David McCandless’s ‘Information is Beautiful’ shows a compact yet versatile visual way information can be studied and explored. Looking at his book for the first time I am amazed at the information displayed and visualized in diverse manners. It’s like I’m looking at information that I didn’t know I needed to know but it’s presented in such a way that’s fun and visually appealing.
David felt like there was too much information in todays modern life, whether that be from the computer screen, bus stop or radio. It can get a little overwhelming. To tackle this David manages to compact information into a fun and exciting visual way allowing for information to be explored at ease. The book explores a broad and diverse way of visually displaying information in a more abstract form unlike his slightly more sophisticated book “Knowledge is Beautiful”, this book displays a variety of abstract yet unique stylistic visual structures in all shapes and forms. From basic geometric shapes, to objects and even typography David manages to find a way to show and visualize information.
Using geometry, scale, colour and size to achieve information visualization.
One of David’s more professional and detailed infographic, containing a balance of both visual and typographic information.
Using scale, positioning and colour in type to create a visual hierarchy of information.
What have I learned?
‘Information is Beautiful’ condenses information to a 256 page book what displays a variety of information in a variety of ways. I really enjoyed David’s use of different and unique ways to explore and manipulate information to create visualization and vastly different infographics. This has shown me many ways I can display infographics and even inspire alternative ideas to create my own and unique designs. Although, if I had to say anything bad about this book I’d have to talk about some of the visual information being “not so beautiful” and the lack of clarity and detail in some infographics can make it a little hard to understand the information being presented.