Visualizations have been around for many years and are used to grasp complex data easily.
In 1812 Napoleon’s army invaded Russia, Charles Joseph Minard created an infographic to depict the magnitude of events. His infographic took a lot of data and displayed easily how things went from bad to worse for the army. This infographic is an example of how visualisations reduce the time needed to understand a given event. It gives the audience tools to analyse and make comparisons themselves.
Minard, C. (1869). Figurative Map of the successive losses in men of the French Army in the Russian campaign 1812-1813 [Image]. Retrieved 20th August 2018 from https://seanmunger.com/2015/09/28/napoleons-tragic-retreat-pictured-minards-famous-infographic/
In 1858, Florence Nightingale created the famous visualization about the deaths of British soliders in the Crimean War. Florence was a nurse who cared for the injured soldiers at the time. Florence noticed that many of the soldiers were dying unnecessarily and kept record of this. She published a monograph from her collected data which revealed that the real threat to British troops was not the Russians but disease. Florence’s graph revealed comparative data over time to give a holistic view of the problem.
Nightingale, F. (1859). Diagram of the cause of mortality in the army in the east [Image]. Retrieved August 20th 2018 from http://blog.visme.co/interesting-infographics/
Otto Neurath, a socialist and economist in Vienna, created a museum to make economics understandable to the uneducated. He created the International System of Typographic Picture Education. He created the concept within visualizations that rather than showing larger pictures to show more of something to show repetition of the same sized image. He believed in taking the information to the people rather than the other way around. He used the idea of using visual information to transform the masses. Below you can see his visualisation about Home & Factory Weaving in England. He communicates big ideas simply so that it is easy for the uneducated to grasp the information.
Neurath, O. (1939). Home and factory weaving in England [Image]. Retrieved August 20th 2018 from https://eagereyes.org/techniques/isotype
Most important aspect and why?
The most important aspect I learnt from this lecture was the importance visualisations have in educating and revealing information that couldn’t be seen without them. For instance, Florence Nightingale’s monograph was instrumental in ensuring that the British army did not continue to die unnecessarily. Her carefully collected data revealed that the amount of deaths could be reduced, which would impact the British army positively. This historical data visualisation is important because it shows the power and impact carefully collecting data over a period of time can be. Florence chose carefully how to present the data in order that the information may be fully grasped. A bar graph could have worked for each aspect of the data, however it would not have depicted well the impact over time. Florence was aware of the story she was trying to tell and choose her method of visualization accordingly.
I found the information about Otto Neurath inspirational as he used his skills in design for a greater purpose. He used his knowledge of design to visualize important information that even the uneducated were able to understand. The reason I found this inspirational was because it was an important reminder to use my design for a good purpose not to just design for the sake of it.
Reference
Cmielewski, L. (2016, July 25). Visualisation: Historical and contemporary visualisation methods- Part 1 [Video File]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/176255824
Beautiful Data 