Comments on: Designing Great Information Graphics http://www.typesett.com/2010/02/designing-great-information-graphics/ Your AMUSING Resource for Useful Design, Typography and Web Dev Articles Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:46:48 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Jolt http://www.typesett.com/2010/02/designing-great-information-graphics/comment-page-1/#comment-901 Jolt Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:53:31 +0000 http://www.typesett.com/?p=1167#comment-901 Some wonderfully creative examples of making stats and other info more engaging and more easily digestible for the gazing eye. Great post! :) Some wonderfully creative examples of making stats and other info more engaging and more easily digestible for the gazing eye. Great post! :)

]]> By: TypeSett http://www.typesett.com/2010/02/designing-great-information-graphics/comment-page-1/#comment-899 TypeSett Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:31:22 +0000 http://www.typesett.com/?p=1167#comment-899 @Chris - Thanks for the reply and it is wonderful that you started this conversation. I think designers are responsible for their IG just as a reporter is responsible for their article. Striving for excellence in your IG should be of high priority and should correlate to the type of website you are working for. The points you made are valid. That particular graphic is confusing but I also see that it's meant to reach a general viewer base and the subject matter was handled with "enough" delicacy to make it's point. A war crime IG or something of equal solemn-itude I would say that they should be as straight-forward as possible. @Chris – Thanks for the reply and it is wonderful that you started this conversation. I think designers are responsible for their IG just as a reporter is responsible for their article.

Striving for excellence in your IG should be of high priority and should correlate to the type of website you are working for.

The points you made are valid. That particular graphic is confusing but I also see that it’s meant to reach a general viewer base and the subject matter was handled with “enough” delicacy to make it’s point. A war crime IG or something of equal solemn-itude I would say that they should be as straight-forward as possible.

]]> By: Chris http://www.typesett.com/2010/02/designing-great-information-graphics/comment-page-1/#comment-898 Chris Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:41:54 +0000 http://www.typesett.com/?p=1167#comment-898 Good article, but I wanted to point out that the graphic used for point #4 (with the ships) actually uses scale in a way that's a big no-no in the info-vis community. First of all, the axis or axes it's using to convey the magnitude of the bankruptcy assets is completely unclear--is it the horizontal axis of the ship? The vertical? Even worse, the area? Area is especially difficult because suddenly you're using two axes (horizontal and vertical) to represent one piece of information. Second, the ships don't seem to be appropriately scaled to one another in any of the conceivable axes, whether counting the minimum, maximum, or mode of their ranges. Third, the area occupied by the color of each ship isn't balanced across different ship types, which leads to the potential for one color being erroneously over-represented (e.g. the color stripe on a sailboat is tiny while the stripe on a freighter is huge, leading to an over-representation of colors on freighters versus the sailboats). Fourth, the axis that the ships are aligned along isn't the same as the scale axis--they're ~30 degrees off. Or does that axis even mean anything? I'm still confused about that. The graph is reminiscent of those published by USA Today and its ilk, which are renown in the info-vis community as being completely misleading in terms of conveying accurate information. A better example of use of scale would be something like the Kyoto targets at http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/kyoto-whos-on-target/ or Hans Rosling's Gapminder (which seems to be the go-to example in the info-vis community for so many things these days). Also, the colors on the graphic illustrating use of color should probably be flipped--typically the left government is characterized by blue and the right government by red. I don't know if the authors were making a jab at the parties or not, but it's needlessly confusing. Good article, but I wanted to point out that the graphic used for point #4 (with the ships) actually uses scale in a way that’s a big no-no in the info-vis community. First of all, the axis or axes it’s using to convey the magnitude of the bankruptcy assets is completely unclear–is it the horizontal axis of the ship? The vertical? Even worse, the area? Area is especially difficult because suddenly you’re using two axes (horizontal and vertical) to represent one piece of information. Second, the ships don’t seem to be appropriately scaled to one another in any of the conceivable axes, whether counting the minimum, maximum, or mode of their ranges. Third, the area occupied by the color of each ship isn’t balanced across different ship types, which leads to the potential for one color being erroneously over-represented (e.g. the color stripe on a sailboat is tiny while the stripe on a freighter is huge, leading to an over-representation of colors on freighters versus the sailboats). Fourth, the axis that the ships are aligned along isn’t the same as the scale axis–they’re ~30 degrees off. Or does that axis even mean anything? I’m still confused about that.

The graph is reminiscent of those published by USA Today and its ilk, which are renown in the info-vis community as being completely misleading in terms of conveying accurate information. A better example of use of scale would be something like the Kyoto targets at http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/kyoto-whos-on-target/ or Hans Rosling’s Gapminder (which seems to be the go-to example in the info-vis community for so many things these days).

Also, the colors on the graphic illustrating use of color should probably be flipped–typically the left government is characterized by blue and the right government by red. I don’t know if the authors were making a jab at the parties or not, but it’s needlessly confusing.

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