text I sent for the piece, in response to their questions - 

On graphics in different media...

Information graphics in the mass media are different to those in specialist media. Mass media graphics need to signal the subject of the content to the reader who can then choose whether to engage. They then need to balance this signpost with the finer resolution data to provide a balance of access points and layers of content. Broadcast graphics need to attract and also keep attention. They typically use a lower resolution of data, but can tell complex relational stories, more like text, over time. Web graphics also need to start with a basic signpost or instruction and then allow user to explore the data for themselves.

On colour...

Designers need to make sure not to create unintentional relationships between elements due to Ill considered use of type and colour. Colouring elements the same colour is the best way to communicate a relationship between them. Readers will assume an intention behind groupings of elements. Use desaturated colours for large areas and most of the data - bright colours should be used only to highlight the most important elements in the story.

On being a credible designer...

Designers often moan that people don't respect them when they do little to earn it. The only way to gain the respect of journalists or any client is to understand their business and the subject. News designers will not have respect of their journalistic colleagues unless they can discuss the stories in the news with authority. The more they understand about the subject, the more they can suggest which subjects will need visual explanation. Some call this discipline 'visual reporting' - whatever it is, when it works, it is the harmony between an original idea for a story and the means to tell it visually.

Thanks to Mina at Designnet for her help. And thanks to the team at WWII magazine - their editing makes these what they are.

A few years ago, I gave a talk at the Malofiej Conference about some nascent user research and design principles of graphics at BBC News. 

I concluded that :

a) design teams that do not understand their users will not be able to provide for them (still true but obvious)

and 

b) it is the design team (or indeed any respective department ) that needs to know it's value to the business (obvious to design companies - but less so to in-house departments)

They need to know why are people engaging with Their output? - and how much does it bring in? - they are not a 4 piece chamber quartet sat in the newsroom/ marketing dept playing accompaniments to afternoon tea after all.

...I noticed someone in the crowd (nameless, but by no means shameless) laughing/ shaking his head at this idea that designers need to know what ROI they provide to the business.

So it is interesting to see that the NYT are now doing exactly that (and not just with design but other NYT items/ products) - providing a portfolio of their work for advertisers to see minutes spent and numbers of users engaging.(nice place to bring it all together too - also speaks of the difficulty that news sites have in keeping all their timeless good stuff on show, before it is washed away by the daily stuff -  although it is maybe only industry folk who need it so?)

Creative industry workers are really bad at measuring the effectiveness of their work. Most would rather not risk it I reckon - best to just get on with it and avoid bright lights shone on you? 

Well, money concerns  are happening to journalism and can happen anywhere else - so it may time to consider your value to your business. Go and talk to the accounts department - they may have some ideas on how to do this - talk to anyone - before the auditors talk to you and you have no answer because you are 'just a designer'.

NYT Innovation Portfolio first seen on Chiqui Esteban's Infographics News