How to Read a Sociological Data Chart
Cairo, Alberto. (2013) The Functional Art: An introduction to information graphics and visualization. Berkeley: New Riders, a sectionalisation of Pearson.
Overview
A functional art is a volume in divided into iv parts, only really it is easier to understand as only two parts. The first part is a sustained and assuredly argument that information graphics and data visualizations are technologies, not art, and that there are good reasons to follow certain guiding principles when reading and designing them. It is written past Alberto Cairo, a professor of journalism at the University of Miami an information graphics announcer who has had the not always pleasant feel of trying to apply functional rules in organizational structures that occasionally prefer formal rules.
The second role of the book is a serial of interviews with journalists, designers, and artists almost graphics and the work required to brand good ones. This role of the volume is as much about the organizational culture of art and design and specifically of graphics desks in newsrooms as information technology is about graphic design processes. The procedure drawings are fantastic. I've included two of them here. The offset by John Grimwade is multi-layered, total of color and dynamic vitality. These qualities were carried through into the final graphic but are often very difficult to build into computer-generated images. I wondered if the graphic would have been as dynamic if it had come up from a less well-developed hand sketch (or no sketch at all).
The 2nd is a set of photographs taken of a clay model by Juan Velasco and Fernando Baptista of National Geographic that was used to recreate an ancient dwelling place call Gobekli Tepe that was in what is now Turkey. Both of these examples lead me to the iceberg hypothesis of graphic design – the more than the design that shows up in the newspaper or magazine is only the tip of an iceberg of enquiry, evolution, and creative work, the more accurate and engaging it is likely to be.
As a sociologist I am accustomed to reading interviews and am fascinated by the convergence and difference in the opinions represented. In this case, I especially appreciated that Cairo's interview questions touched on the organizational structures and working arrangements, equally did his own anecdotes throughout the volume, to provide an agreement of the opportunities and constraints journalists and information graphic designers face. Their work is massively collaborative and the volume works to reveal the bureaucratic structures that come to promote and impinge upon pattern processes and products.
In that location is a fifth part to the book, too, a DVD of Cairo presenting the material covered in the first three capacity of the book. I admit, I have rarely been a large fan of DVD inclusions. They are easy to lose, scratch and/or interruption. But bold the DVD is intact and accessible, I never know when I ought to stop reading and kickoff watching. And even if the book has annotations indicating that an obedient reader should stop reading and beginning watching the DVD, this assumes the reader is willing and able to put downwards the book and fire up the figurer. The only time I can imagine using the DVD is as a teaching aid in class to give the students a interruption from having to heed to me all the time. Unfortunately, that is prohibited by Pearson.
All the same, it is worth watching because Cairo has a great voice and he is able to discuss interactive content/blueprint in a way that is not piece of cake in the pages of the volume. While some of the discussion repeats themes from the first part of the book, there are new examples from additional designers, including some who accept been Cairo'due south students, which might exist of interest to people thinking of signing upwardly for his online course.
What does this book do well?
The volume does a great job of explaining the conclusion making backside graphic pattern. The sketches, procedure drawings, and recounts of the conversations that went on in editorial meetings gave important depth of context. The organizational culture and mean solar day-to-day expectations of the newsroom tend to encourage the use of templates and discourage exuberant inventiveness. Cairo explained that this Brazilian prison graphic that eventually won the Malofiel design honor also won him a reprimand from his boss who proclaimed it to be "ugly". In practise, conceptual distinctions between art and technologies for comprehension are fabricated rigid past bureaucratic structures in which, "the infographics director is subordinate to the art director, who is usually a graphic designer," and that this organisation, "tin can pb to damaging misunderstandings."
The more prominent argument follows from these peeks into the backstage of journalism. Infographics and visualizations are technologies, not illustrations. Cairo writes that:
The first and main goal of whatever graphic and visualization is to exist a tool for your eyes and encephalon to perceive what lies beyond their natural accomplish….The form of a technological object must depend on the tasks information technology should help with….the course should exist constrained by the functions of your presentation….the meliorate divers the goals of an artifact, the narrower the variety of forms it can prefer.
One of the writing techniques that Cairo uses is summarizing his accept-away points from previous paragraphs in quick lists of pointers or key questions. Cairo incorporated these quick lists gracefully into the writing style and I never felt similar I was reading a textbook. Still, the quick lists make it piece of cake to employ the book as a reference. The index, bibliography and detailed table of contents add force to the book equally a reference source, as well. Notation to the publisher: I found it frustrating that the volume did not include a listing of figures, specially given the bailiwick matter.
Diversity
One of the greatest strengths of this book is the diverseness of sources from which Cairo draws his material. Yes, he uses graphics he has adult in many cases which is hugely valuable because he is able to provide insights into the development processes. However, he also draws from graphics old and new [come across an sometime one he pulled out of an annal at the Academy of Reading about weaving in the industrial revolution], from magazines, newspapers, and the internet, made by freelancers, in-house designers, and students, and in languages other than English (some of which are translated, some of which impressively need trivial translation). My favorite graphic in the book was one I never would have come across that uses pieces of fruit to describe the surgical procedures used to reach sexual reassignment.
This diversity serves as an example of the breadth of Cairo's experience in the world of journalistic information graphics. Information technology is too a testament to his existent joy in the subject field. Many authors of design books are happy to fill the pages with their own work. Cairo is surely talented enough to have done. Instead, he chose to showcase an incredible range of designers and styles. This diversity, combined with the accessibility of the writing, are cause enough to recommend this book for anyone who is curious about graphics and journalism, especially journalism students.
What doesn't this volume do well?
The most curious shortcoming – given the incredible diversity of designers, styles, countries, and publication types represented – is the scarcity of women designers. There are thirteen designers profiled in part IV of the book; only two are women. There were forty-vii graphics reprinted; 5 were designed by women. With respect to the reprints, Cairo is completely justified in reprinting his own work more often than the work of others because he knows how the design process unfolded in those cases. Since he is a man, this inflates the masculine contribution to the reprinted graphics category. Still, many of the graphics he worked on were collaborative efforts and his collaborators could take been women in a more than platonic world. But mostly, they were men.
Because the information graphics world is relatively interdisciplinary and (and so far as I know) has no specific professional arrangement whose membership includes a representative sample of practicing data graphics and data visualization professionals, it is hard to tell if the gendered design in Cairo's volume is due to some oversight on his part or the underlying gendered make-up of the industry or a combination of both. Fifty-fifty if the industry is dominated by men, it is important for people who write and edit textbooks to ensure that women are represented or they run the risk of sending the message that women may not be welcome or well-rewarded if they choose to pursue data visualization. That is unacceptable. The graphics earth will lose out on one-half its talent pool and women might avoid careers that could have been satisfying and rewarding for them. Notably, the kinds of graphic design that crave coding – like data visualization and interactive blueprint – are better compensated than illustration and static design so it's possible that women are beingness subtly nudged into the less well-compensated areas of graphic blueprint along the line. It would have been squeamish if this textbook that is so diverse in and then many other ways could have pushed the gender boundary and included more women.
The book also over-promises in the cognition department. The beginning affiliate on noesis was too basic. The second and 3rd capacity in this section had more that was directly applicable to design. All three chapters could have been condensed into one. It is certainly true that perception and cognition ought to be included and there were some useful applications derived from the 3 chapters, but at that place was besides much review and as well few articulate applications of the bones principles of cognition and perception to graphic design.
Here are the pointers I did find useful, if you happen to want to purchase the book and skip those chapters:
+ If you desire viewers to estimate changes by visually comparing elements, you will have the best luck if those changes are depicted using elements of the smallest number of dimensions possible. For instance, viewers will take an easier fourth dimension coming upwards with an accurate estimate of the divergence in size between two lines (1D) than between 2 circles or squares (2D). It'south best to avert 3D comparisons birthday. I would also add that regular objects like circles and squares are cognitively easier to remember with than irregular objects like polygons other than squares.
+ The less frequently a colour appears in nature, the more likely information technology is to depict the centre. Reserve the employ of colors like red, pinkish, imperial, orange, teal, and yellow for elements that are meant to describe attention.
+ Humans cannot focus on multiple elements at the same time. Pattern graphics that take one focal point or clear hierarchies of focal points. Do this past eliminating unnecessary use of bright colour, chart junk like grid lines that aren't absolutely necessary, and past establishing a logical information hierarchy in the page layout.
+ Landscapes have horizon lines. Humans are used to encountering the world this way. This is one reason why it is easier to make comparisons using bar graphs (where all the elements start from a common horizon line) rather than pie charts (where there is no shared horizon).
+ Eyes are good at detecting motion and they volition focus attending on moving objects. Try non to ask viewers to read text and simultaneously sentry a moving chemical element in interactive graphics.
+ Human brains are skillful at picking out patterns. Oft, adequately small changes to a graphic layout that strengthen the appearance of grouping or other types of patterns will add to the ability of the graphic to deliver an instant impression or overview of the message being communicated. For instance, changing the spacing of the bars in a bar graph and so that every fourth bar has twice every bit much space after information technology as all the residue will make the graph appear to have groups of iv-bar units.
+ Interposition – placing i object in front of another and so they overlap – is a proficient way to add together depth. If objects never overlap, the opportunity for the illusion of depth is lost.
Summary
Overall, the book was well-written, included valuable insight into the process underlying the creation of potent, successful data graphics and visualizations, and would be a solid textbook for use in journalism departments. The representation of women designers was disappointingly low and the segment on cognition could exist condensed or otherwise improved. Cairo is clearly a talented designer and instructor. This volume meaningfully combines both of those strengths and is an important contribution to undergraduate and graduate education in the emerging sub-discipline of information visualization and design.
I am sending you out with one of the graphics I was most impressed by, in office because the graphic is skillful, but mostly because Cairo helped me to see why a rather boilerplate looking graphic is in fact rather bright. It is past Hannah Fairfield of the New York Times graphic desk and it shows that the driving behavior of Americans is sensitive to changes in the economic system. During the 2005 recession when gas prices were high but the economy was struggling overall, Americans collection fewer miles. This pattern had simply 1 historical precedent – the 1970s. The graphic depicts this by having a timeline that appears to walk backwards during those two periods in history, a broken pattern your pattern-loving heed is likely to fixate on one time you lot realize this is not your boilerplate line graph. Smart.
References
Cairo, Alberto. (2013) The functional art: An introduction to information graphics and visualization.
Fairfield, Hannah. (2010) Driving Shifts into Contrary New York: New York Times.
Grimwade, John. (1996) The Transatlantic Superhighway. [data graphic]. New York: Conde Nast Traveler.
Steffen, Renata; Vieira, William; Silva, Alex and Gwercman, Sergio. "How sex change surgeries work." Superinteressante magazine. Brazil.
Velasco, Juan and Fernando Baptista. () "Gobekli Tepe Procedure Shots". National Geographic Magazine. In Cairo, Alberto (2013) The Functional Art p. 238.
Source: https://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/
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