The Social in the Visual

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.

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