Monday, March 28, 2011

Reading + Find&share

The reading in Graphic Design the New Basics, Info graphics are described as diagrams. Diagrams are graphic representations of a structure, situation, or process. This relates to our lecture about spacial, temporal, and quantitative information graphics. Visual relationships/Graphic marks take on meaning when paired with numbers, scale, connections. For instance, the splooshy mark on the infograph above doesnt really mean anything. But once it is paired with the numerical information, a title, and scaled according to the data, the splooshy mark makes sense and we can draw the relationship between the elements, realizing that the mark is an oil droplet. This all seems so obvious and rudimentary until information graphics is a task you, the individual, has to take on. I myself struggled while working through ideas. Visualizing data in a way that makes sense to a mass of people and not just in your head is a hard concept to grasp at first. I think its about starting simple. Nothing extraneous. Design and form should derive from concept and data. Tufte refers to all the fluff in a diagram as "chart junk." Whats the old saying . . . without concept (data) design is decoration? something like that. Heibert has 6 steps of graphical integrity that really helped me work through some infographic skeleton frames. Proportional correspondence, data-ink proportionality, clear labeling, contextual relevance, device relevance, and shape relevance.

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