This book is my personal crown juwel: Infographics are abundant today, but few people know they have been around for centuries. They have always worked as a tool for understanding. And they have been used to explain every possible topic from cosmos to religion, from diseases to market prices. In this beautiful book, I have assembled an enormous collection from the past 800 years. Available from TASCHEN in three languages
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This was a thrilling discovery tour: “Napoleon’s Russian Campaign” (1869) is one of the most famous infographics ever. The man who created it was Charles-Joseph Minard (1781-1870), a little known French civil engineer who immersed himself into the new art of data visualisation when he was already 70 years old. He created a wonderful series of data maps, which was largely unknown to the public until recently. In this book, I have published the full series of maps for the first time, ever
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Will Burtin (1908-1972) was a German exiled graphic designer whose work feels like a bold combination of Bauhaus and Buckminster Fuller. What’s more, he also happened to be a wise conceptual thinker who integrated user experience and research into his design process
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Punch cards were used as data storage for early computing machines. Their design is optimized to work both for the computers and the humans handling them. Here is a book chapter about this curious graphic design situation, for the book “Print Punch” from CentreCentre publishing
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One of my favorite collaborations: An urban installation in the city of Breda that made the history of infographics tangible, in the truest sense of the word. Together with the Graphic Design festival Breda and Dutch illustrator Jan Hamstra
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Bar charts are everywhere today. Back around 1800, they came as a complicated visual that required abstract thinking. Was it the recording of flood levels that inspired them?
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Digital archives are great to have, but hard to experience. This interactive installation lets us look at the daily work of über-artist Leonardo da Vinci, via one of his famous collections of drawings
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Like many authors, German novelist Theodor Fontane was a voracious reader — and he loved to annotate his books. An interactive installation provides a glimpse into what he was after
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The Middle Ages are a remote world with a completely different media ecosystem. Books were custom-made, scarce and did take an enormous time to produce. This process left a lot of space for elaborate diagrams
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Researching the history of information graphics is a collective effort. I have been lucky to collaborate with some of the most prominent collectors and enablers in the field
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The early modern age in Europe was shaped by the advent of printing technologies — as well as by the colonization of large parts of the world. The infographics from the period provide testimony
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In the 19th century there was tremendous growth in the use of information graphics, such that by the end of the century a natural proliferation of maps and diagrams can be noted across many areas of media culture…
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The Library of Congress holds a collection of hand-drawn infographics about the life and progress of the African-American population. The series was prepared by the sociologist and civil-rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois with a group of his students and alumni for the Paris World Fair in 1900. A stunning new book from Princeton Architectural Press…
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