The Eyes Have It

The Democratization of Visual Communication

Once you get started using an RSS aggregator, it can be easy to lose track of memes you want to mention. a n t e n n a pointed this out early in April:

"It must say something about the state of contemporary culture that the Corbis home page devotes equal real estate to professional and personal users. (Links under 'for personal use' include 'Crafts Pictures' and 'E-Cards'). What's interesting to me here is something about the democratization of visual communication - the idea that more people are communicating graphically (not to mention via animation) than ever before. Only a generation ago, choosing a font was an esoteric task for a specialized caste of professionals. Now, Corbis sees a viable consumer market for stock art."

Does this mean that audiences and end users will anticipate and demand that all but the most mundane of communications be visually rich (think The Diamond Age)? And since the general public now has access to many of the same tools and resources used by those who communicate visually for a living, will they will begin to gain a more discerning sense of what's possible and what's appropriate?

These issues bring to mind some of the central themes in Being Visual: A Guidebook for Strategic Presentation in the Rich-media Communications Era by Robert L. Lindstrom:

"On the people side, the first thing to do is accept the fact that the average businessperson will one day be equipped with as much rich-media communication capability as a regional television station. They will be able to capture, edit, receive, transmit, and do all sorts of rich-media magic that today is handled mostly by qualified media professionals. At some point they will use audio, video, music, animation, graphics, text and numbers at will, adopting whatever media best fits the message."

I know this isn't a particularly new or original question, but what will the "qualified media professional" eventually morph into?

Yet Another Double Helix Post: DNA Ephemera from the National Centre for Biotechnology Education

This collection has something for everyone: Australian alcoholic spring water, postage stamps, perfume, pins, posters, door handles. Some of what's here seems to me more significant than the term "ephemera" might imply. [Other TEHI recent posts about the iconic nature of the DNA image can be found here and here.]

Don't Let Friends Use PowerPoint

Here's a classic anti-PowerPoint rant by Thomas Stewart in Business 2.0: Ban It Now: Friends Don't let Friends Use PowerPoint. It's reasonably funny but it's also dead on in describing how PowerPoint encourages the creation of bad presentations (as well as how awful those presentations can be).

On the other hand, I'd like to offer an example of what's possible: interaction design history in a teeny little nutshell, a talk recently given by Marc Rettig. More often than not, the slides are built around graphics (custom, not clip art). The formatting is just consistent enough to ensure each slide is part of a whole and it never becomes tedious. Most importantly, the layout is supple and lively enough to conform to the content, the content is not boiled down and shoehorned into the layout. It's not so much that friends don't let friends use PowerPoint, it's more like friends don't let friends use PowerPoint the way you're supposed to use PowerPoint.

Google's DNA Logo

Google has a tradition of incorporating extra graphic elements into their logo to celebrate "holidays". Today they celebrated the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA by deftly replacing the "oo" with a double helix. Back in February, I commented on the article in Nature that discussed how the image of DNA's double helix has become an integral part of our cultural iconography. I guess there's no stronger endorsement of a cultural icon's pervasiveness than making it as part of a Google logo.

It's likely that this version of the logo will no longer be on display when you're reading this. It should be archived somewhere on this page. There's also a link to an interesting article about Dennis Hwang, the artist who has been "drawing the face of Google for almost two years".

"Understandably, the "O" and the "L" are the easiest to deal with. The "O" has become a Halloween pumpkin, a Nobel Prize medal, the Korean flag symbol and the planet earth. The "L" has been used as a flagpole, the Olympic flame cauldron or a snow ski. The first "G" is the most difficult to deal with, and I don't think the "E" has gotten much action because of its location."

History of Visualization of Biological Macromolecules

This site, by by Eric Martz and Eric Francoeur discusses both physical as well as digital representations.

"Shortly after conceiving the idea for his Bender, crystallographer Byron Rubin realized that the machine used in Midas Muffler shops to customize automobile tailpipes operated on a similar principle, but at larger scale. He collaborated with the local shop to construct a backbone sculpture of rubredoxin about 5 feet high from stainless steel tailpipe. Rubin's rubredoxin sculpture won the Chandler competetion at the University of North Carolina in 1973, and since then has stood in the lobby of the Paul M. Gross Chemistry Building at Duke University, Durham NC USA."

-- -- --

"DCRT found it to be prohibitively expensive to publish an atlas of computer-generated, spacefilled images in color. A breakthrough occurred when they learned of an inexpensive cardboard viewer for stereo slides, which would accomodate a pair of 35 mm slides in 2x2 inch mounts. This viewer folded flat for convenient enclosure in the cover pocket of the 3-ring binder in which TAMS was distributed."

Check Your Insides Out: The Colossal Colon Tour

Sometimes it's good to be reminded that powerful, effective visual communication strategies need not be restricted to the page or the screen.

"The Colossal Colon is a 40-foot long, 4-foot high replica of a human colon. Visitors who crawl through the colon, or look through the viewing windows, will see healthy colon tissue, colon disease, polyps and various stages of colon cancer. The Colon was modeled after a real colon taken from colonoscopy film footage and is extremely lifelike."

"Graphical Summary of Patient Status"

A few day ago, Chris Rangel posted an interesting piece examining "why computerized information technology for the medical field often falls short", to the point "that many physicians such as myself find that it is more efficient NOT to use these systems and instead rely on other methods of gathering patient information (such as looking in the paper chart for test results or calling the lab directly)." He also offers several ways to make these systems easier for medical service providers to use. Chris touched on issues of graphic design and user interface emphasizing customization and ease of navigation. I thought that this paper might make an interesting addition to the discussion of these important issues: Seth M. Powsner and Edward R. Tufte, "Graphical Summary of Patient Status," The Lancet 344 (August 6, 1994), 386-389. I hope to follow up with other, more recent, references if time allows.

DUMC Library: Ophthalmodouleia Das ist Augendienst

Here's a very, very early example of dynamic, interactive graphics being used as a learning tool. Ur-Flash, one of animation's ancestors, moving atoms not electrons.

"The woodcuts included in the manual are based primarily on Bartisch's own drawings. The two series shown below appear in the book as single images with overlay flaps, allowing the reader to dissect the head or eye by pulling the flaps back.

It includes 88 full-page woodcuts and covers eye defects, surgical instruments and methods for curing diseases and injury, as well as recipes and illustrations of equipment for producing medicaments.

It is considered the first modern work on eye surgery and one of the finest woodcut illustrated books of the 16th century."

Ohio State's Scientific Glassblowing Shop

These objects are tools completely devoted to the most rational, complex and practical of endeavors.

These photographs uncover qualities that make them seem as if they were created in the fulfillment of an artist's simple, often irrational desire to create mysterious and gratuitous beauty.

"Ohio State's Glassblowing Facility can meet all of your needs for repair, modification and custom design of scientific borosilicate (Pyrex) or quartz glass apparatus. In addition, the shop can reduce your costs by reproducing standard catalog glassware (many designs on file in our shop library). Our glassblower is the third generation in a family of glassblowers and has been recognized by his peers by being awarded The Andrews Glass Award for best technical paper at The American Scientific Glassblowers Symposium, 1999 (see photo of liquid nitrogen cooled carbon monoxide laser). He is readily available for consultation on intricate design work and can perform on-site repair work in your lab as well as all in-shop services."

[via dublog]

Edward Tufte: Cancer Survival Rates and Redesigns, including PowerPoint

My favorite information design guru examines and redesigns a typical display of medical research data. Scroll to the bottom of the page for a number of perceptive comments and suggestions from other site visitors.

SharpReader 0.9

When Medical Weblogs recently became an aggregator, it created a great deal of conversation in the medical weblog community about RSS. As much as I liked the idea of using RSS feeds to manage my ever-growing list of daily must-reads, I hadn't been able to find an aggregator that I was really happy with. Today I stumbled across the newly released SharpReader and it seems to have all of the features I was looking for and it works the way I want it to. It's currently in beta, and there are a few bugs that remain to be fixed, but it's definitely worth trying out.

Yet another Vesalius post

A new online version of Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Book 1) was just released last month by Northwestern University. The site's emphasis is on the translation (it was 10 years in the making) but I was really impressed with the image viewing interface. Much more interactive than the typical collection of static scanned .jpg files. Capabilities include zooming into and panning across these very crisp, clear reproductions which are also linked to the passages that mention them. (Hints: The Flash version works much better than the no-Flash. Don't forget that all the frames can be resized. Click the "A" button to bring up a list of references to the text in the bottom right frame. Drag the red box in the thumbnail to navigate within the full-sized image.)

From the "About" page:

"The March 2003 release of the first book of this online edition marks a significant milestone in the life of the Vesalius project at Northwestern. Translators Daniel Garrison and Malcolm Hast have been working on the Fabrica for more than ten years. Early in 2001, they teamed up with staff at Northwestern's Galter Health Sciences Library, the University Library on the Evanston campus, and Academic Technologies to publish the first book of their new translation online. While Garrison and Hast expect to publish On The Fabric of the Human Body in print, they felt it was critical that their work be made available as translation progresses. In addition, using the Web as a publication medium greatly enhances the environment in which readers can interact with the text and with Vesalius' beautiful, intricate drawings."

This is clearly a great example of Esposito's "processed book".

[Previous TEHI posts referencing Vesalius are here and here.]

SARS Infographics

Two takes on graphically representing the spread of the SARS epidemic:

New York Times Version: I'm not sure that the map in the background buys them anything. On the left part of the chart the location of the dots means something, on the right part placement is basically arbitrary. However, the use of dots to graphically represent the numbers involved (and to indicate which "generation" of transmission each case belongs to) makes it relatively easy to quickly assimilate extent of the epidemic. It would have been even more useful if they had found a way to mark each dot that indicated who has died of the disease (that important piece of information is now buried in the text).

Le Monde Version: Cleaner and less cluttered than the NYT version but there seems to be more numbers and the graphics only serve to broadly indicate the movements of the infected as they traveled with the disease.

[via Caterina]