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Wordle War II - Visualising Texts

Although my postings refer to information design for print, there is a lot of interesting work in online (information/ data) visualisation.

You can see a bunch of them here at Information Aesthetics.

This basically involves the designer/ engineer creating an ongoing design system to show patterns and hierarchies. It needs flexibility above and beyond what can be frozen on a printed page and all this while dealing with the need for the user to interact with this data too, after an initial overview. (I personally think an initial orientation is important - and then the ability to drill down - others do not and seem to revel in initial complexity.)

One method used to show links associated with a website is the tag cloud. And there is a new website called Wordle that lets you make similar typographic arrangements based on the text from any given source.

These are actually visual displays of words that appear often in a body of text and so an indicator of what is important to the author. I put the contents of the current wikipedia WWII page through it and the results are here.

My first thoughts are that it is good to see the word Soviet so prominent, the USSR often being disproportionately represented by much western media on the war. Japan is surprisingly prominent - I wonder if that indicates a US-leaning view of the war (much of the US involvement was the massive Pacific-wide naval and amphibious war with Japan). And interesting to see China so much more prominent than in the books I grew up with.

Wordle is not an analytical tool and to be so would need to stress sentence and grammar intention and structure and context etc etc but it is a lot of fun and will do a serious job of bringing these concepts to a larger audience. It is easy to use and if you want to find out about the creator, here is his blog.

I should mention the work of Stefanie Posavec if you want to look at further visual patterns within text.

I tried a few others - Wikipedia page Causes of WWII, and WWII Technology (Wikipedia again)

And in case anyone is interested, this site's Wordle cloud is like this.

V-3: The Vengeance Weapon - WWII Magazine - June/July

The June_July Issue of WWII Magazine features a graphic about the last of the vengeance weapons that Hitler hoped would destroy Britain.

Design Issues
Signposting
Recent discussions with folks in the graphics industry have pointed me towards the need for better signposting. Like many people passionate about a subject, it is always tempting to afford equal importance to all elements. A balanced composition is one thing - but there should be no confusion as to what the subject or editorial thrust is.

Orientation
As well as the headline, the initial image and paragraph should tell us what the basics of the story are and what to expect from the graphic.

Scale
I haven't put a scale in many of these illustrations - it is often a reliable staple of lazy graphics - and in Britain, things always get compared to a double decker bus. It seems relevant here though as the size of this weapon is one of the reasons for it's failure - but also symbolic of Hitler's (and Nazi German) arrogance and extreme vision.

Sketch-Up
Tools wise, I am using Google Sketchup to make some of these elements - it's a great programme although sometimes distracting to use. You really need to know what you want t achieve when you start it up or you'll be there for hours.

Further reading
When in the states recently I came across this V-Weapons Sites book by Steven Zaloga. . It is pretty concise. Ill add some more books as the blog goes on.

It's a shorter post this time as I am just back from being away - lots to catch up on.

Kamikaze Deconstructed - WWII Magazine April/May 2008

This graphic for WWII Magazine is concerned with the Kamikaze tactics employed by Japan during WWII.

Editorial Issues
Data Integrity
The graphic element at the bottom of the left hand page shows numbers of kamikazes. Due to the lack of proper records and confusion of these attacks, precise numbers are harder to come by but I think that the graphic here represents a s fair proportion of sunk ships to overall missions. One insight from doing this piece of work was that the deck-gunners and sailors on the US ships couldn't be 100% positive as to which was and wasn't a Kamikaze plane when they were at distance - as the escort planes would fly close to them and also act as unwitting decoys.

Selection of Planes
I wasn't exhaustive with the selection of all planes used in these missions for the same reasons of space and the fact that in their desperation , the Japanese used many many types of plane for this task. I mentioned others apart fro he Zero because it is important to challenge people's mental model of WWII - beyond that which they get from the mass media.

Demystification
I felt it important to point out the fallibility of much of the technology and tactics and to show that es, they did create chaos and death but ultimately they lost more than they gained.
I think this is one of the most important aspects of this work - especially as there is so much rubbish written about the superiority of Axis technology and troops. Yes - each side's military had it's strengths and weaknesses, but it is important to explain that this tactic was used because they were desperate - id they had plenty f planes, plenty of pilots and plenty of oil, they would have carried on with a more conventional form of defence I am sure (albeit more desperate the closer the lies got o the home islands. (Any non-S readers should check out The War - a documentary which is unashamedly US in it's outlook - although fair in it's assessment of the sacrifice of others (including the USSR). But even though we see various Hollywood films, the US story is not told in depth to the non-US citizen - so the War is a good place to start.

Design Issues
Themed Pages
In the work I am doing for the magazine and the book proposal, I am trying to introduce visual coding of the subject matter that should run throughout. It is done here with The use of the blue background - something I am trying to use for many of the aerial graphics - especial when the detail is concerned with the tactics of flying rather than just machinery. I will also continue the colour coding of the different belligerent powers - Green for USA, Khaki for UK, Red for USSR and Blue/ Grey for Nazi Germany. It is hard to evaluate whether it will work or whether it is worth doing until a larger body of work is built up and the graphics can be read as a series or at least related - no just by the subject material but by the basic building blocks that make them. It is odd to develop a style guide on the fly - as opposed to running into what many designers love doing - great big style guide 'bibles' - but I wonder that I don't have the full range of all the required variable s of such a guide in front of me yet - so I'm doing it as I go along.

Oversimplification
I felt that the crash tactics were pretty well explained with the three stage sequence on the right hand page but one issue was with what kind of treatment to show the impact. This is one of the few graphics (even though they all deal with parts of a catastrophic story) that shows mortal moments and I hope that they are shown sensitively.

Some (experts) could also argue that the proximity fuse is too simple - that it takes a lot of the operations of such a device for granted. I think that one needs to remember that the editorial gravity of the graphic is about kamikazes and so just as the Leigh Light deserves it's own spread from the Radar graphic - a call needs to made i the story telling and the call was that the Proximity fuse needed to explained simply.

Malofiej 16 Information Graphics Conference

I’ve just got back from Malofiej16 in Spain. It is an Information Graphics conference run by the Society of News Design - Spanish Chapter – with a lot of credit going to Javier Errea, a Newspaper Design Director/ consultant who organises it. (He is also helped by the kind people at the University of Navarra, who also run a course that is possibly one of the principle reasons for Spain’s excellence in this field in the last 20 years or so.)

It’s an annual conference with two days of talks mainly centred on Information Graphics used in the news, but also with other subjects such as a truly fantastic talk a few years ago by Paul Mijksenaar on airport design.

I have decided not to show loads of pictures on this entry because I think they may detract from some of the summary of main points. (I won’t mention every speaker – other conference blogs do this – I don’t – and I am summarising my reflections on the speeches, rather than what was accurately said.)

Warring factions
Javier Errea made some sound points in his introduction. The main one was that by seeing an organ of communication (paper, magazine, website) as containing different types of devices (text, photo’s, graphics), one encourages these devices to compete and fight against each other. The writers don’t want graphics because it means less text and vice-versa. One could also argue that these disciplines would retreat within their own cultures even more and become stale.

Complimentary parts of the whole
He said one should instead regard the whole organ as a visual one, because that is how people are consuming it. Once this view is shared, al the means of communication acheive a finer balance and a better execution. The parts are all better linked and accessed and the experience is as a whole for both readers and employees.

(50%NYT) + (25%Clarin) …
Javier also mentioned how Information Graphics are becoming a little formulaic. I agree and I think there needs to be a little more activity across the whole spectrum of visual communication.

Motifs
One thing I saw was a further departure from the schematic/ diagrammatic (Nigel Holmes and John Grimwade as fine proponents ) towards two opposite ends of the spectrum-of-visual-communication.

1. Attack of the over-layed circles
The first was the ‘data-aesthetic’ as championed recently by the New York Times but also used in a more accessible manner by the Guardian, UK. A mate and I were just pondering the influence of the world of data that is the web on all this. It’s all good stuff and doesn’t get aped too much (you cannot if you don’t have the data – and lazy apers don’t tend to gather much data.)

2. Aaaggh it’s an atom splitting on front of me! – oh - it’s just a picture
The second was a move towards the illustrated hyper-real. I would say that the main difference between this work and totally-real 3D rendering is a knowingly aesthetic moment that reminds us that it is just a drawn picture on the page (the use of pencil, colour wash, light effects in atomic renders etc) and isn’t real. The National Geographic excel at this work, especially in their scientific illustration. I also have to credit the Nat Geo speaker, Sean, on a great talk and I can assure any subscribers that more effort goes into the veracity of their dinosaur illustrations than Mother Nature spent on thinking up dinosaurs in the first place.

Way high
This was one of the reminders for me on how high the standards of editorial integrity are at these places that get it right (NYT, National Geographic, El Mundo, Clarin, etc). It was inspiring listening to the excitement and entrepreneurialism exhibited by NYT reporters at finding out the details of the Virginia Tech massacre so their readers could understand this particular story in the best (most relevant) way our current media can offer.

Bart and Lisa and Mario too
Shan Carter spoke about creating digital graphics and the NYT approach. He mentioned how they see their audiences and this rang true with me. In both my jobs at the BBC, I put understanding the audiences highly. One of my favourite models was that of Mario Garcia, who mentioned that there are Scanners and Readers (in fact the same person in different modes. Shan’s slightly more fun version of this was Bart and Lisa – design for those who are Lazy and Nerdy. I liked this model too but you really need to be a New Yorker speaking to a bunch of Europeans to properly carry it off.

Turn it up to 11!
Michael Robinson (Graphics Director at the Guardian, UK) made a really nice comment about the need for Volume Control. I though this was a good way of talking about a palette and style guide and having worked in news I wondered how often he had to fend off requests such as ‘ yeah but my story is worth the big stuff etc etc’. But, I thought ‘volume control’ was a fine phrase because it alluded to an elusive finessing to sensitive subjects that transcends just colour or tone.

As regards an equivalent to the excellent ‘design is what you take out as much as put in”, Michael said “there’s no need to show the sea if you are talking about the land” – which I liked.

Know thy reader
The big issue constantly ignored at this and every other design conference is ‘does it bring in more readers?’/”will it make us more money?”. Javier mentioned that ‘graphics retain reader attention in surrounding text”, but I’d like more detail. Intelligent customer research is so hard to do that most people are exposed to bad customer research and designers being some of the smartest people at sniffing bullshit, give it a wide berth. This is unfortunate as designers are also innately often the most humane discipline in their consideration of human needs and so it makes sense of them to take more ownership of this process and ultimately their destinies.

Takeouts
My main learnings for the WWII work are that the standard of work out there is really high. I need to decide where on the visual spectrum of possibility my work for WWII needs to be. Recent conversations with the new editor have pointed to better signposting of the subject matter as one starting point but I am happy with the echoing of the editorial tone hat my more schematic/ less ‘real’ approach is taking. We are also in deep discussions about the work for the year ahead so I’m pretty excited.

Battling Through the Bocage - WWII Magazine, March 2008

This months graphic explains how US forces overcame the bocage - Hedgerow country - of Normandy.

Editorial Issues
Independent Innovation
Although my article features the Culin hedgerow cutter, it is fair to say that faced with similar problems and with similar means of solving them, similar solutions appeared independently. The Culin cutter is one of the better recorded examples but there were a few types. Technology is often a result of human needs being met (when it is not blind invention) and there have been many examples of this throughout history - Guns. Germs and Steel is the best book on such ideas. (I'm always going on about that book.)

Rommel's 'Asparagus'
Some accounts state that the materials used for the cutters were 'Rommel's Asparagus'. When Rommel was assigned to the Atlantic Wall, he installed hundreds of metal poles in fields. These were to disrupt and crash the fabric-covered gliders that were to land there. There were in fact many types of (beach/ field/ anti tank/roadlock) obstacle for the engineers of the hedge-cutters to recycle and so I have tried not to be too specific.

Orientation
Starting the story at the map begged a few issues (covered later on in 'Cartography' too). I would start with the general map of the area. I felt I could exclude a global 'locator' as we called them in my old design team as I reckoned that knowing where France is should be like knowing that WWII was in the last century. (Is this presupposed knowledge - i suppose it is - but many of the readers really know their stuff/(were there!) so lets just go with it) How to then zoom in was trickier. I wanted to first use the long tiled-field element that explains how many fields the troops would need to cross. I then thought that that is not useful information until you knew how dangerous they could be and that info had to come first - at the bottom of the left page. So I continued a slow zoom - into an 'anyvillage' and then to the hedgerow itself.

Fairness
I was aware (being British) that it was not just the Americans who faced difficulty here. The British and Canadian troops also faced difficulties - but especially through street fighting. It is important to try to concentrate on one story at a time and so I stuck with the US tale of the hedge cutters.

Design Issues
Arrows
I have been trying to make the arrows blend into that which they indicate as much as possible. This is more possible by using the 'darken opacity' transparency on them. In this way they are less singular arrow-shaped agents and more part of the graphic. Anyone interested in Arrows in Information Graphics could do worse than read Edward Tufte's new book - Beautiful Evidence - its got a really good chapter on them. (Anyone thinking that this is abit too detailed about Information Graphics - that was your hint - this is not the site for you.)

Cartography
I am getting closer to deciding a house style for these maps. I am pretty happy with the colours - but I need to decide whether they will always be the same style. The commando knife graphic (incidentally the most searched-for on Google) features a map that doesn't need a lot of cartographic detail and begs the question of how much detail does one need for basic story telling as opposed to actual wayfinding.

The cutters
On the Sherman tank with the orange cutter, I don't suppose that any units painted their cutters bright orange - nor would it have been the thing to alert the dug-in Germans that a Sherman tank was coming into their field, but I think that colouring them so in this graphic succeeds in alerting us to what we need to know (Colour Leads The Way). (I chose the colours as they have a 'construction' look - an artistic license that I hope is OK.)

Not Using The Spread
Some designers feel, if given a double page spread, you should use the increased area to maximise your message through a device that occupies or exploits that area as a whole - rather than just in pieces. I looked at this issue of the graphic-vista in the Assault Rifle write up but here is a counter argument (to myself) - If the most important role for design is to support the information, and the information will have an optimal format (narrative, argument, breaking news etc) then the design needs to compliment that format. The design format chosen here aids narrative (the story of problem - then solution) through traditional reading from top left to bottom right - with words and pictures along the way. By getting people in at a natural entry point (top left) and hopefully keeping their interest throughout, you will impart the information in an appropriate way. Of course not all graphics are a narrative - the 'Which Tank was tops graphic was what we could call Guided Data.

Guided Data
Hmm - I think this is a separate post but it is something to do with the fact that augmenting a chart, should not be jazzy pictures (count the roller coasters next to the stock market charts over the next few months) but stories that highlight trends and facts behind the data. True, advanced graphics with many layers can develop from just making this clear to showing correlation, but a story helps too (that's why people like presenters talking next to charts on TV News.)

Which Tank Was Tops? - World War II Magazine, January 2008

This month's graphic gives ammunition to those engaged in any 'best of' conversations around Tanks in WWII.

(I'll try to post some of the previous versions in a week or so - but am v busy with new mac and xmas parties - for US readers, we in the UK go out alot at Christmas Time.The main aim of the graphic is to be able to give people a framework to discuss the virtues of tanks in WWII. It doesn't necessarily seek to be conclusive although I do believe it shows some interesting patterns.

Editorial Issues
An influential factor was the volume of production undertaken by the US and Russia. This is hinted at but I was wondering if there was any way to show this on the graphic. I decided not as it would have been a distracting variable in this discussion.(rising bars along the years etc)

Life size calibre
I am working on another graphic, to be featured this year hopefully, showing how in the European Air War the Germans (especially) up-gunned to cannon where the US stayed with machine gun calibre bullets. An interesting point in the design is that the calibres of the projectiles are shown real size on the page.

I wondered if this was also possible with the tank calibres and I tried a bunch of different permutations but again, despite looking interesting, they didn't really allow comparison - and they all bled into each other. This would be interesting to put on a  wall chart or a larger format display but not here.

Barrel lengths and type of projectile
Some might argue that I have gone for the wrong or over-simplistic variables involved in assessing the effectiveness of tanks. Instead, I want to do some other graphics that explain factors as barrel length and velocity as well as comparing different types of shells and tank gunnery in general.

It does ask wider questions of how much data can be contained in a magazine-spread display as opposed to other media. (there aren't too many that compare with the high resolution of magazine printing - newsprint is poorer for instance.

One could argue that the web is a place for some of these issues - I will address that in a later article but these graphics are staying in print for the foreseeable future.

Taking out the KV2
I had included the KV2 heavy tank - partly because it is such a magnificent looking thing - and it also underlines (and over-illustrates) the Russian commitment to heavy tanks.

Variation in Tank Models within designations
One interesting fact which there was no room to show was the amount of development within Tank Models. There were many makes of the Panzer IV, with new armour and minor tweaks to the gun, iterating the machine towards the next model. There was also a lot of battle field modification at unitlevel, which would not have been noted and so the number of different tanks within seemingly set patterns is much more plentiful than at first seems.

Tank Silhouettes
I was thinking of adding a silhouette at the bottom of each 'bar' but at this size, they would not have been useful - and their minimal decorative quality at that size would have served only to distract.

Weight
I thought to indicate the weight of the tanks by showing the tracks as darker on the heavier tank - the reasoning being they would leave more of a mark on the page as they went across it - this was a bit too clever/ obtuse and again there was a danger that the graphic could be cluttered by this.

New Graphic up soon

Hi folks - I'll post my ideas about the January issue graphics when they are up on the historynet site.

Sorry about the wait for anyone who has come from the magazine to find out more.

Fairbairn-Sykes Commando Knife- extra background

I came across this story on the BBC's People's War website.

It is about a soldier who trained under Fairbairn and Sykes and contains some fantastic insights into these mens' personalities. (If you click the name of the author, it will take you to the contents of his entry too)

Radar Rules the Waves - WWII Magazine, December 2007

This month's article is concerned with The Battle of the Atlantic.

Editorial Ideas
This is a big subject and initially I wanted to put alot more in the graphic.

I eventually decided to just concentrate on the Sonar and Radar war. There was also an idea to do a graphic (that will feature in the book proposal) on what I am calling 'The Radar Race', but the editor decided that that subject was pretty well covered and we should go for a lesser known aspect of the struggle for intelligence.

In concentrating on one aspect of The Battle of the Atlantic, I had a good opportunity to investigate others for a later date.

These include-

• Further exploration of the Leigh Light and it's use
• The Radar Race in the Air
• U-Boat attack tactics
• The Schnorkel U-Boat - German technology to enable longer diving times was late in delivery
• Torpedo technology
• The Air Gap and Anti-Submarine planes - especially the long range of the B-24 and how it helped to close the 'Air Gap'.

Design Factors
Timeline
This timeline is slimmed down and ultimately better for it.

It did include ranges of the radar too. It was difficult because some of them had a small - 20 mile  - range and some had a massive range - 300 miles. This would have made the scale too large and meaningful comparison would have been difficult.

I wanted to see if I could show the difference between airborne and shipborne too as regards range but again, doing the basics of presenting facts by date - and the amount of apace available - negated the ability to lay out the data in that way.

The timeline was initially just vertical solid lines, but the left-to-right fade gives it some movement and alludes to the subject without detrating from the data. There would probably not be any need to 'affect' left to right movement on a larger and more spacious timeline, where the eye builds up it's own head of steam across the page, but this one was small and fairly cramped and I wonder that the 'go faster' lines help it acheive a more 'kinetic' (albeit a little forced) quality.

'Kinetic composition'
I should credit this phrase to Chris Pullman of WGBH in the US. I am fortunate enough to know Chris through my fiancée and he gave me some good advice when I last saw him. He was looking at the Bazooka graphic (I always carry a small folio of work in progress around at conferences in case I bump into wise people) and he mentioned how I should seek to improve the 'kinetic' quality of the composition.

At that time, the sense of movement in the graphic - both to lead the eye - and for a degree of excitement - wasn't so pronounced and his use of that word pretty much told me what I should do. It's inspiring when someone speaks in words of instant affordance. Thanks Chris.

Assault Rifle: Theory to Practice - WWII Magazine, November 2007

November's graphic in WWII Magazine is concerned with the creation of the first assault rifle by the Nazis. On a personal note, this is one of my favourites so far and the first one I did when I started this project last year.

Editorial Issues
Useful Range
In the hands of an expert, some of these weapons would have a much greater effective range but I looked at alot of different figures and these seem to be the best averages.

I hadn't realised what an effective and efficient weapon the Ppsh41 was until I started this graphic. Reading about whole divisions of Soviet troops equipped with these, you begin to get a picture of the attritional nature of the war and the force of the wave that crashed back on the Germans.

(Read Ivan's War for a superb account of the lot of the average Soviet infantryman in WWII. Very readable - more interested in the effect of these events on normal people as opposed to 'Order of Battle' detail.)

anyway - back to ...

Which weapons to include?
I missed out pistols - not influential enough on large actions. I decided to include heavy machine guns because they were often part of the battlefield, creating imbalances of firepower alongside these other weapons. At one point I was going to note the weight of each weapon, to show the trade-offs between weight and firepower. This would have been one variable too many in what was already quite a dense data visualisation.

The first?
One could argue that the FG42 was an earlier assault weapon. It does indeed merit a mention although it's use was not widespread.

Kalashnikov?
I am loathe to mention too much of the modern implications of these technologies. There is alot to be said about the influence of the  Germans on US weaponry since WWII - the M60 even looks like an FG42! I feel that discussing the present too much will take the WWII reader away from reflecting on the WWII era - important for appreciating the difficluties of manufacturing and technology at this time.

Design elements
Graphic Vistas
This graphic got me thinking about the landscape or 'vista' as a metaphor in information graphics. I hope I will explore some different techniques in the work for WWII Magazine but this one follows a common idea. It is the idea of an overview in the general theme and issues of a topic (the rifle range here) with data available one layer down - just as a graph shows you the general trend and then allows detail to be investigated. I have also added a formal 'tour' of the issues and an explaination in the story of the Stg44.

Everyday Activity
I reflected that showing all the data on a 'vista' with the viewer compositionally above the 'scene', able to survey and take in all was a good fit with our natrual perception systems. Every day, we are confronted with views and scenes that we need to  make sense of - and I felt that for this reason, the data presented on such a 'vista' woud be easier to digest.

Field of Vision
I further stretched my theory of the 'vista' being an easily digestable information format, by considering the human factors/ ergonomics of reading a magazine. When most people read the magazine, there will not be much room either side of the magazine for their remaining field of vison. The magazine, with 'vista' presentation, has replaced their normal view. It follows that replacing the brain's normal expectation of a view - with depth of field and significant objects - with another sort of view will be a more cognitively digestible way to convey informtion than a graphic that only works on the flat plane of the page.

Colour leads the Way
Thanks also to John (Grimwade) and Nigel (Holmes) who were really helpful with this one.
They both made the point that the central narrative  the 400m-Stg44 axis, should be raised above the rest of the data. On the version they saw, there was red elsewhere on the page, distracting the eye from a 1-2-3-4 narrative, attracting the eye to non-crucial visual elements (the explosions in the gun barrels on page 2 bottom left).