The Rheinische Fachhochschule in Cologne, one of the oldest of its kind in Germany, invited me to talk as part of their series of guest lectures on the theme of “Big Data” last week. As I mentioned earlier, what really keeps me occupied is how we can establish a more detailed and informed dialogue on data visualisation. So…
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With the current variety of media channels, visual information has become an indispensable tool of communication. Here is my new book – the atlas of infographics
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For a few years now, Canadian-born Jer Thorp has been working on the forefront of data visualisation, creating ever new ways to interact with vast data sets. Operating under the title of a “data artist”, Jer has recently teamed up with Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin to form the Office of Creative Research. During the…
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Moritz Stefaner came to the field of data visualisation with a background in cognitive science and interface design. His works are intriguing in their effort to create a comprehensible visual vocabulary for mapping complex data. In his latest project “Stadtbilder”, the German designer visualised geolocation data for three German cities, with the aim to show…
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Charles-Joseph Minard is famous for one particular infographic: His map of the so-called “Russian Campaign“ of Napoleon and his army of 420,000 men. It is little known, however, that this graphic was only one of a series of several dozen infographics created by Minard. They all survive in an archive in Paris
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I am very much into all things related to structuring information & visual storytelling. So it is exciting to hear that London’s wonderful Victoria & Albert Museum stages an exhibition exploring new ways of visual narration and the forgotten art of memory: “MEMORY PALACE”, opening today. Based on a novel by writer Hari Kunzru, the…
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Maps are a means to store and communicate location-based data – from physical landscape information to climate data, from popular tourist spots to school data. Maps have also become a very popular format for recording personal memories and subjective impressions (such as in Raul Arias’ collection of literary references in Madrid or Hugleikur Dagson’s crazy…
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Even though tools like “Processing” have been out there for a while, computational design is still a rather new strand in visual communication. In computational design, the final visual appearance is not shaped by the artist’s pen or frozen in an Adobe file, but is dynamically controlled by software. “Design by coding” means the designer…
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The Museum of Modern Art in New York City is a fascinating brand name in the museum world. Since it was founded in 1929, the institution’s goal was not only to show what’s happening in contemporary art, but also to shape the very definition of what art “is” and which role it should play in contemporary…
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Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas have been working in data visualisation for many years now and are currently leading Google’s “Big Picture” research visualisation group. In 2012, they created a great personal project: The “Wind Map”. It visualises in realtime winds blowing across the United States. At the time of writing this post, strong winds…
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The American artist George Widener is an expert of numbers. Being diagnosed with an Asperger’s syndrome, he possesses an extraordinary memory, far beyond anything we can imagine. He is able to juggle with dates, weekdays and events from the past centuries as well as with future calendars and weekdays. All this data, which one would…
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In their quest to explore opportunities arising from the latest web technologies, Google has released a new experiment for their webbrowser Chrome: “FIND YOUR WAY TO OZ”. Google has teamed up with Disney to create an interactive online mini-adventure promoting Disney’s new fairy tale film “The Great and Powerful Oz”. (Screenshot) The website reveals a…
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