The misuse of colour in science communication | Nature Communications. Vision is one of the most fundamental means of communication. It is (or should be) in every scientist’s best intention to make figures and their content as accurate and easily understandable as possible. One of the most powerful aspects of images is colour, which in turn transforms information into meaning. The visual evaluation of a colour gradient is important to a variety of different fields such as the first direct impression of a black hole1, the mapping of votes cast in political elections2,3, the planning of an expensive rover route on Martian topography4, the essential communication of climate change5,6, or the critical diagnosis of heart disease7.
However, when colours are used incorrectly, this can lead to the effective manipulation of data (e.g., by highlighting some data over others), the oversight of the needs of those with colour vision deficiencies, and the removal of meaning when printed in black and white (Supplementary Note 1). BOX 1: Human colour perception 1. Making ‘Dive into Color’ | Cooper Hewitt Labs. Guest post by Olivia Vane ‘Dive into Color’ is an interactive timeline for exploring the Cooper Hewitt collection by colour/colour harmony and time. It is exhibited in ‘Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color’ 11 May 2018 – 13 Jan 2019. Since spending time at Cooper Hewitt last year on a fellowship, I returned to London where I’m a PhD student at Royal College of Art (RCA) in Innovation Design Engineering supervised by Professor Stephen Boyd Davis.
At Cooper Hewitt, I developed a prototype timeline tool for visualising the museum collection by tags. This post describes further work on that prototype, shifting the tool to exploring the collection by colour. I’ve been asked a few times recently what my process is for designing visualisations. Previous colour-collections visualisationsColour has previously been used both as a facet for search and for visualising collections.
I was interested to explore colour alongside the time dimension. ‘Orangered’ ‘Steelblue’ ‘Olivedrab’ The Greatest Library You’ve Never Heard Of: ‘The Visual Telling Of Stories’ | Nightingale. Dr. Chris Mullen’s drive to collect and share information has created a fascinating archive with a focus on Fortunes Magazine and the history of visual communication Less than two years ago, I found myself on a website with abstract links and that featured the quote “IT BEGGARS BELIEF…” on its homepage. The ellipsis suggested to me that someone was about to elaborate. How right I was. I came to learn that the site is called The Visual Telling of Stories and it’s the brainchild of Dr. Chris Mullen.
Memory theatre To call The Visual Telling of Stories an archive doesn’t do justice to the crafty mind that has assembled it. The site is more like a memory than a library: a mixture of academic clippings, magazine advertising, personal reflections, correspondence with art directors, illustrators, and friends, cartoons, old books, and diagrams from every subject and time period. After returning to the site over and over again, I decided to contact Chris to learn more. The importance of Fortune. Communicating science through visual means. Cultivating the Art of Slow Looking - JSTOR Daily. The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. Spend a moment with the following photograph and consider what you see.
Although information abounds in images, rarely are they received as more than illustrations of text or narration. Yet visual information can often provide nuance that words cannot describe so elegantly. What Do You See? In the photograph above, you may have identified a group of people posing in front of a building.
The Subjects Instead look closer. The Foreground Although the photograph is cropped tightly, one detail remains visible in the foreground. The Background Behind the figures looms a large, multi-story building. Subject, Foreground, Background This kind of sustained looking is one way to approach images and encourage visual information to reveal itself, by considering the photograph’s content in visual groups: subject, foreground, and background. Try this exercise with the following image.
Then, revisit the details and connect the dots. The sensual artistry we first used to visualise our cells and tissues. The locked drawer, the unopened box – we all know how it feels to want to see inside. In most of us, curiosity peaks at childhood, or morphs, in adulthood, into a hobby. But there are those for whom the desire to see becomes an almost spiritual imperative, one that they must live by. They are scientists, in particular naturalists, and their impulse manifests in different ways. Some have looked outside the physical self, at the world around them or in the skies, while others have turned their attention inward, to the human body itself.
A relentless desire to reveal images once ran counter to the laws of society. Human dissection was only allowed during a brief window in antiquity. When Theodosius destroyed Alexandria in 389 CE, after Julius Caesar had burned part of the library in 48 BCE, the practice of human dissection came to an end. No one merged art and science quite like Leonardo da Vinci, who trained himself to draw human forms by studying anatomy.
W. E. B. Du Bois’ Hand-Drawn Infographics of African-American Life (1900) William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B. " Du Bois — sociologist, historian, activist, Pan-Africanist, and prolific author — had also, it turns out, a mighty fine eye for graphic design. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868, Du Bois studied at Fisk University, Humboldt University in Berlin, and Harvard (where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate), and in 1897 he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Two years later he published his first major academic work The Philadelphia Negro (1899), a detailed and comprehensive sociological study of the African-American people of Philadelphia, based on his earlier field work.
William Edward Burghardt "W. Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display. Abstract As digital humanists have adopted visualization tools in their work, they have borrowed methods developed for the graphical display of information in the natural and social sciences. These tools carry with them assumptions of knowledge as observer-independent and certain, rather than observer co-dependent and interpretative. This paper argues that we need a humanities approach to the graphical expression of interpretation.
To begin, the concept of data as a given has to be rethought through a humanistic lens and characterized as capta, taken and constructed. As digital visualization tools have become more ubiquitous, humanists have adopted many applications such as GIS mapping, graphs, and charts for statistical display that were developed in other disciplines. Thus the representation of knowledge is as crucial to its cultural force as any other facet of its production. Figure 1. Certain issues immediately arise. Figure 2. In this chart gendered identity is modified. Figure 3. Ics-chart.
+ Other Cartographies, Kiara Marina Firpi Carrión - The Learned Pig. How can we make visible something that has been invisible for so long? + Other Cartographies makes visible the invisible. The recompilation of histories of female cartographers is a challenge since most of them have been erased from History. As a graduate in architecture, my fascination with cartography started when I was in my second year of university. A professor introduced me to the term, ‘psychogeography’. In Guy Debord’s words, it means the study of the precise laws and specific effects on the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviours of individuals.
I started to implement the concept from a feminist perspective in the analysis of design. I used my body in the site analysis and worked on the design based on my sensations, perceptions, and intuitions. The first map that I found was by the indigenous Shanawdithit (Canada, 1801). It’s important to highlight this project’s manifesto: Image credits (from top): 1. Www.joycekozloff.net. Data Visualization and the Modern Imagination - Spotlight at Stanford.
There is a magic in information graphics. Maps float you above the land for a bird’s eye view. Timelines arrange memories on the page for all to see. Diagrams reveal the parts inside without requiring disassembly, or incision.* ❡ Data visualization leapt from its Enlightenment origins and into the minds of the general public in the 1760s. It cast more powerful spells throughout the following century. . ❡ The sections in this exhibition examine information graphics that show space, time, nature, and society. *The opening paragraph alludes to Henry D. An Interactive Display Color-Codes Hundreds of Historical Mineral Illustrations. Simple tools for mastering color in scientific figures. Call me a procrastinator but I strongly believe that spending time to select a good color scheme can work miracles with a plot, paper, or presentation. In science, it’s generally not expected that you invest time into a thought process on something like aesthetics.
I would dare to go as far as to say that it’s sometimes outright frowned upon if you do. Like if you were less of a scientist for caring if the plot design is good, just as its numbers are. Needless to say, aesthetics is very subjective and if you do like bright yellow letters on blue background, I can do nothing but secretly roll my eyes. No offense. However, it’s also good to keep in mind that there are some basic principles of color theory, which are valid regardless of personal preference. This video explains some of the reasons why understanding color is important and how to mix colors in the right way. Now you see how I’ve decided about the title for this post. Three categories of color schemes Some reading and tutorials.
17th Century Watercolors - C82: Works of Nicholas Rougeux. In 1692, a Dutch artist known only as A. Boogert compiled a guidebook on mixing watercolors titled Klaer Lightende Spiegel der Verfkonst comprising nearly 900 pages of handwritten descriptions about how to mix colors and 2,088 hand-painted samples. The book is one of only a few surviving from this period and has been beautifully preserved at the Bibliothèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France with scans available on their site and at the Internet Archive.
Boogert’s manuscript is split into two books—the first of which illustrates the effects of diluting 42 “pure” colors with varying amounts of water. Results were painted on numbered plates, each containing three samples of each color with the same amounts of dilution and paired with a description of the mixing process. Among the 108 total samples, are a few plates of blue, yellow, silver, and gold shown with only 1 or 2 swatches because there was little to no effect of dilution. Click to see the original painted samples.
A Color B Color. This cross-section was the genius of the much under-rated Thomas Webster (1782-1844) who visualised and drew it - Buckland added the fossils. Webster was a gifted artist and the first to correlate strata of southern England with the continent using fossil. Complexity Explorables | biology. CellPAINT: Interactive Illustration of Dynamic Mesoscale Cellular Environments. PDB-101: Goodsell Gallery. I’m proud to announce that @BioRender (a project my team & I have poured our hearts into for 2 yrs) has 200K+ figures by 95K+ scientists □□□□□! We built this so you could stop struggling to make figures in PPT □ Also, the base version is free, forev. Viz resources. Imsc-visual-essay. Tennessee-North Carolina. - Great Smoky Mountains.
Rights assessment is your responsibility. The maps in the Map Collections materials were either published prior to 1922, produced by the United States government, or both (see catalogue records that accompany each map for information regarding date of publication and source). The Library of Congress is providing access to these materials for educational and research purposes and is not aware of any U.S. copyright protection (see Title 17 of the United States Code) or any other restrictions in the Map Collection materials. Note that the written permission of the copyright owners and/or other rights holders (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemptions.
Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. Cartography Playground. Computer Vision Course at Stanford. Your Friendly Guide to Colors in Data Visualisation | Chartable. ImageSeeking for Fantastic Visual Metaphors. TeachingToSee. "What an extraordinary film! It is simply exquisite, in its pacing, content, narrative arc, photography. " Ric Grefé Executive Director, AIGA "A great story beautifully told. " Ken Carbone Chief Creative Director, Carbone Smolan Agency “This film is absolutely beautiful.
Luke Geissbuhler Cinematographer of Helvetica and other films "A fine, insightful and educational documentary. Hans-Ulrich Allemann Designer/Educator "This very fine film has a wonderful contemplative quality. Chris Myers Designer, Educator, Graphic Design Chair The University of the Arts, Philadelphia. The Top Trends in Data Visualization for 2018 – CARTO – Medium. Plotting the Course Through Charted Waters. Introduction Heat maps, stacked area plots, mosaic plots, choropleths – oh my! There are so many different ways to visually convey relationships and patterns in data! In this workshop on data visualization literacy, you’ll learn to recognize many popular types of charts and how to glean insights from them. The Appendix contains some examples of data visualization as visual essays and it also includes links to resources for learning how to create your own. This workshop is available as open source.
There is an interactive version (which should automatically send you to either mirror 1, mirror 2, or mirror 3) and a static version. Common visualizations Pies, Waffles, Bars, and Tables A pie chart and a bar chart (sometimes called a bar plot) are an easy way to visually compare values. Notice how the use of color allows us to compare survivorship within classes. Each square represents a certain number of units, which I think makes it easier to visually compare sizes of groups.
Multiple variables. Uli Westphal. Elephas Anthropogenus After the fall of the Roman Empire, elephants virtually disappeared from Western Europe. Since there was no real knowledge of how this animal actually looked, illustrators had to rely on oral and written transmissions to morphologically reconstruct the elephant, thus reinventing an actual existing creature. This tree diagram traces the evolution of the elephant depiction throughout the middle ages up to the age of enlightenment. ( click on drawings for magnification & additional information ) 2008 | inkjet-pigment-print on canvas ( 225 cm x 150 cm ) | cardstand This work was part of my Masterthesis at the Institute for Art in Context of the UdK, University of Arts, Berlin A manuscript about this work was published in 2015 in Zoologischer Anzeiger Vol. 256, Journal of Comparative Zoology, Munich, Germany, Elsevier, ISSN 00445231, pp. 36-41 Since 2009 it is on permanent display at Phyletisches Museum, Jena, Germany All content © Uli Westphal.
TeachingToSee. Dots vs. polygons: How I choose the right visualization. Inside Science Resources - Accueil. Untitled. Module: eikones - Bildkritik. Robert Kosara on Data Visualization. MITP on Nautilus: Drawing Physics. The death of interactive infographics? – Startup Grind – Medium. Teaching — Enrico Bertini. Julia Buntaine: Visualizing science: bridging the science-art gap. A History of DataViz – info we trust. Plant Image Analysis - Software. What Causes the Smell of New & Old Books? Vintage InfoPorn No.1. History of Graphic Design | History of Graphic Design. The Surprising History of the Infographic.
This colorful 1895 map made by the U.S. Geological Survey of #Tennessee and #NorthCarolina also shows cross sections of the underlying terrain! Check it out closer here. 5 Tips for Learning to Code for Visualization. The Power of Looking Closely. 39 studies about human perception in 30 minutes. Markets For Good :: The Trials and Tribulations of Data Visualization for Good. Visualization as Process, Not Output. Diagramism. Data Visualization With Knoema. Sketching with Data Opens the Mind’s Eye — Accurat studio. Beautiful Reasons — Accurat studio. Learning to See: Visual Inspirations and Data Visualization — Accurat studio. Visualising Painters' Lives on Behance. Data is the Latest Medium for Creating Beautiful, Meaningful Art. Little boxes. Intermental.
Simple Visualizations with D3plus. Announcing the Information is Beautiful Awards Longlist. Showcase. Subtleties of Color (Part 1 of 6) : Elegant Figures : Blogs. Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics, and Data Visualization. The Science of Visualization - SA Visual - Scientific American Blog Network. Infographics. The Architecture of a Data Visualization — Accurat studio. Timeline of History. Clarafi | Science Visualization Made Clear. Galapagos Islands, field notes, 1970-1971, and undated.
Home - Seeing Data. NASAGallery. Beautiful Science - Natural History Timeline. Treevis.net. Untitled. Understanding Data Visualisations - Seeing Data. About Seeing Data Research - Seeing Data. Sketching with Data Opens the Mind’s Eye. Story Map — Design story. Week 33 a week of envy — Dear Data. Digital Cartography. Visualizations. Visualize your data. Data Journalism, Spring 2014. A path for redesign as critique in visualization. TAPoR - Text Analysis Portal for Research. Image Sort Visual Learning Tool - About. Organizers. Shom.pdf. Circles-of-Life-c-Martin-Krzywinski-Circles-of-Life-2014.png (PNG Image, 3839 × 5905 pixels) - Scaled (9%) Home - Visual Thinking Strategies. Visual Thinking. DataVis.ca.