Info Visualization

Week 3

Christian Swinehart -
  • Retinal Variable wrap-up
    • Meet in pairs, presenting your data-to-retinal variable ‘mappings’ to one another
    • Pick one example row from the other person’s worksheet that you feel is particularly successful, surprising, or creative
    • Pick one row from your worksheet that you’re unsure of and have a question about
    • Present those two rows when we re-join the whole class
  • Research & Readings
  • Nothing but a Number
    • critique of your 7 different experiments
    • begin work on next iteration by choosing 1 direction that you’ll approach from 3 different angles: quantitative, qualitative, and humanistic

Assignment

  • Poor Form
    • Read Kierann Healy’s chapter on ‘badness’ in information graphics. For every reading assignment, you will be expected to post a short (250–500 word) write-up summarizing what you took to be the ‘message’ of the piece, what you agreed or disagreed with, and what you’d be curious to hear your peers’ opinions about. Be sure to add the tag "R1" to your post by clicking on the gear icon at the top of the screen and don’t forget to Publish your draft.
  • Nothing but a Number: Final Posters
    • Pick one of your directions from this week’s sketches and develop three different posters, expanding on the information graphic at its core, the typographic treatment of its textual content, and a visual hierarchy that allows for ‘three reads’ based on distance/attention.
      • Be sure to include your ‘primary’ piece of data—the original number you selected—and any (or all) of the supplemental numbers you came across in last week’s iteration (i.e., the ‘compared to what’ portion of the argument)
      • Choose any aspect ratio for each poster, but limit the largest side to 17". Experiment with different sizes on the different posters and consider how your use of composition interacts with those dimensions
      • Use a single type family and establish your type hierarchy by varying its size, weight, and/or width
    • The textual content should include (at least):
      1. A short (fewer than a dozen words) title
      2. A slightly longer (under 3 sentences) ‘lede’ that makes the claim your graphic is there to support
      3. A short paragraph of ‘discussion’ that explains subtler points being made by your graphic or otherwise provides context for the subject matter you’re engaging with. This is your chance to address the ‘so what’ portion of your argument
      4. A citation to the source of your data
    • The graphic itself should include a legend explaining anything that needs to be established about the meanings of the colors, patterns, sizes, positions, etc. Make sure this is working in harmony with both the graphic and the typographic elements on the page.
  • Programming Workshop
    • In preparation for next week’s in-class lab, make sure you've got the following installed/set-up:
      1. a text editor (consider VS Code, SublimeText, or Atom)
      2. a development environment (on a Mac, install the developer tools by opening the Terminal app and type xcode-select --install; for Windows I recommend signing up for AWS/Cloud9 then creating a new ‘environment’.
      3. an account at GitHub and (if you’re not using Cloud 9) a copy of the GitHub Desktop client
    • Depending on the extent of your prior experience with programming, you may want to take a look at: