What makes an information graphic beautiful?

http://tinyurl.com/databeauty

note, i have yet to get my hands on Beautiful Data book nor (shamefully as a graphic designer) have i had chance to read Data Flow, although a friend was trying to get a hold of it for me. I managed to read Tufte's Beautiful Evidence book.

I read Brad Paleys comments in Creative Review Mar 08 that he thought it came from 'the accurate and comfortable representation of data' (centaur publications)

I have read Vande Moere and Lau's examinings of aesthetics in data visaulisation with their measures determining a circular sunburst style to be most beautiful.

Is it symmetry, balance in design?
Colour Harmony?
Simplicity?
Font Style?

please share your thoughts/readings. quote for the books above if you have read them, please, review the books if you read them and post here. I am finally getting round to writing up my research for my thesis. Your thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

Yuri Engelhardt’s critical review of Edward Tufte’s Beautiful Evidencehttp://yuriweb.com/tufte/

Lau A. and Vande Moere A. (2007), “Towards a Model of Information Aesthetic Visualization”, IEEE International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV’07), IEEE, Zurich , Switzerland, pp. 87-92.http://web.arch.usyd.edu.au/~andrew/publications/iv07.pdf

Cawthon N. and Vande Moere A. (2007), “The Effect of Aesthetic on the Usability of Data Visualization”, IEEE International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV’07), IEEE, Zurich , Switzerland, pp. 637-648http://web.arch.usyd.edu.au/~andrew/publications/iv07b.pdf

quite the hoard at http://web.arch.usyd.edu.au/~andrew/

http://www.informationesthetics.org/node/28
http://www.informationesthetics.org/node/27

Live Energy Stats

energy monitor

Live stats which would probably come in handy for nicholas feltron. I know they have been out a while but thought i'd share. This electronic Energy Saving Monitor is a clever device that shows you how much electricity you are using in your home in real time - for example, you can check just how much your hair dryer is costing you as you use it. Plus you can also calculate the savings you could make by switching your TV off rather than leaving it on standby!

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/prmts/article-1054676/3-million-energy-saving-bonanza--free-reader.html#ixzz0LboDvPVD

Photo Manipulations By Erik Johansson

punched face by-erik-johansson / coffee world map by erik-johansson

Photo Manipulations By Erik Johansson

View more presentations from visual_think_map.

Wonderful manipulations in photoshop, go through the slides. It does challenge me to think, 'ok so he cut that out, masked over this, layered....' but very tidly done and wonderful to see. Below is one i had seen =, maybe by erik, who knows, but looked good. Face punched, face sucked.

vacuum

Stats Humour

variationsonnormal.com is such good humour and quirky visual thinking. I particular like the satirical look at website stats with the hugely necessary and important: Average visitor weight. Will regularly visit/be fed via google reader his other quirky inventions like a handle for biscuits to dunk.

'Website stats are an obsession for some people. How many visitors? What age
are they? How long do they spend on the site? The list goes on. Here is my
idea to take this statistical obsession one step further. A doorbell with
built in home visitor statistics display'. (C) Dominic Wilcox

http://variationsonnormal.com/2009/06/14/doorbell-with-inbuilt-visitor-statistics-display/

Bizarre Infographic

In UK and on BBC three there is a program called bizarre ER, I saw these great informative little infographic animations with a soupson of humour & blood.

The Visual Dictionary

the visual dictionary

this looks like an excellent project that I am probably blogging that was
blogged a while ago but, well worth another blog post dedicating to it.

the only rule to the tvd, only a single word must be visible, cannot have
more than one distinguishable word.

free to sign up and a great inspiration on typography and it has an A to Z to
navigate the words.

http://thevisualdictionary.net/recent/

unrelated but useful: http://www.slatebox.com/Home/HowItWorks

Intro-Info-Slideshow

Forgive my title, was in a creative mood. But this is a good slideshow. Also checkout their @Info_graphics twitter some interesting infographics.

Introduction to Infographics

View more presentations from infographics.

photoshop layers by creative photoshop mag

photoshop layers by creative photoshop mag
Originally uploaded by visual think map

loved this way to display the layers for tutorials, saw it in the mag at a college, thanks ian.

i thought for an easy way to make it, could just do a action recording making layers into that perspective style. take a while once, but using the action would make any piece of work look like that. well i havent tried it but thought it might work

Isometric Arrow

isometric arrow

nice way to show depth, and add an angle for inwards.

you can flip it to have it for pull to open

Car Scrap Registration

car scrappage scheme uk june 09

in the uk they are trying to boost the economy by gving you so much cash to
upgrade your banger (old car) to scrap and purchase a new one.

your car hase to be a certain age and i never knew what reg was what and
couldn't really be bothered checking becasue i could stump up the rest of the
cash for a new car.

but this clever add gives you the infographic of the reg and year and shows you
what the governments cut off is and what nissan are willing to offer.

i thought it was good.

EuroVisualisation

I saw this on InfoAesthetics.com , always brilliant. I need key with this, something telling me the douze points or zwolf points of which colours rather than just size so i can discern the order.

See a video here: http://visualthinkmap.ning.com/video/eurovisualisation-1 (the embed kept crashing explorer)

From blob.creanode.com/blob/eu2009 is a simple interactive visualization. Each country is represented by a circle. Moving over a specific country reveals who voted for that country and by how much.

Another Eurosong Contest Visualization and another EuroVision Contest Visualization (see 3rd example) @ InfoAesthetics.com

See tashian.com/wine-flavors/ (had a facelift with some category labels added).

Geological time spiral

Geological time spiral
Originally uploaded by Ethan Hein

A fantastic image, much like one i posted last year.

http://visualthinkmap.blogspot.com/2008/06/evolution-of-life-visual.html

World at Work

work now by Romuald Dehio, Stefan Prins (Theo Deutinger Arch+) and Michael van
Schaik of restruct org

Z33 - Hasselt - 27 June till 25 September 2009

The project “World At Work” will be presented for the first time as physical machine in real space at the exhibition "Work Now" at the art center Z33 in Hasselt (Belgium).

The 2008/2009 Impakt Online Exhibition shows World at Work

The project the "World at Work" rediscovers the earth as ‘Time Machine’. Its rotation around
its own axis gives us our days and its course around the sun determines our earthly year. To achieve a higher degree of accuracy in organizing their life, humans divided one day in 24 hours and a year in 12 months. The acceleration of transport and information on a global scale, the introduction of time-zones became necessary at the end of the 19th century.

With "World at Work" we project the amount of inhabitants per time-zone onto the earth as ‘Time Machine’. By assuming that the average working day around the world is from 9.00am to 5.00 pm, we come to the conclusion that there is a strong imbalance in the distribution of workforce. One can almost talk about a day and night on earth.

The world as ‘Time Machine’ is visualized by its course around the sun (together with its three neighbour planets) and its spinning around its own axis. On top of its self-rotation a graph with the amount of inhabitants is projected. The third element of the visualisation is the addition of all the working population of one global working day and shows how many people are
working, relaxing or sleeping.

This visualisation is shown either in real time, or can be released and speeded up at the users will. All three parts of the visualisation are interconnected as programmed clockwork that shows time by mimicking reality.

Client: Impakt Online

Design Team: Theo Deutinger, Romuald Dehio, Stefan Prins

Programming: Michael van Schaik/restruct.org

credits to: Romuald Dehio, Stefan Prins and Michael van Schaik - restruct.org

with special thanks to: Michael Impakt Online & Sabine Niederer , Erling Haverkamp -
Imatech and Ronald van der Groef - Overwijn TS

from: http://td-architects.eu/?id=122

Manuel Lima | Visual Complexity Interview

Manuel Lima Visual Complexity from digup.tv on Vimeo.

Manuel's website has no doubt been an inspiration all in data visualisation and information graphics.

Manuel Lima is an interaction designer, information architect and design researcher. He currently works as a Senior User Experience Designer at Nokia's NextGen Software & Services in London. Manuel is also a frequent speaker in conferences and festivals around the world, on the topic of Information Visualization, in particular the visualization of complex networks. About

Visual Complexity VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines from Biology to Social Networks, and, to be a space that inspires, motivates and enlightens any person doing research on this field.

see also: Blogviz. mapping the dynamics of information. manuel lima

was only 22days ago it was posted. not overly posting, well his site and interview deserve the publicity even if it doesnt need it.