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A short visual history of charts and graphs « Seeing Complexity. Most of the charts used today in data visualization among virtually all of the social sciences (economics included–you can’t get out of it this time) derive from the original design of William Playfair (1759-1823), political economist and a product of the Scottish enlightenment, and Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777), a mathematician of the Alpine inclination. Together, they more or less popularized the idea that data could be presented to a mass audience. (The power of the long tail. Chart by William Playfair, 1786. via Robin Good) In the 1790′s, as people got wind of his pioneering work, they accused him of lie-telling and fabricating his data. The academe, acclimated to the traditional tabular graph (see my post on data mining vs. visualization), resisted his innovations for, say, 150 years. (Playfair pie chart, via VML) (The Universal Commercial History, Playfair, 1805. via Mrinal Wadhwa) Now Priestly was a somewhat different character.

(via Wikipedia) I’m not sure why. (via Wikipedia) W.E.B. Du Bois, radical visualization, and the transformative power of information « Seeing Complexity. These graphics do actually have to do with my conference because at the time, Du Bois was teaching at Atlanta (now Clark Atlanta) University which happens to sit on the same campus as Morehouse (which is very nice, by the way). In fact, I was struck by how similar some of the images looked to hip contemporary visualization methods (see my posts here, here, and here).

Of course, none of these are interactive or widely available, but they had in mind a similar goal: the dissemination of information in a compact form that tells a story, carrying meaning or implication beyond the numbers alone. This also got me thinking about the historical development of data visualization, a topic that I have covered before here, here and here. I commented to a friend yesterday that some of these were more reminiscent of the modernist graphic design–especially in advertising–coming out of New York, Los Angeles, or Rome in the 1930-1950’s. Like this: Like Loading... Paris 1900 The Exhibit of American Negroes. The Exhibit of American Negroes. The Exhibit of American Negroes was a sociological display within the Palace of Social Economy at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris.

The exhibit was a joint effort between Daniel Murray, the Assistant Librarian of Congress, Thomas Calloway, a lawyer and the primary organizer of the exhibit, and W.E.B. Du Bois with the goal of demonstrating the progress and commemorating the lives of African Americans at the turn of the century.[1] It included a statuette of Frederick Douglass, four bound volumes of nearly 400 official patents by African Americans, photographs from several educational institutions (Fisk University, Howard University, Roger Williams University, Tuskegee Institute, Claflin University, Berea College), an African-American bibliography by the Library of Congress containing 1,400 titles, and W. E. B. Du Bois’s Atlanta Studies.[2] Most memorably, the exhibit displayed some five hundred photographs of African-American men and women, homes, churches, businesses and landscapes.

W.E.B. Du Bois' Paris Album. American Negro in Paris :: W E B Du Bois . org. Black History Charts, 1900. Over 60 charts and maps, along with specially commissioned photographs were prepared for The Georgia Negro Exhibit, which was part of the larger display. Only three of these infographics are available in color from the Library of Congress. Click on them to view them larger. There are black and white reproductions of the entire group (see selection below), at the extensive online archive created by Professor Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., of the University of Miami. The following excerpts from Professor Provenzo’s site offer more detail about the information graphics.

Du Boise described the project in his autobiography:In 1900 came a significant occurrence which not until lately have I set in its proper place in my life. The variety and inventiveness of charting devices used, is quite impressive, especially for undergraduate Sociology students in 1900. Vintage InfoPorn No.1. My conceit, when I started making infographics, was simple. I believed this was a *new way* of expressing and visualizing information, a thoroughly modern and zeitgeisty fusion of data and design. Oh you muppet David… These infographics were created by students of American African-American activist W.E.Dubois in 1902.

They’re so modern looking! Right down to the type. So much so, in fact, I had to double-check they weren’t fakes. But no, there’s a huge stack of them in the Library Of Congress. Then there’s ISOTYPE – the International System Of TYpographic Picture Education. There’s a gorgeous small-format book on Isotype by Neurath’s wife Marie and Robin Kinross that’s worth a look. The vibe of ISOTYPE, and its tight visual language, depended heavily on the pictographic work of German artist Gerd Arntz. Nice! Gerd Arntz: Graphic Designer (look inside) is gorgeous book, recently published by 010 Publishers, celebrating his work (Amazon UK | US).