maxgadney.com

The march of time - onwards and upwards

Very decent timeline from the guardian here.

- makes real effort at resolving the far out/ deep in of time lines - id like to see it stretch each way in and each way out even more - it is a little bit on rails - id like to see the whole

- v clear iconography (although the clear colours would really illuminate the Whole from a far out view - and id like toi see more links across countries (maybe there aren't any?)

- nice metaphor of time as a zoom forward - shame the mouse controls cannot use scroll wheel - you 'go' forward but still need to move left to right at the top

overall really good - and a positive step forward

The Story of Economics - Blastland's new work

Michael Blastland was one of the most popular speakers at the recent Design of Understanding conference.

Here is his new radio show - starts today. Iplayer available to UK people after.

 

Make graphics simple, not simplistic

 

Hans Rosling said to me "graphics won't do everything - they'll simplify some points, they'll introduce the idea and help to highlight important areas, but for some of the more complex explanation like causation or correlation, they have their limits".

That is borne out in the comments of this piece on redesigned health reports in Wired. 

I personally think the graphic pieces are good enough to illustrate the point, but probably aren't to a productised standard. You could say 'yeah but it was a magazine deadline' but you could say 'don't give lame excuses'. Both sides are right. (and i still buy Wired).

No one is going to disagree with the idea that health data could be given visualsiation attention and could be made more useful.

But the reality of doing anything good when dealing with this stuff is that it takes a tonne of work to understand the problem first.

In research at the BBC, a repeat issue was the fine line between making things simple (good, useful,accessible, focussed) and simplisitic (glib, generic, useless).

 

Are comics a bit crap?

I love comics. At least I used to before Monday.

I'd finished reading The Passage - a well written, non-Twilight, vampire horror novel. It was great. The story world was compelling and there were some good characters and a ripping story. A real page turner.

When I finished it, I thought how good it was and also how long it took - 750 pages over 2 weeks. It was densely packed and involved.

I thought of my favourite comics, say The Punisher, In The Beginning, by Garth Ennis. I think on balance, Punisher fans would have got more out of a 750 page written novel. Think of the amount of character exploring you could do. Nicky Cavela's backstory, the Company's deliberations etc. Could have been fantastic, but it was a comic and ideas in comics can only go so deep.

What we get in a comic is impact - and accessible engagement. It's not just the digestibility but the jaw dropping punch that you get (especially in Ennis' pacing) when you turn a page. Books cannot do that, but on balance I would rather have the slower burning effects of a page of prose and their lasting effects than an impactful end panel that lands it's case quickly but forgetably.

For those of you that know me and my love of comics will know that I am a bit disturbed by all this - but to continue -

I'm thinking the same with information graphics - are they just adverts for the text experience?(When there is one) If they are useful software then they are obviously an experience in themselves.

Pictures have momentary attraction but a thin capacity for information and importantly, ideas.

Prose on the other hand absorbs ideas like blotting paper and retells them with a lasting sophistication.

 

Malofiej 19 is in three weeks

 

The world's pre-eminent news information graphics conference is on soon.

Here are the details  - I can't make it this year, but there is a decent line up and it's great fun too.

You should go.

 

Stadium Evacuation Simulation - Useful Visualisations

(title is a bit of a mouthful but can't be clear and concise *all the time*.)

This is a simulation of a bomb attack on a sports stadium. It is used by emergency authorities to plan their response. More from this project here on the Redfish site.