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Introduction
Steven Heller

Raw Data, Around the time that the Information Age turned into the data dump of the early
1980s, Louis Silverstein, design director at The New York Times, pioneered an
Fresh Cooked analogue editorial approach to capturing and communicating important facts
to his readers by filling a full broadsheet newspaper page with various charts and
graphs, tied together with descriptive captions. He dubbed this page a 'side of beef',
referring to the cutaway diagrams that hung in most butcher shops, indicating
where the different prime and lesser cuts were located. Silverstein's sides of beef
were considerably more complex than their namesake, but no less engaging. They
gave readers a diet of prime, lean data, with which to feed their news consumption.
An average page would feature a detailed annotated schematic of (for example)
the space shuttle, along with separate route maps, complemented by a number of
charts and graphs presenting additional orbiting information. Aiding readers to better
understand complex material through hierarchical displays, created using extended
captions and informative visuals, was the simple goal; launching an entirely new
discipline of information design was the amazing consequence.
Information graphics, or 'data-visualization' as it is known today, was not entirely
novel in the 1980s, or even before. Charts, graphs, diagrams and maps were long-
time editorial staples of newspapers, magazines, textbooks, annual reports and
more. Graphic pictoiconography of the kind running rampant today had been used
as a visual shorthand since the nineteenth century, if not earlier. By the 1930s, symbol
signs had been modernized by language theorist and social scientist Otto Neurath,
whose ISOTYPE (International System of Typographic Picture Education) is the most
common representational icon-language used today. Like mathematics, the easy-to-
understand reductive symbolic picture is a universal communicator, whether on road
signs or luggage stickers, and Neurath's original international picture language is as
intact and viable today as it was when he directed artists to create his earliest statistical
charts in the 1920s.
In the ensuing years, data-viz has changed from the facile and virtually
undesigned to the conceptually rigorous. The variations have expanded in size and
scope to meet an increased demand for digestible information. The data dump is
equal parts glut and wave, directly in relation to the excessive number of computer
sites and apps offering statistical information; the seismic shift from analogue to
digital methods of aggregation, storage and dissemination has overflown the banks
of containment. But there is a bright side. More demand begets more designers, both
schooled and untutored in the art of information presentation. A greater number
of platforms and media outlets means it is incumbent on designers, who a decade
ago would never have thought of themselves as 'information architects', to become
makers of some form of information visualization . The results are not just the rote
pie and fever charts of yore, but are more nuanced while still being accessible.
Making enticingly accurate infographics requires more than a computer drafting
program or cut-and-paste template, however. The art of information display is every
bit as artful as any other type of design or illustration, with the notable exception
that it must tell a factual or linear story, rather than an expressive tale or polemical
message. What this book reveals is that this art is required to help explain all kinds
of data- but this is not exactly novel either. In 1977 the English-born illustrator Nigel
Holmes (pp. 146-53), newly arrived in New York, almost single -handedly shifted
how charts and diagrams were used in Time magazine, away from nondescript
colour-tinted boxes towards illustrated mechanical drawings. Holmes, influenced by
Neurath's colleague Rudolf Mod ley, who added to the visual vocabulary with many
more relevant sign symbols than the originaiiSOTYPE, imported a rare sense of wit
and humour into the infographics universe, intended to engage the reader's eye
and mind. How Holmes arrived at his solutions was not all that different from
other conceptual illustrators: he sketched them, working and reworking them until
they were crystall ine.
Whether with a pencil or on the computer, drawing is the operative activity.
Many information designers and architects will do small thumbnails or draw lines
onscreen as a first step in making a pleasing frame for their data messages, but
there are many others who take the prel iminary exploration as an art exercise.
Visualizing data is not supposed to be an expressive opportunity, but the best
designers are capable of making an artful commentary while presenting the data
clearly and efficiently.
So much of the finished work in this book, shown here alongside the designers'
working sketches, reveals a Jekyll-and-Hyde relationship. Much of the loose
sketchwork belies even the 'hard-edged' precisionist or, one might say, clinical end
product. Even when the preliminary designs are done on computer, they exhibit an
understanding of visual craft that every artist will appreciate. When Louis Silverstein
sketched out his raw 'sides of beef' on vellum or tracing paper, black litho crayon in
hand, the joy of creating his broadsheet-sized pages of information was as intense as
the finished product, typeset, pasted up and ready for press.
12

Nobels, No Degrees
La Lettura, 2012

This infographic examines the nearly one thousand

Nobel laureates created since 1901, when the awards
began, to the present day, analysing the age of
recipients and the evolution of age averages over the
years, as well as award categories, graduation grades,
university affiliations and hometowns. The first idea
was to divide a selection into categories, enlightening
these with further parameters for each individual,
but the team soon found that with small samples,
no patterns would emerge: 'We tried selecting the
youngest and the oldest, but nothing happened. We
tried selecting only women, but nothing happened.'
The final infographic is illustrated on p. 14.

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Brain Drain
La Lettura, 2012

By showing incoming and outgoing flows of researchers

in sixteen countries, this infographic is an attempt
to cha rt the motivations that move academics from
one country to another. Each country is visualized
through the representation of GDP per capita, female
employment rate, overall unemployment rate, university
ran kings and percentages of foreign researchers,
foreign population, emigrant researchers, overall
emigrant population and researchers returning to their
country of origin, as well as the primary countries that
researchers come from and move to. The team wanted
to determine if surges in the number of academics,
large investments in research and development, higher
incomes and steadier markets were the drivers that
determined the choice to stay or go .

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.i

J,-.I . 26
Kelli Anderson
·I' I 0 Inventing ways to illustrate strong business growth

·r i Kelli Anderson, now based in Brooklyn,
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New York, first began creating diagrams in
high school because she was interested in
.I
I both art and physics: 'I could use both as
I
jumping-off points to better understand
a world in motion,' she explains.
Anderson always begins the design process
by sketching out ideas in pencil. In this initial
phase, she tries to determine what type of
diagram or chart the design will be, and
to see how the information might fall into
it ('sort of like the wire-framing stage in
web design').
'When working on client projects, creating
sketches also initiates an editorial-type
conversation about the larger narrative
story told by statistics,' she explains.
'The data shown in any infographic is,
first and foremost, an exercise in editing
out extraneous data- there are an infinite
number of facts in the world about anything.
What data is measured or recorded is a
subjective choice, as is the editing of the
recorded outcomes.'
This is also how Anderson spots patterns
within the masses of data that will ultimately
tell a story. The data pattern is reinterpreted
as a narrative, and the infographic bridges
the gap between those raw numbers and
the interpretation of their impact. 'Sketches
help in building that bridge,' she says. 'They
give a better idea of whether or not the
data will actually impart the intended story
to the reader. Sketches pave the way, but
also reflect on the efficacy of the preceding
editorial step in creating a final infographic.
'Some graphics are so complex they
require a rough mock-up in Illustrator before
you can even start thinking about the design
details,' she continues. 'You just can't beat
pencil-to-paper to get rough ideas into the
world . Everything else just takes too long.
Your brain works fast and the pencil is the
only tool capable of keeping up. The lag-time
between having an idea and "getting it down"
means losing sight of some dimension
of it. That is why my sketches are so
terrible- at this stage, the priority is on
the idea. Obsessing over presentation
can come later.'

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Nights Booked
Airbnb, February 2011

'Travel company Airbnb started

out with this super-idealistic :.··'
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marketplace where people can
rent out their homes to other
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but also that it is working, and
working insanely well. Airbnb
was really smart to keep track
of all of their data from the very
beginning.'

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38
Nicholas Blechman
0 Making data-v isualization an enjoyable experience

As art director of The New York Times Book
Review and editor of Nozone magazine,
Nicholas Blechman is not your typical data-
visualizer, but working on graphic charts
with illustrative and cartoon figuration is
one part of his expansive tool kit. He often
initiates his own infographics, both to impart
information and to make a comical point.
Blechman began creating infographics
as part of a regular column for Audubon
magazine in 2001. 'I think art directors
wanted to make charts and maps more
fun and began giving information graphic
assignments to illustrators,' he says.
For every piece, Blechman notes that he
will always sketch twice, 'first to get the
idea down, then a more refined sketch- a
sketch of the sketch- to explore the design'.
Although he generally draws with pen on
paper, Blechman recently bought a Wacom
Cintiq interactive pen display and now
enjoys sketching directly in Photoshop,
before importing to Illustrator.
'I love the immediacy and directness of
drawing on paper,' he says. 'Something gets
lost if I skip this phase and render directly
onto the machine.'

Extra Virgin
Suicide
The New York Times,
26 January 2013

A series of infographics on
food 'crimes', here illustrating
the adulteration of olive oil.
Blechman notes: 'The danger
with infographics is that one
can become a slave to the
data. The challenge here
was not to be too literal, and
to dramatize the facts w ith
humorous drawinl!s.'
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