politics of diagrams

All

Before Christmas I asked if anyone had any good readings on the politics of diagrams. Many thanks to those who responded - i've got a heap of reading to do now! Here is the list of recommendations:

Charles Peirces’s work on the nature of diagrams

Deleuze discusses Foucault’s idea of the diagram in the former’s book on the latter

Otto Neurath’s seminal work on isotypes and related visual devices

Diagrams for the masses: raising public awareness – from Neurath to Gapminder and Google Earth by Raul Nino and Yuri Engelthardt

Moretti, Franco (2005) Graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for a literary history. Verso.

Data Soliloquies (2009), Richard Hamblyn and Martin John Callanan. London: UCL Environment Institute

Latour’s work on cascades of inscriptions and immutable mobiles

Sharpin’s work on virtual witnessing

Lines by Tim Ingold

The work of Jacques Bertin

Some people also sent examples of interesting visualisations and infographics, here are their links plus some of the sources we recommend to our students:

Books

Abrams, J. and Hall, P. (2006) Else/where: mapping new cartographies of networks and territories. University of Minnesota Design Institute: Minneapolis. 526/ELS

Baer, K. (2008) Information Design Workbook. RotoVision: Beverley. 741.6/BAE

British Library, Barber, P. and Harper, T. (2010) Magnificent maps: power, propaganda and art. British Library: London. 912.074/BAR

Fawcett-Tang, R. and Owen, W. (2002) Mapping: an illustrated guide to graphic navigational systems. RotoVision: Miles. 741.67/MAP

Harmon, K. A. (2009) The map as art: contemporary artists explore cartography. Princeton Architectural Press: New York. 760.0449912/HAR

Klanten, R. (2008) Data flow: visualising information in graphic design. Gestalten: Berlin. 741.6/DAT

Klanten, R. (2010) Data flow 2: visualising information in graphic design. Gestalten: Berlin. 741.6/DAT

Knight, C. and Glaser, J. (2009) Diagrams: innovative solutions for graphic designers. RotoVision: Miles. 741.6/KNI

McCandless, D. (2009) Information is beautiful. Collins: London. 032/MACC

Mogel, L. and Bhagat, A. (2008) An Atlas of Radical Cartography. Journal of Aesthetics and Protest: Los Angeles. 304.23/ALT

Sloman, P. (2009) Paper: tear, fold, rip, crease, cut. Black Dog: London. 709.051/PAP

Tufte, E. (1997) Visual explanations : images and quantities, evidence and narrative. Graphics Press: Chesire, Conn. 741.6/TUF

Tufte, E. (1983/2001) The visual display of quantitative information. Graphics Press: Chesire, Conn. 741.6/TUF

Tufte, E. (1990/1991) Envisioning information. Graphics Press: Chesire, Conn. 741.6/TUF

Tufte, E. (2006) Beautiful evidence. Graphics Press: Chesire, Conn. 741.6/TUF

Visocky O’Grady, J. and Visocky O’Grady, K. (2008) The information design handbook. RotoVision: Miles. 741.6/VIS

Vossoughian, N., Camp, D., Stroom Haags Centrum voor Beeldende Kunst (2008) Otto Neurath: The language of the global polis. NAI Publishers: Rotterdam. 711.4092/NEU

Websites

http://infosthetics.com/ - fantastic for the latest notable visualisation produced all over the world

http://geographicalvisualisationresources.blogspot.com/ - Jon’s blog with infographics relating to geography

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/ - some amazing visualisations

http://www.meryl.net/2008/01/22/175-data-and-information-visualization-examples-and-resources/ - 175 visualisations

http://eagereyes.org/ - reviews of visualisation

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/ - David McCandless’s site

http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/08/visualization-as-journalism.html - article about vis

http://www.coolinfographics.com/ - another infographics blog

http://dd.dynamicdiagrams.com/ - a design and diagrams blog

http://bigthink.com/blogs/strange-maps - strange maps blog

http://mapsthatmatter.blogspot.com/ - maps that matter blog

http://graphicfacilitation.blogs.com/pages/ideas_illustrated/ - info on graphic facilitation

http://trade-routes-resources.blogspot.com/ - a blog about historic trade routes

http://www.archivalmaps.com/index.htm - old maps

http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/historic_cities.html - more old maps

http://www.bl.uk/magnificentmaps/ - the legacy site for a map exhibition the British Library ran

http://www.kitchin.org/atlas/contents.html - an atlas of cyberspace produced by geographers

http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/visualization.html - some very cool visualisations

http://www.wallstats.com/ - infographics you can buy

http://flowingdata.com/ - a datavis site

http://mapecos.org/ - Visualising pollution

http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/gallery.htm - visualising history

http://www.mysociety.org/2007/more-travel-maps/ - visualising travel

http://prefuse.org/gallery/ - more ideas

http://www.scimaps.org/ - geographical visualisations

http://www.theyrule.net/ - mapping corporate connections

http://www.topicscape.com/mindmaps/ - a site full of mind maps

http://worldprocessor.com/ - visualising the world

http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/epu/ - photographic visualisation

http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/index.jsp - visualising Britain

Newspapers

http://mondediplo.com/ - Le Monde

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog - The Guardian

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/multimedia/index.html - The New York Times

Producing/About Visualisations

http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/ - input your data, get a visualisation

http://www.perceptualedge.com/examples.php - improving visualisation design

http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html - almost every type of visualisation method you could think of

http://www.wordle.net/ - producing word clouds

Flickr Groups/Bookmarks

http://www.flickr.com/groups/innovation-dataviz/ - collection of vis

http://www.flickr.com/groups/playspacenewcastle/ - participatory vis

http://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?w=all&q=visualisation - more groups

http://www.delicious.com/tag/visualization - vis bookmarked on delicious

Data and Statistics

http://www.gapminder.org/downloads/ - great for finding data on a range of development issues

http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx - data on OECD countries

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home/ - data on EU countries

http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm - data held by the UN

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/default.asp - statistics about the UK

http://www.data360.org/index.aspx - ‘a wiki for data’