Information is Beautiful

"The eyes and minds of beholders..."

I just bought this lovely book by author-designer-thinker, David McCandless, a contributor to Wired magazine and The Guardian newspaper, amongst other things. He uses visual communication and infographics to clarify many complex issues, uncover what have been generally perceived as accepted truths to be, well, clearly not truths at all, and to make some very sharp cultural and political observations via crisp colour-coded diagrams that are more than the sum of their parts...

Much of the graphs and graphics are lovely to behold, regardless of their sometimes very serious and worrying content. Their poetic 'balance' is often reminiscent of minimal art such as the grids of Piet Mondrian, or Suprematism, whilst others look like bauhaus designs or its antithesis, Pop Art... and like Pop Art often reappropriate the symbols of our everyday environment. And these visuals, unlike some minimalist art, convey very clear and easily assimilated meaning.

Anyway, rather than reading my words describing his visuals, why not just take a look at his rather excellent and generous website: Information Is Beautiful. Yes it is.

A Tale Of Two Dogs

"You paw things..."

[ The last entry made me think about this little parable concerning, age, experience, effort, achievement... This is just 'paws for thought', I do not expect this to become a 'dog-blog'... Not that I'd mind. ]

There is a house.
In the house there lives a family and their two dogs.
Their house is a home.
One dog is young and energetic.
The other one is old, experienced and seasoned.
The young dog loves to bark and play and chase things, like squirrels and its own tail.
The older dog prefers to lay near to the hearth at the feet of his master or mistress.
The children love the young dog because he is noisy and funny and always seems to be doing something…. and visitors all notice the young dog as it plays tuggy-rope, or chases its tail or starts after squirrels and barks at birds.
One dog spends its energy going round-and-round in circles or chasing after something that it cannot catch… popular and entertaining, perhaps, but actually achieving very little.
The other is reliable and, in turn, relies on experience and knows how things work around the home – he has the experience and strength to do what is really important to everyone in the house.
The master and mistress know which dog can be trusted to see off a rat or an intruder and to look out for their children when they are not there to do so.
(…and, they also know that one dog will learn from the other…)