World Languages Graphic
stuart July 3rd, 2008
This graphic is an attempt to get away from the sometimes impenetrable aesthetics of information design. We are firmly of the belief that social statistics should be mapped in a way that makes them accessible.
But is the approach here too flippant: a board game product shot to sum up the complexities of human speech? As you can see, I ran out of space to graph all the ‘major’ languages, so this particular analogy to a ‘word game’ is not ideal.
But is it worth it to create visual interest? Does it make you want to read the stats, and are any of them surprising? Is it at least successful on that level? We would like to know what you think.
July 4th, 2008 at 5:03 am
This is a nice idea, but I don’t think it quite gets there. Flipppancy is not a problem at all, but as you say having to leave out Spanish etc is a big drawback. Again, I was not sure whether there was something else supposed to be going on with the intersection of the languages.
July 4th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Yes, just plain wrong not to include Spanish. As to the intersection I hoped that would get folks thinking about what languages borrow from each other; that there are no ‘pure’ languages; or that there are people out there that speak English, Arabic, French and Hindustani.
July 5th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Like it! Nice work that man.
I was a little thrown by the old school version of Scrabble. But that might just be me, I had not seen it look like this with the blue board and the serifs. It is lovely, but would possibly be less distracting with a newer version.
July 21st, 2008 at 1:06 am
The board game is called ‘Upwords’. Its main difference from Scrabble being that players are encouraged to change words by stacking letters on top of others. For this particular information design then, this gives me the excuse to use stacked tiles as a measure of people speaking a particular language. This may be a problem if people identify the game as Scrabble rather than Upwords, as you point out, Alex. Hmm … maybe I need some stats on number of people that have heard of or played Upwords?
October 8th, 2008 at 4:01 am
I think it’s great but hindered by the boards size.. The idea of this being a physical info-graphic is awesome.. kidna reminds me of the games ‘box cover’ or something with the way it is shot also which gives it a nice aesthetic.
September 22nd, 2009 at 2:05 am
[…] very pleased at to see a couple of our information graphics (this, solar power diagram and the World Languages graphic) included in Connie Malamed’s excellent design textbook, Visual Language for […]
January 29th, 2010 at 1:43 am
[…] very pleased at to see a couple of our information graphics (this, solar power diagram and the World Languages graphic) included in Connie Malamed’s excellent design textbook, Visual Language for Designers […]