The Social in the Visual

… And here is our more rational approach. These two animations, the sensationalist and the rational, were projected next to each other within the gallery. The Swine Flu version was the one passers-by could see from the street. As they approached, viewers began to see the rational approach projected on to a wall more hidden from the street. The two projections were synchronised so that the comparisons were impossible to avoid. Please pop back soon for the video clip …

Here’s the first of two animations that we projected on to the walls of the Spectrum Gallery in Beaufort Street, Perth, last week. We’re beginning to get to grips with what this Figures thing can be. All along we’ve wanted to look at alternative visuals for news. Here we decided to compare the usual news approach of photographs and attention grabbing headlines with a more reasoned approach (next post).

We need your feedback on our site.

Here is a little spiel to explain our research, please let us know what you think!

We are examining both the form and content of news information using the web and info graphics as interrogative tools. We feel that these two belong together as we can reach a broad audience in the same way that news media does. And at the same time proposing new ways of shaping information visually.

This is an examination of alternative news information – we don’t profess to provide answers, far more it is about presenting information in new ways. A lot of the postings so far are about the form, using new models to communicate socially relevant information, hence the content is at times arbitrary. After this initial research period we hope to have some productive visual forms we can apply to media content that we feel is worth investigating.

So after reading our spiel, please have a look and post your thoughts on the Figures website: Which postings do you connect with and why? Can you spot any key themes that are worth developing? What are some issues that you might like to be addressed? Are there any problems with this approach? 

We look forward to you sharing your thoughts about Figures.  

In this blog, we’ve discussed the idea of the ‘rhetoric of neutrality’ before. Now it’s time to look at one of things that rhetoric was not really designed for: humour. While the research going on at this blog has been exploring the special powers of information graphics, it has been informing some of the teaching we do in our day jobs. At ECU we run a vector illustration class with a focus on information design. The image shown here is from one of our students, Mr Scott Malcolm. This is his response to a brief which asked students to map out graphically something they feel strongly about. Most students choose to look at environmental and/or social/health concerns. Such concern for others is heartening to see, of course, and, in fact the reason for our research. Every now and then though, as in Mr Malcolm’s submission, the content breaks the mould and helps to highlight the fact that this form of graphic design is almost exclusively devoted to serious subject matter. We’re intested in these unusual approaches to the form, not just for a good time, but because our research has at its foundation the idea of accessibility. Humour can slip under the guard of many stony-faced conventions to subvert messages and to help make for memorable communication.

Can you help us think of some serious topics that might benefit from this ironic use of information design?

We’re big fans at Figures of Shahee Ilyas’ flags as pie charts. That got us thinking about the following information based on national colours. But this post has a clear antecedent in Uriah’s post, The personal body as information design. Have you ever pondered why so many nations seem to have two sets of national colours? Notice how with these examples, Australia, Italy, The Netherlands and Germany, the national football strip does not follow the national flag colours? And there are many more nationalities where the two do not coincide.

In Australia, for all the carry on in recent years surrounding our national flag, when we refer to our national colours we do not refer to those in the flag, the red, white and blue, but instead to the ‘green and gold’. The colours of the wattle, not the flag. In Italy, the blue, once the colour of the royal family, has been clung to despite the abolishment of their monarchy in the 1940s. Similarly, there’s a historical connection in the Dutch strip that precedes the current flag (rather allarmingly, the orange has historical connections with militant protestantism. Surprising for a famously broadminded culture).

In many cases, the national sporting colours seem to have a deeper connection to a national psyche, or to grass-roots sentiments about that country than do the colours imposed upon a nation via national flag through a top-down approach. What are your thoughts on these disconnections between flags and ‘true’ national colours?

To further explore the potential of locative information graphics I looked at Australian suburbia, which has undergone a massive change since its beginnings. A new model for suburbia is The Estate. These environments encourage a style of architecture, paint colours, town plan, and so on. All of these physical aspects can be seen in The Brochure. A certain lifestyle is for sale, often reserved for a particular person with a certain class, occupation, social qualities and family values. What if these ideal living standards were made public and transparent? What if Figures obtained this role. As an example, our service would be this mailer, targeted to particular suburbs and using the local area statistics from the ABS we can talk about the citizens this particular area attracts.

For this example I have used the Leeming suburb, not an estate structure, but hopefully the mailer will still raise awareness of the suburb’s social qualities. The mailer acts as a how-to manual to living the ideal lifestyle in Leeming. It shows the average occupation, family structure and time management. For example, if you are a male in Leeming you are expected to perform 5-14 hours of housework, while females should perform 15-29. For your occupation, the majority of residents are professionals; your choice of work would be education, technical service or healthcare. This manual includes a survey, which requires the Leeming residents to participate with the mailer; asking them to record their average spending, time, family, etc. With this information the mailer informs the citizen if they fit the mould for Leeming or whether they should be reassigned to a better-suited suburb.

Could this tongue-in-cheek mailer be taken seriously? Is it an informative way to introduce readers to designing a lifestyle? What else could be placed in the mailer or other how-to services for the uninformed suburbians?

If you live or have lived in Leeming please respond.

Could colour be used as a human geographical tool? Stuart’s post raises some great questions about colour as information. I argue that the shift towards modernity has severed the link between colour and the natural material.The boom of the textile industry and of mass produced products has caused the public in developed parts of the world, to behave as an information design. Unique and bespoke items are reserved for the rich and elite.Large quantities of identical coloured shirts, indicates that groups of people are wearing the same colour at the same time. What can these patterns tell us? Certain patterns of colour can be attached to an occupation. Designers wear black t-shirts; blue scrubs and white for medical services; bright orange for road workers. Would particular patterns emerge if we examined one occupation, like education? Read the rest of this entry »

In recent posts we’ve been having a chat about, among other things, economic rationalism and creativity. And, as always, information design is the subject of this blog. Here’s a recent find which combines all of these topics in one succinct design. This ‘faceless watch’ was ffffound on the Geek & Hype site. Like a lot of very good design, this is ‘meta-design’: Design that refers to design, in this case, watch design. It acknowledges a typical bracelet design, yet asks a perverse question: do we need the watch part of the watch? Will the bracelet alone do the job? Superb concept. I wonder how well it works in bright daylight?

As the economic rationalist mantra goes: “time equals money”. I wonder how much designer, Hironau Tsuboi, got paid for this design. And how long did it take? It’s difficult, via fffound, and many websites for that matter, to get to the source of an image to find out, as for example in this case, who designed that? As Uriah said in a previous post, the Web definitely throws the issue of ownership up for debate. What do you think of sites like ffffound which, on the one hand, provide endless eye-candy or ‘inspiration’, and yet, on the other, pull so much creative work free of its cultural and personal, authorial anchors? Faceless indeed.

This image was taken from CSU Web Services.

How well does this graphic communicate the social, participatory advantages of online connectivity?

The name of our site privileges the role of the visual and how it relates to the social world – this in fact is one of the main reasons that we got together in the first place. So, we are asking what is the link between creativity and what is visually represented, and how does this relate to the social?

Is creativity to be understood in the sense of ascribing to the standardised Western language of art? If so, does this construct work that is about art itself, i.e., art framed by ideologies and institutions, or about the social world? Is it creativity in the design sense, which arguably also fits within a predetermined ideological framework? Should these differing visual languages be considered as distinct, or rather, what if the social was the central premise for creativity, how can art and design work together productively?

David Gauntlett asks what is the role of creativity and the social in his inaugural lecture, “Participation Culture, Creativity, and Social Change,” from November 2008.

Some of the findings he raises are worth considering as they arguably shift the user from being a passive recipient of information to having an active role in the dissemination of content:

69% of US adults and teens consume citizen media content.

54% of US adults and teens edit their music videos and photos.

32% of people see themselves as broadcasters.

So given these stats, and the amount of time we spend online, on google, wikipedia, social networking sites etc., how can the Figures site construct a space for participation through visual means? Can the visual participation that happens online be made manifest in the physical realm? Maybe the concerns raised in the “Virtual Maps” posting, regarding locative media is one such option.

We’ve decided to start some categories here at Figures. At the risk of being branded crack-pots, one of those categories needs to be ‘Crazy Notions’. This will be a place where strange whims (seldom indulged in the ‘rhetoric of neutrality’—as Robin Kinross has described it—the realm of information design) may be played out, to see what they might develop into. Good design process should never disregard crazy notions, at least not to begin with! And so, in that spirit of exploration, though it might lead us into dead ends, here is the first crazy notion post.

So, what if buildings were bar charts? What are city skylines showing us? The 20th century (economically rationalist) city is typified by the skyscraper, why? Generally speaking, the modern CBD rises towards the middle: The tallest buildings are to be found where the rental of floor space per metre is at its highest. Presumeably the rent is highest in the city at this position because its the most desireable position in the city from which to conduct business: Because it’s central (and/or it’s located near transport corridors or other influential, maybe geographical features). In this regard then, a skyline can be a bar chart measuring rental costs through altitude: The taller the building, the higher the rent at that point in the city. Of course this should mean that city skylines would be pyramidical in elevation, triangular in profile. Some are, but many aren’t. In the US, due to the more recent development of their cities compared with the old world, one is more likely to see this pattern. It occurs in Europe too, especially where cities were destroyed by bombing during WWII and were rebuilt from the middle of the century. Some German cities, Frankfurt and Köln for example, have a skyscraper skyline. Meanwhile, Rome insists that no buildings exceed the height of St Peter’s. Could one say that the ‘bar chart of buildings’ in Europe measures the degree to which your city was bombed during the war?

Could tall buildings also be a bar chart of the importance placed on economic rationalism in a city? Paris has its tall buildings tucked away in one quarter, La Defense, while it brands itself as a romantic city whose appearance precedes the 2oth century. London does something similar: Most of the skyscrapers exist at Canary Wharf to the south east of the CBD. Though in London, the tall ones do march more closely into the centre of the city. Is this an indication of a more economically rationalist nationalism? Or is it because much of London was also wiped out in WWII? We’d love your thoughts on this half-formed notion. Especially if you’re a town-planner or an architect!

Pics are borrowed from: Frankfurt; New York; Paris; Rome; Perth