Infographics news: 2010/10

31/10/2010

What is visualization, according to Lev Manovich

"Lev Manovich is one of the big names about theory of new media, and he also talks about visualization. Now, he publish a new aricle called What is Visualization. You can read it all clicking on the name of it, But here you are some sentences I'd like to highlight:

"300 years after William Playfair amazement at the cognitive power of information visualization, it looks like that finally many others are finally getting it."

"Let's define information visualization as a mapping between discrete data and a visual representation."

"Scientific visualization and information visualization come from different cultures (science and design); their development corresponds to different areas of computer graphics technology."

"Information design works with information, while information visualization works with data."

"When we switched from pencils to computers, this did not affect the core idea of visualization(...). Similarly, while availability of computers led to the development of new visualization techniques (scatter plot matrix, treemaps, etc.), the basic visual language of infovis remained the same as it was in the 19^th century"

"The practice of information visualization from its beginnings in the second part of the 18^th century until today relied on two key principles. The first principle is reduction (...). The second is spatial variables."

24/10/2010

Antidecalogue for infographics departments

I've read today at the great blog Lola como mola by Silvia Cobo an antidecalogue for digital media (in spanish) written by David Domingo. I'm not reproducing it here visit her blog with Google Translate and pay her a visit. But I noticed that it's not very far from what could be an antidecalogue for infographics departments. I mean, ten things media should do if they want to destroy their own graphics departments:

1. Place someone with no journalistic ambition directing the department. He or she just need to know how to draw or how to design. They're not doing journalism, just making the news prettier.

2. Any writer or department chief decides about the infographics. Articles and what goes inside them belongs to the writers. If they don't like the colors, or using a pie instead bars, they decide.

3. If the people of the infographics department want to go out for the coberture of any event, don't allow them. That's journalists matter, what infographics got to do with it? They just have to draw what they're told.

4. Writers and infographics people don't have to talk each other. Writers take a sheet with the data to infographics, infographics do the drawing, and that's all, that's how things work. Infographics dudes don't have to understand the data. Copy the numbers, draw the bars, ctrl+p and the work's done.

5. Some news need a graphic, no matter if we have enough information. Maybe we don't know how the accident happened, but accidents informations go with infographics, so just guess what happened and don't forget to draw some flames, readers love them.

6. If another newspaper publish a good graphic, plagiarism is the best solution. Don't waste your time looking thinking on what's interesting for your own readers, don't look for the sources, don't look for better ways to tell the story. If a bigger newspaper did it that way, it has to be better than anything you could think.

7. Don't try to look for new narratives. Readers are not very smart people, they don't understand anything beyond bars and pies. And we don't have time to waste playing games...

8. An infographic that takes more than one day to be done doesn't worth it

9. The writer of the article that goes with the infographic don't have to read the graphic. Writers don't have time to read the data that goes in the graphic to check that article and graphic are saying the same. They're with the text, the important thing, not to go looking to drawings.

10. Never look what others are doing. Don't read other newspapers, don't look what are others doing. That's contamination, pollution, and you could loose your own very personal style.

22/10/2010

Visualizing.org

I was preparing a post about visualizing.org, a place to share your visualizations. Then I received a video od Adam Bly speaking about the lauching of the platform at the Why Design Now? Conference. So, better than me, I'll let him talk

20/10/2010

i for infographic?

The Independent is launching a new quality newspaper, called 'i'.
Some of the mottos they are using to introduce the product, and, of course its name, reminds me the portuguese journal 'i'.

I don't know how Independent's i is going to be. But if, as they say, they want tio do a newspaper that:
- Gets to the point
- Dosn't do information overload
- Is all you need in the time you have

Then I just can think on infographics.

I don't know if that's the path they're going to follow. Honestly, I don't think so. Infographics are not cheap. And newspapers, and The Independet in particular, doesn't want to spend much money now.
But, the portuguese i, if that's the model, show daily amazing graphics done by a small but great team.
And infographics get to the point better than texts, don't overload and explain more in less time. And I (still) have great hopes on The Independent.
We'll see next week.

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12/10/2010

Best infographics of Spain and Portugal 2010

Last week the SND-E (spanish chapter of the SND) released the list of winners of the ÑH, the best of the spanish and portuguese design in 2010. Including infographics. Here you are the list of the awarded in the infographics categories and some examples. All the online infographics are linked with the graphics.

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Levante-EMV (Valencia). ‘Accidente de Castelldefels'

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Público (Lisbon). ‘Bandeiras azuis em 2010'

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El Correo (Bilbao). ‘Catástrofe en Castelldefels'

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Público (Madrid). ‘Bolt destroza la física'

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Expresso (Lisbon). ‘Um exercício de equilibrismo'

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Marca (Madrid). ‘Un marciano en Berlín'

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