Information is Beautiful by David McCandless

 Amazon.co.uk
 
 

This book is out now. Information is Beautiful is a collection of many visualisations of data - on lots of different subjects.

I met David McCandless the other day and we both share the view that if you are in the business of information design - and are serious about your form-giving, you should seek to do something with it apart from just 'data art'. 

this graphic from his blog
 

It's a good sentiment. That's why I'll buy this book.

The book took a long time to do (a solid year apparently) - but the thing that shines is that the time it took would have been to understanding the data and stories. 

They are rendered economically but humanely. They are boldly coloured for sure - where some may prefer NYT sobriety - but colour is nice - they are the closest I have seen to smart mass-market graphics in a long time. If only most of our journalists in the UK had a fraction of this visual smarts.

So I'll be buying a copy and if you know people who work with a lot of text and information, get them a copy - this book is infinitely more likely to make sense to them and show them a way forward than most info-vis stuff about today.

Noteworthy also...

David also created The Helicopter Game which caused me a major Remembering-doing-nothing-but-playing The-Helicopter-Game flashback when I visited it again - cool.