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WWII Fighter Plane Silhouettes (1)

A chat with Toby Barnes today had us discussing the difficulty in finding decent silhouettes for WWII fighter planes.

I have had a lot of google searches come to this site too - searching for WWII Fighter Plane Silhouettes.

So I thought i would share what sources I have seen.

I would stress that the best ones are often to be found in books - although some on the web are decent for cross-checking. 

One always needs to be careful about provenance and accuracy with these - there is alot of variation in models - early Mustangs different from later ones etc.

The below site is very sound.(but the use of frames in the web design means that you need to look for the 'Plans 3-vues' on the side - never mind - it is worth it)

http://richard.ferriere.free.fr/

Plenty of 'secret Luftwaffe' projects here

http://www.luft46.com/

focke wulf profiles

http://fw190.hobbyvista.com/profiles.htm

spitfire profiles

http://www.spitfiresite.com/reference/camouflage-markings/default.asp

here are some nice cutaways if that is what you like

http://www.flightglobal.com/staticpages/cutaways.html

and if you are into more of the german plane schematics, this is an interesting book

So - that is pretty much what i have in my links list for silhouettes.

This wasn't really a post about any information design insight or such but some of the draughtsmanship above is pretty fabulous. 

Leave any that I missed in the comments if you like.

Ascot Design

I went to the Royal Ascot horse race on Saturday. I was wondering if this would be of any interest to anyone but then I saw that Ben Terrett had done a post on F1 so I figured that I'd pitch in some more sporting observations.

With one eye on the racing, I had one to spare to cast over the delightful design of the programme.

I wouldn't have thought an establishment event would have good design - apart from the knapkin rings maybe - but I think it is because of the huge amount of information in horse racing. I think that after a few wines, an expert or beginner needs to have an idea about who to bet on in a hurry - and the clear layout, colour-jersey sign-posting/ access points and hierarchies of form information are pretty useful.

I personally wouldn't have that red block of info-blurb next to each rider - the red is too dominating - a different colour to denote it's prose-manner maybe - but no need for the red. Red is the last resort. Red is the cherry on top of the rest of the visual cake you have made - it shows you where to cut first. 

Spielberg referenced 'Don't Look Now in the use of this Girl in the red dress - she is visible because of the economy of the rest of the scene

It is the You Are Here spot, used when the start point of a design isn't shown (maybe for good reason) by the composition and other more subtle means. Don't paint with Red, don't sprinkle it - you should have a very fine brush that applies a small amount of red as a finishing touch or a last resort.

Many sports are under pressure to open up their arcane rules and traditions to newcomers and I thought this guide was very accessible - and visually elegant. I liked their how-to-guide.

(My only win of the day came not for that though but on the advice of my sister - she reckons that black and yellow vests win more. This advice was followed in the first race (apart from the yellow) and Big Audio came in at 22/1!)

Portugese Sporting Information Graphics

I saw these recently on Chiqui Esteban's excellent infographicsnews.com.

They are from a new newspaper launched in Portugal called "i"

They show why the Latin world is ahead in newspaper information graphics.

I like the way the footballer comparisons sets up its central question - "who is best?" - you can see that due to the isolation and placement of the two cut-out photos that this is the main point. 

The data points are then secondary but they do their tasks efficiently - even more so in the tennis player one where the quantitative comparison of tournaments won is mixed with the timeline with great economy. 

I do think the tactics-illustrations could be a little more detailed - there is a leap from the photographic actuality of a known star to the same star being represented by a generic aesthetic that could represent anyone. 

I'd have liked to have seen caricatures of each footballer there - abstracted versions of them that articulated the particular skills but used more recognition and fun.

But these are crisp and accessible - excellent.

WWII Book Reviews - Criteria

I'm going to start reviewing WWII/ Military History books that I have read.

Anyone looking for reviews should click here (from a few weeks time i reckon)

Some of these have been useful for the WWII Magazine work I do - others just because they are interesting. I already did this once a bit - but want a bit more rigour.

I have developed a list of criteria to mark them by

Here follows a description of each criterion.

Mark out of /10 for the Novice

Mark out of /10 for the Expert

When you go into a shop or look online, there is no way of telling which, on the shelf of WWII Bombing Campaign books, is a good overview or more accessible - or which ones have detailed specs of cockpit designs and bombing-mission-protocols. 

The grade for Novice and Expert will indicate this - some will manage to balance them both - the gift of great writers like Keegan, Beevor, Hastings.

Many will veer towards the 'Expert'.

When I say Expert, I mean someone who knows the basics, has read a couple of general histories, has a couple of more specific areas of interest in WWII. 

When I say Novice, I mean someone who may have a basic understanding of WWII, but would find a lot of new material in most books that went beyond general histories. They would not be likely to engage with a specialised area of the war - unless it was made accessible for them (normally by excellent writing).

Editorial Criteria will be:

Editorial Quality /10

Does the writer look to social, economic, geographical and other, un-traditional angles on his subject?

How much new and original proposition/ arguments exist here?

Does the writer seem to favour or bias any one side of the conflict?

Does the writer use overly patriotic language to support his case?

Does the writer present a balanced view?

Human Scale /10

Does he reflect the humanity and experiences of combatants?

Does he reflect the humanity and experiences of civilians?

Does he cover the duality of celebration and misery in war?

Are there the unguessable, unique, original insights and moments?

Does he address the moral issues in war?

Order Of Battle /10

How much traditional Unit History is there?

How much history of individual battlefield deeds?

How much is there a blow by blow account of tactics and minutiae of the battles?

How much emphasis on the relationships between strategies and tactics of commanders and units?

How thorough is the coverage of every battle in the theatre(s)?

Technology /10

Does he explain the technologies that lead to the one in question?

Can they tell us the social factors behind the developments?

Are technical specifications consistent across models and types throughout?

Of course these are based on what I think a good book should do. It is hard for a single book to do this all. The Novice/ Expert marks will not be accumulated from the Editorial marks.

These are criteria-in-progress so please comment on what is missing - What does a good WWII book read like?

Discursive Information Graphics -or - "What May Be"

This graphic from last week's Guardian is sound but initially I thought it could be easily improved.

It shows seasonal league places of Newcastle Utd and their managers. For Non-UK readers - Newcastle were relegated from the top football league in England recently - and many say there was not one major reason but many difficulties throughout the club. 

I thought that graphics such as this provide a place for quantitative reasoning and that a few more layers of data could make this more interesting.

Extra layers of data that could have told the story of the contributing factors to the collapse of this football club are:

- money invested

- profits made by board/ owners
- changes in backroom staff
- changes in executive staff
- new signings ( and their provenance, cost, effectiveness)
- accumulating wage bill

- general accounts - money in/ out 

- comparative debt with other english clubs - compared with those on continent

Thinking about the above, I remembered that caution is needed when presenting causal factors.

One must be careful in the data selected as the very selection and presentation of one set of data with another will imply a kind of relationship if not correlation or causality.

One could argue that this is a shortcoming of graphics versus text - that the presentation of so many  factors is a dance between many causes and and many effects, 

To freeze this complex and dynamic interplay renders it untrue - and that text, with it's pace, nuance and vagary is the best way to allude to complex relationships that cannot be shown.

Maybe a solution to this would be to borrow from the language of business diagrams - analytical devices that investigate dilemmas.Or just provide graphics that present the different reasons, separate from each other and any implicit causality.

So maybe rather than using these to provide evidence, one could provide them as discursive pieces -"What might have gone wrong.

Information graphics that support not one truth but many, prompting inquisitiveness in the readers - rather than having to be always right.

I'm working on one of these at the moment. More later.

WWII Magazine Graphics on Flickr

I have put all the WWII Magazine graphics on flickr.

There will be other stuff posted onto my pages but that's it for starters.

I figured that is is a nice and easy place for them all to be seen at once.

Do remember though that there is plenty of insight into why the graphics were done like they were on this blog too, so don't 'just look at the pictures'.

In fact never 'just look at the pictures' - it's what many designers do and it is why they are a little bit thick:)

The Waco Glider - WWII Magazine, July 2009

This month's article is about US 'Waco' Gliders and the risks they posed to those inside them.

Lessons Learned

I wanted to fully address the issue of signposting in my information graphics. 

It's a bit of a watershed. The current editor and I had a chat about these when I started and he felt they needed more signposting. I took a while to agree because I was so keen to get to the data, to get to the complexity and main thrust of my argument.

I forgot the Mario Garcia principle of News design - "design for both scanners and readers".

The signpost lets the casual reader know instantly what they are about to experience. (there is a massive glider in the main part of the left page - so this is about gliders and air war.)

Before the eye hits the glider, do you show the map at the top too? was one of my quandries - I thought it introduced things pretty well - and maps in News Design always give a veracity and underline a time and place

I didn't think the map deserved a large piece of the right page

 

This has been an issue with some of the last few years articles. Some have been so concerned with their stories as to forget to remind the casual reader what they are actually about. 

I think that in future, the signpost can be more subtle, but swinging too far from your habits is a way of learning too - as long as you swing back abit.

Drawing the Glider

I set up a separate document so as to concentrate solely on the Glider art. I used guidelines on other layers to aid the construction.

So if I was going to draw a glider, I thought I'd better do it right - or good enough at least. I have been looking at technical drawing methods and gradually putting some into practice.

I amassed plenty of photo reference, found a decent photo to trace for the outline and went about filling in the detail from the photos. It was all done on the mac - using a Wacom tablet.

The blue guides were for the struts within the glider - a series of metal tubes that would need to interlink under the glider skin.

Only a couple of line thicknesses were used - and tapers were used by converting the line to paths then tweaking the points.

The thicker outside line helps define the object but one needs to be careful not to make it too thick - as many do who try to make their diagrams that extra bit more authentic.

Invasion stripes were added for both accuracy and also for form definition - always nice if surface elements can help define the character of the object too - not just provide detail or colour

Drawing the Comparison Gliders

The comparison Gliders are smaller and only need to show their basic forms. A little bit like Aircraft Identification silhouettes - all the reader needs to know is their basic shape, to reflect on major design differences - wing placement, width of fuselage or comparable size. No other detail is needed in the illustration because no other detail is in the story. These are realistic representations but they are heavily edited to their basic essences.

The smaller glider shapes were exercises in economy - an outer line and just enough detail to define and differentiate in the actual form

Drawing the Landing Zone

I thought that to illustrate the landing zone I would need to create a generic landing zone.

Too realistic a render would have made The landing zone - I just wanted A landing zone. So the main thing with that is to make the pictures more like symbols - they stand for the elements - not unlike the smaller Gliders above. 

But this illustration style and aspect is too unreal, demanding and thus attention sapping - the minute people are uneasy or thinking why is that like that then you have lost them

The roughly sketched approach seemed to be precise/ vague enough - it was mainly a question of the contrast with other elements - both internal 0 the darks and lights - and the external - the contrast with the other elements on the page - so i lightened it so as not to cause an imbalance

This was the simple light and dark lines - quite nice but a bit too contrived - too vague - not precise enough

People

Starting with the last few graphics I want to feature people in these pictures. A friend of mine mentioned that it is strange that these graphics are all about technologies designed and affecting man but feature no one. 

So I continued the direction of the last graphic - looking for a style of render of people that speaks to their humanity, is not too precise and marks them out as different in kind from the technology that they are involved with - possibly more obviously organic lines making up these souls at the mercy of the harder straighter lines around them.

Next Issue...

I am really into the direction we are going with these. I am happy to work with a team that is happy to see progress and I hope they see the fruits of their constructive and civil critique in every article.

The next few are going to be good.

Be Head of Design for BBC News, Sport and Weather for a year

There is a vacancy in the BBC, covering maternity leave, for a talented design leader to oversee some of the following -

- redesigning the News web site

- diving into database journalism in a big way

- redesigning the Weather mobile service

- designing for the Winter Olympics on web, mobile, and red button

- and more!

Applications close on Tuesday 26 May

(the day after this coming bank holiday weekend).

I used to do a part of that job (the News bit) and know many of the team. They are the best in the business and lovely people too.

Doesn't really need much more selling so I'll stop.

Good Luck

Here and There by Schulze and Webb

Quick post this - to draw attention to a project some friends of mine have done.

Schulze and Webb are a v smart london design. tech/ making/ thinking consultancy. 

(Disclosure - they are also friends of mine) 

They have  a new project - a map of Manhattan called Here and There. You can see more/ buy one here.

Design thoughts

I like this. Possibly because I know how much thought they put into stuff generally, but it's great. But that isn't much of an insightful critique. So here is a punt at one.

It isn't a map - but it is absolutely about maps. 

I think this will inspire others in their map work because of how it provides the absolute key issue in most Information Design and that is it's value in the world. It surfaces the constant dance between orientation and navigation.

Where you are and what you can do. 

It's what I have spent the last year thinking and writing about (and hopefully doing).

Letting people know what they are being offered (so they can decide whether to pursue).

Letting people follow their interest, in a way they can understand.

I will add that such artefacts can offer something a little sensual - and I think the rush as we slide down 4th Avenue is exactly that.

Bits of midtown on the curve are hard to find, sure - but this piece of work is about thinking about wayfinding - not actually doing it. 

And given the failure of many modern approaches to data display (especially so much DataVis data driven mess) this is a nice way of reminding us of the tension between Here and There always in mind.

Note - I wasn't paid for this - I bought one (well, two actually)

Browning graphic Update

Some of you coming to the recent Browning Graphic Post may have been confused as to why the graphic wasn't pointed to from the site, like it is normally - it is now. 

Oops. 

Sorry about that. 

And this link goes straight to the WWII Magazine site who host the larger images.