Love this! Every student, designer, person has to have the ability to immerse themselves in type physically rather than just mentally. .
Shape My Language
Subway Blogs Map
Names Authors
An excellant visualisation taking another fantastic subway (hary beck) subversion visualisation similiar to the web-trend-map-2008-beta by the information architects, except instead of mapping mapping the internet terrain, mapping claude ashcenbrenner's (at serial mapper) blogs/RSS links archive.
He cleverly structures the content of his blogs using the paris subway map layout of lines by renaming them as:
Visualisation
Teaching
Thinkers
Business Intelligence
Missing In Action
Mind Mapping
Network
Creativity
& Humour
To arrange all these blogs into an easy to follow, complex/diverse/similarities content ordered, clean spatial structure is a real achievement. It has this easy to the eye pink background and beige centre that allows the Blue and Green names easy to focus on and follow along the lines. But if it isnt enough of an achivement to arrnage these complex/diverse blogs in a great connectivist structure, he still added further depth by simply subtly differentiating between French & English blogs without having to compomise his overall layout much at all merely a small key to say:
green - english
blue - french
Making it bilingual to help when navigating.
He was exporting this to pdf so that it is a fully interactive hyperlinks attached to the blog name nodes concept map. make in more engaging yet further.
He breaks it into 2 output version of the authors and one for the names, both using the same spatial location along his different lines so as to easily correlate the authors with their blogs.
I love it as you can probably guess.
Here are cluade's comments (forgive translation, may not be absolutely correct)
'You've probably noticed this blog is somewhat artistic. Indeed unlike the practice you can not find the list of my favorite blogs.In fact I think for a long time, but procrastination also achieved all that we must say that I was not sure how to keep all my RSS feeds in a reasonable space ..
I finally found the solution obviously in the form of a map. You will therefore find below a selection of 70 blogs devoted to mapping information encapsulated in a subway map.
Parisians (and others - °) recognize a part of the metropolitan network to which were added some tram lines. This plan is bilingual French / English including heads of line that I let you discover ... The francophone (in Blue) is represented by nearly 40 blogs, many of which have emerged in the last year ..
This device is designed to encourage you to leave your usual lines by taking paths through it.
Ca n'al'air nothing but a path we must remember that the term method has been built from a Greek word meaning old way .... So Good cognitive walk!
Each blog is associated a subway station. Place your mouse URL appears, click will open a new window to view the blog.'
Love his concept of 'leaving usual lines by taking paths through it', much like my work with the recent http://visualthinkmap.blogspot.com/2008/09/notebook-route-map.html. Could be called Blog Route Visualisation, but Blog Subway Map infer's that quite effectively.
Aa soon as I spot I know a link to Claude's interactive version, trust i will repost this. Great aid to exploring blogs of similiar content/interests/terrain that can be used in an instant, just how you more often then not want a visualisation's performance (function) to do.
Fantastic claude
Enjoy the journey
from here: http://www.serialmapper.com/archive/2008/09/25/mise-en-seine-de-blogs.html
search the web for the titles/authors of blogs, will no doubt bring up the right one as we await pdf concept map
Information Aesthetics Diagram
From they're paper Towards a Model of Aesthetics in information Visualization, Andrea Lau & Andrew Vande Moere (who was previously quoted, see here) create this fantastic equilaterral triangular digram that helps understanding of the types of images, charts, art, design & much more.
Although I have yet to read this paper, this diagram investigates & structures the different types of mapping between the three poles of:
Aesthetics - Focus on visual style & experience
Data - Focus on representing abstract data sets
Interaction - Focus on user input & feedback
Regular readers will notice that this blog seeks to find some of the most creative & innovative (aesthetics) ways of visualising, mapping (hence I tend to call them visual maps) information (data).
I am also intersted the Interaction between users mentioned in the diagram such as the HCI (human computer interaction), explored really well by lauren bugeja in her research map, and taking into account the level of engagement of the graphics, GUI (graphic user interface) both in website design such as hierachy/composition, but also the graphics themselves beeing stimulating when dealing with interactive visualisations such as kartoo, visual acoustics or music plasma.
The higher engagement allows greater playfulness through more challenge, presenter control, and variety in a game for browsing, read here presentation visualisation by till voswinkel.
This diagram certainly gives a reader/user of this visual map/diagram a better awareness of how these interesting factors of info vis, data vis, art, design & graphics all coherently piece (reflected in its jigsaw syle puzzle) together.
Excellant, read the paper, as will I.
For further research into visualisation read, views on visualisation from eager eyes. Or see more papers co-written by andrew vande moere.
found here: http://visualmethods.blogspot.com/2007/09/information-and-aesthetics.html
Visual Communication: Wordless Recipics
http://www.coo.kz/
This is the website Lauren Bugeja has created to house these beautiful visual maps. The visual equivalent of a thesis - work from her final semester in Visual Communications.
She calls these visual maps Recipics, good use of ambiguity in the word pun on recipes. These are great explorations of visually mapping information making it universally accessible. She still uses the paradigm of numbers & arrows, but what I like best is how she uses these & space to depict time & measurements fig. Depicting time in a similar tecnhique to Bradford Paley in Once more around the sun. She uses faded flames contrasted to full colour to depict gas mark, which is admirable technique removing the use of numbers.
She has great experiments between mimetic depictions of food, but creates great iconic characters to represent meats i.e. lamb=sheep, beef=cow & pork=pig, fig.
Bugeja acknowledges the occasional stumbling block: “The ingredients are still a work in progress,” she said. “For example, it’s hard to explain the difference between flour, baking powder, anthrax and cocaine without words.”
A clean sans serif font, & beautiful pastel colours really caps off a great, excellantly executed idea.
Her research map as she calls it, looks at the contrast of word & images, human factors with Human Information Processing with communication. In relation to interaction of the GUI (graphic user interface) she states the same as I have researched with engagement allowing greater playfulness through more challenge, presenter control, and variety in a game for browsing.
What’s most relevant here is the Information Architecture to ‘organise information to create meaning’ through ‘scheme & structure’ i.e. mental schemas and these visual map techniques of brainstorms, spider diagrams etc (Bugeja, 2008, p VC Major project). There are many more beautiful visual maps of all topics linked under diagram diaries on flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenbugeja/sets/72157594238802216/
Liverpool Map
There are other techniques to improve salience within the design process such as some of those mentioned by Laszlo Moholy-nagy in his essay from 1925 ‘Contemporary typography – Aims, Practice, Criticism’, ‘tension introduced into layouts by contrasting visual elements such as: • light/dark • empty/full • multicoloured/grey • vertical/horizontal • upright/oblique’ (Blackwell, 2001, p. unknown). An excellent visual map that beautifies, enlivens, and has an excellent salient ability is ‘Liverpool the centre of the creative universe’ designed by Burn Everything.co.uk, fig. This was exhibited at the Tate Liverpool but this certainly grabs the user/readers attention and it categorises the content into Topographic landmarks of the city, such as The Docks, The Walker Art Gallery, Tate, Bluecoat Art Gallery, Liverpool College of art & also by The Beatles. The subtle harmony with tinges of Pink Framing (arrows/lines) the main Landmarks in the foreground and the background framing of the Blue linking particular people across these Landmarks are excellent. The framing (Kress & Van Leeuwen) also has many different styles from varied iconic and well known pointing hands, to hand drawn, dashed lines, rounded edge bubbles, rectangular, organic grey shapes, speech bubbles all used in distinction to there landmarks. The use of varying saturations of black with the monochrome bubbles and introduction of illustrations of birds & eyes, some iconic others mimetic (realistic photos) create a magnificent balance of word & image. The layering and differing tones of grey create great depth and the information value is immense because it is so visually engaging and stimulating you to read/interpret and identify The Beatles as being something you know of. You follow the linked bubbles further and may discover Brian Epstein, ‘Who is this?’ is a reponse the name might elicit. This would then hopefully inspire the map reader/user to research this name, usually via Google (preferably Kartoo.com), or ‘Who is Peter Blake?’ That would certainly inspire and stimulate creativity upon discovery. Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen wrote three aspects of visual composition: Salience, Information Value & Framing in Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge (1996), (Chandler, 2006, p. sem_04). Blackwell, Lewis. (1998). Twentieth-Century Type, New and Revised Edition. Lawrence King, London
Related articles by Zemanta
- The Beatles: It's a fab time to celebrate the Sixties (telegraph.co.uk)
- Happy Birthday, Brian Epstein (emilyanthony.blogspot.com)