The Functional Art is here

Alberto Cairo's latest book is here... and in english. 'The Functional Art' has been translated, updated, improved and completed in the last months and now is available. I read the spanish version and the sensation I had is that I was reading what I should have read when I was in my first years in this work. But then you notice it keeps being useful anyway. The reading is completely different now, what I learn from the reading changes with your experience. Is, undoubtedly, time well spent. Is not just theory, also practical cases through discussions with some of the greatest names as John Grimwade, Fernando G. Baptista, Steve Duenes, Hannah Fairfield, Geoff McGhee...

But this is 'Show Don't tell', so I'll stop talking and let you enjoy the intro...

...and the interview with John Grimwade

Related  - The best design advice I ever got - Alberto Cairo  - Index of the book

The Functional Art: all you need to know about infographics, coming next summer

Share

If you're reading this blog, you may know who Alberto Cairo is. Former graphics director at elmundo.es, infographics professor at Chapel Hill, Infographics director at Globo (Brazil) and, most recently, infographics professor at the University of Miami.
After this (useless) introduction, there's something you need to know: his most recent book, El Arte Funcional, is being translated to english and The Functional Art will be available in summer 2012.

Four things you should see if you are an infographics person

Tweet Share

You should visit these five links if you really like infographics, visualizations, visual narratives or however you call it.

10 significant visualisation developments: January to June 2011
Visualising Data

These frists months of 2010 has been really interesting for the graphics world: good works, tools, statements, discussions... Ten of the top worth-visiting liks of the year on VisualisingData.

22 free tools for data visualization and analysis
Computer World

Making graphics and visualizations is getting easier day by day (the quality of interest of those is another discussion). The technological barrier is falling down and now you don't even have to pay for licences. People got plenty of tools online, free and easy to use. From the ones by  the omnipresent Google  (Fusion Tables, Refine...) to others, independent but interesting like Impure.
Here you got a good list with a good bunch of them.

Visual pieces by Antonio Pasagali
lainformacion.com

Antonio Pasagali is Art Director at lainformacion.com, the news web I work for. He has published a couple of Visual Pieces, with really nice aesthetics, but also informative. Something different. And that's a good thing.
1. Pedestrians in New York
2. Madrid-BCN: train and plane

The functional art
Alberto Cairo

Alberto Cairo's book (called in spanish 'El arte funcional' and which could be translated as 'The Functional Art') has become famous before being in the shops. And now it's on its last steps before being released. By the moment, we know that it will be published between spetember and novembre, 2011, at least in spanish. And also what does Nigel Holmes thinks about it:

Welcome to Alberto’s world. Cairo has done it all here: history, theory, practice, examples. And he's done it brilliantly. It's the most comprehensive and sensible book yet on real-world information graphics; we won’t need another for a long time (or until he writes his next one!)"

Laws of simplicity, by John Maeda

I've been on online holidays. I've been reading, and as some of us can't forget our jobs, among the books have been some about infographics. 'Laws of Simplicity' by John Maeda, who teaches at MIT (and anonymous comment tell me that he is now director of RISD) and visual artist, has been the chosen. And I may say that I made the right decission.

It's the perfect book for the summer: you can read it in an afternoon at the beach or during a plane travel. And it's an useful book, for infographics and for life.

If you can, buy it, but here you are a little advance with the ten laws:

1. Reduce: thoughful reduction

2. Organize: makes a system of many appear fewer

3. Time: saving in time feel like simplicity

4. Learn: knowledge makes everything easier

5. Differences: complexity and simplicity need each other

6. Context: what lies on the periphery of simplicity is not peripheral

7. Emotion: More emotions are better than less

8. Trust: in simplicidty we trust

9. Failure: some thing can never be made simple1o. The one: subtract the obvious, add the meaningful

Infografía 2.0, by Alberto Cairo

September is back, nd of holidays for so many and the start of them for some others. And with september el nuevo libro de Alberto Cairo releases Infografía 2.0, his new book. bad news: it's only in spanish, but if the spanish poet Antonio Machado learnt danish to read Kierkegaard, a good infographics journalist could learn spanish to read Cairo. Anyway, this is just an appertitive for Cairo's bible.

I've been lucky and I've read it, and after doing it I felt like coming back from Malofiej. I didn't mean drunk, if you were thinking so. I mean eager to keep learning and going to job with a new 'hope'. As Xocas says, one of the best things of Alberto is that he is a great teacher.

The book, divided in 4 chapters, conclusions apart, starts talking about infographics from the most basic question: What is it? Alberto bets for the analytic inforgraphics, the infographics focused on information, the facts, the explanations. He avoids the decorative infographics. Later, he speaks about the begginings of infographics on newspapers and its history: Playfair, Minard, Rorick... One of the most interesting points of this chapter it's to see how from the icreation of the fisrt infographics departments we have the burden of the original sin: the conception of the infographics journalist as infographics artist. The graphics as a tool to fill gaps, as a beautiful thing to make pages softer, instead of a journalistic tool or language.
After being introduced on the interactive infographics on a divulgative way, we know how works the best infographics department in the world: The New York Times, with a deep anaysis. Knowing how work them is like an emotional harakiri sometimes, because the great amounts of envy it can cause. But one alwys have things to learn, technichs to apply to our departments, doesn´t matter how small they are.

What I lerant or I got reafirmed after reading this book
- We don't have to think on the reader as a stupid reader. We don't have to give them everything liek they were toddlers. Graphics aren't news for those who don't like to read.
- To get your infographics team respected form the rest of the newspaper, respect may start form ourselves.
- Task organization in a department is basic.
- Online graphics are much more than lineal sequences, but lineal sequences aren't less than other kind of online graphics.
- Being multimedia is not a juxtaposition of media, but integration of them
- And so many things...

Summarizing, I should strongly recommend this book while waiting for its big brother.

If you want to takea look to the first chapters of Infografía 2.0, you can do it at Alberto's web.

Alberto, congratulatiosn for the book.

Bars and circles

Alberto Cairo speaks on his blog (in spanish) about the use of circles instead of bars that are spreading all around the world, inffluenced by The New York Times.



He uses this image to demonstrate that people understand better when we measure just changing one dimension (height or width) and not both. And he's right. And we, in Púbico, must recognize the 'mea culpa'. He doesn't say that circles are bad for graphics, we thinks they¡re right when we wnat the reader not the know the exact cypher, but a global vision.

I absolutely agree with Alberto, although I think there's one more reason for using circles: sometimes, with brs, the differences are so extreme tat there are not any possible way to place it on page. This times, circles are easier to place, showing the real difference, and without 'cutting' the bar. I prefer a difference that is not so clear at first sight that one that is 'false'. Anyway, I think is an advice more than needed.

There's another reason to use circles, and I won't recognize I've said this later... Writers and editors like color circles rather than neutral bars. As we stare to paes with puppies and babies. It's not a powerful reason to include this kind of graphics, and we never do it for this reason, but we must recognize that that 'exists'.

PS. TAlking about Alberto Cairo, he release his new infographics book in Spain in September. The bok is calledInfografía 2.0. Visualización interactiva de información en prensa (Inforgraphics 2.0, Interactive visualization of information on newspapers). This is not the book we've already talked about, Visual Journalism, but a good one to keep waiting. Just a problem: would be released just in spanish.

Alberto Cairo is preparing a new book

Alberto Cairo is preparing a book about infographics. So we can now celebrate!. You can take a look to some examples at his weblog, but I show you one of them I "lifted" here...



It looks great, as you can see yourselves. Now all he needs is a editor, but I don't think it will be a problem...

Infographics in the internet era

Alberto Cairo, at his web, offers for free downloading (if you don't sell or modify it) the 50 pages document Infographics in the internet era. Sailing to the future, made for the Multimedia Bootcamp 2005 at Chapell Hill, North Carolina University, where he teaches. Worths reading. Alberto talks about multimedia graphics, its rules and some examples from elmundo.es, as the one about Einstein's anniversary.
To download it you can click here