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Tiger Woods Impro-graphics

There has been a bit of a fuss about the Hong Kong based Apple Daily's use of video reconstructions around the Tiger Woods events.

I like them. They are Impro-graphics - they totally make stuff up and they revel in that. They are what the celebrity/prensa-rosa press would love to be - totally fantastical improvised fun.

The reason that people are uncomfortable about them is that they are used to portray the 'facts' in the T Woods 'story'. (There may well be a bunch of those 'quotes' by the way - it's that kind of post.) 

This is a fantastic way to do speculative celebrity entertainment. It is the real life cartoon rendering of the gossip pages - come to life -  in a suitably unreal 3d veneer - it is perfect for the unreal portrayal of the totally made up that most celeb papers/magazines are. 

They pitch their stories into the fantasy mind of their viewers - who do not for one minute care about the facts - they just want to make believe - and these nutty 3d mirages allow precisely that. They let the audience pretend (Russell Davies talks nicely about pretending in this post/talk)

Now, the use of this tech in News/ factual graphics is another matter - I don't believe it really has a place.

I think that the difficulty is that Apple Daily is also an imparter of facts. And the use of this fun stuff sits uneasily with that. Most dumbing down accusations come with uneasy juxtaposition of different stuff for different audiences - not the stuff in itself.

It is all a matter of the intention of the designer. The celeb graphics are obviously stupid - they are what they are - and they are a bit of a laugh. But 3d graphics purporting to tell the truth about news events stray into difficult territory. To render in 3d you need to render everything - and it is often that the news designer doesn't know everything. The use of 3d requires them to ad lib - as they cannot use the nuances of a pencil sketch.

This site puts it well - they expand on a premise in the sound book The Experience Economy - that of the Fake Real, Real Fake etc

– Real-real: is true to itself; is what it says it is

– Real-fake: is not true to itself; is what it says it is

– Fake-real: is true to itself; is not what it says it is

– Fake-fake: is not true to itself; is not what it says it is

I think that the 3d work looks fake so should only be about the fake stuff - play it for laughs - as that is what our perception systems do when we see 3d used for News stories - we know they are not real and it seems funny that someone out there thinks that we might be fooled.

(It seems also that Apple Daily is coming under alot of pressure for its 'video reports'. You will need to use the translating function I imagine.(from Infographics news).)

 Gert Neilsen also comments about this.

Some Guardian Graphics

When I used to hire designers I saw a lot if portfolios. One common comment was "this portfolio looks like it was done by different people." This was when the standard of the work used to be inconsistent

I see similar traits in the Guardian at the moment. They are generally very sound and are to be respected for dragging UK papers into the 21st century design-wise, but I see some inconsistency.

 

This CO2 bubble chart is a typical Guardian bubble chart style. It is a decent chart and the colours are very engaging. Nice.

Then there was this one a while ago.

 

This one is less a graphic - more an op-ed piece  - don't get me wrong - it's good to have visual op-ed (ask the NYT) but this graphic uses info-design vernacular (insinuated comparative volumes and presentation of hierarchy/ colour code) to make it's fun point - ( maybe I need to lighten up ). But in being accessible and fun, it failed to tell us how many people are on different wages etc - the list on the page is v interesting - answers the 'where am I?' question.

But the following is really not that good - some cut out shapes with a few volumetric bubbles - it's like some clip art got published accidentally - the pictographic effect may be fitting in tone for this data blog ares but it is a bit lazy looking - give us a list instead. (Does though make the one above look a lot more humane with plenty of people and faces.)

 
Is there an assumption that any data is worth visualising? 

Probably - but in my view,  information on it's own is not beautiful - but the articulation and editing of information certainly is in with a chance.

So come on Guardian - do the good stuff.