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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.