1868-2008

Last week, while I was searching for some images and I found this video. I made it a couple of years ago in my first visit to the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden.

Even though, the London Underground network has kept growing since 2008, I think that the video is quite interesting. It shows the evolution of the underground network employing the diagrammatic language of its map. The video also gives an overall of the complexity of the network at the end of the period.

I should update the video including the current layout of the network!

magic napkins

Thanks to a comment, I borrowed from the library The back of the Napkin. Dam Roam, the author, emphasises the power of visual thinking through simple drawings. Beyond the book content, one thing that really got my attention was the used of Napkins to draw: ‘so I pulled a pen from my suit pocket and grabbed a stack of napkins from the table’.
This sentence remains me my years as a graphic design student, when I used to sit in corner-coffee shops and spent hours drawing and brainstorming, trying to solve design tasks. Related to this, Milton Glaser explains that drawing is a fundamental instrument of understanding. Drawing is a way of seeing and organising what it is in our minds. It is not about drawing a piece of art in each piece of paper or napkin; it is just a method for organising ideas and thoughts before moving on to designing itself.

As Roam has stated in his book, technology might be pretty useful sometimes, but, before, it is essential to have a clear idea of what to design, communicate, or visualise: ‘The reason we won’t need computer software or sophisticated data-plotting programs is because every picture we’re going to make will be composed of just a few simple pieces, all of which we should already be able to get down on paper’.

Old Napkins from different places where I wrote down some key ideas, strategies, thoughts...

… the funny thing of napkins is that I keep drawing on them… maybe it can be considered as a (scientific? visual?) method after all.

This post is devoted to a special person who has been always supported me and shares the passion of doing coffee-brainstorming napkins…thanks!

where is the toilet, Sr.?

Let’s analyse some images.

'Toilets' (Photo ©SP)

01. New bus station. Mar del Plata (Argentina). This is one of the biggest summer tourists’ cities of the country. I was there (in the new bus station!) for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and the first thing I noticed was its Wayfinding System (I will discuss it in a different post) and in special the visual sign shown in this picture: ‘Baños’ (Toilets). On the one hand, it can be a design decision to employ typographic signs only, instead of graphic signs to indicate the location of most important elements of a station, such as platforms, toilets, exits, etc. However, I found it useless to have it only in Spanish, as to this bus station are arriving both national and international tourists, and not only in summer time. This new bus station is still underconstruction, hopefully this is only a temporary sign…

'Mujeres. Una mujer es el ser humano de sexo femenino, en contraste al masculino, el varón. El término mujer se usa para indicar diferencias sexuales biológicas, distinciones de género en su papel atribuido culturalmente, o ambas cosas. La palabra mujer proviene del latín muller, blanco. De esta etimología derivan muelle y molusco, lo cual es totalmente irrelevante' // 'Hombres. Sustantivo utilizado para nombrar a cualquier individuo humano, sin importar sexo o edad. En modo alguno esto discrimina lingüísticamente a la 'mujer' (ver al lado) que por extensión debería describir a un individuo de la raza humana también. Un varón adulto de la especie humana. Cualquier ejemplar del género Homo, que incluye a varias especies extintas de homínidos, y a los homínidos en general.' (Photo ©SP)

02. Coffee shop. FrayMocho library. Mar del Plata (Argentina). Automatically, when I saw these doors, they reminded me the previous ‘Baños’ sign. What a difference! I thought…These toilet signs seemed to me to be exactly an opposite example than that of picture 01. Even though written text is in Spanish (mujeres [women], hombres [men], and their definitions), it is supported by both icons and pictures of ‘women + girls’ and ‘men + boys’. Maybe having three languages to communicate a message (toilets location) can be too much, but it has an intention behind of how to communicate and organise the elements.

(Photo ©SP)

03. Central mall. Cambridge (UK). This is a clear image which it is also depicting toilets location, and has a similar meaning than that of the second picture. However, it is extremely more synthetic and simple than picture 02. It has only the minimum graphic elements to communicate, with an appropriate chromatic coding and size. Maybe, it can be said that these signs are focused on young audiences as, probably; the older ones can find them useless or confusing because of their lack of text. Nevertheless, this is another example of a strong design decision and its importance for a design process.

A same concept/word can be visualised with many different visual languages (graphic, typographic, mixed). Some results are more effective than others, communicating without doubts a message to the correct audience. Others, even though are employing an appropriate synthetic visual language are not being simple and clear enough. This means that not for employing only an appropriate language a message is going to be effectively communicated. As Richard Wurman has explained, the how is also a key factor of the design process.

Design Fundamentals

–> “Hasta la publicación de esta obra, un número considerable de artistas (y diseñadores) y estudiosos ha dependido de textos en idiomas extranjeros para satisfacer su creciente necesidad de información con respecto a los fascinantes problemas de la creación plástica (arte, diseño) y su relación con la percepción visual”

He encontrado este texto sumamente interesante, ya que pertenece a un libro (una traducción, en realidad) publicado en la década del 70 en Argentina. Sin embargo, estas líneas bien pueden estar describiendo la realidad actual del ámbito académico del diseño, ya que el mayor número de publicaciones ‘serias’ aun se encuentran en su idioma original (inglés, alemán, francés).

A su vez, es interesante resaltar que esta traducción fue publicada en los últimos años de la que es considerada la última etapa de metodologistas, en la cual el análisis e investigación sobre métodos de diseño iban a la par que la práctica.

–> ‘Since the publication of this book, a considerable number of artists (and designers) and academics had had to employ foreign references to obtain information about fine arts (art, design) creation and its relation with visual perception’

I have found this text extremely interesting as it belongs to a book (actually, its translation) published in the 70s in Argentina. However, its meaning can also be describing the current academic design environment. The majority of ‘serious’ academic design books and journals are still only been published in non-Spanish languages (English, German, French).

Moreover, it is also worth to notice that this edition was published at the end of what has been defined as the ‘last decade of methodologists’, where design research and design practice were almost going for the same track.

- Scott, R.G. (1974) Fundamentos del Diseño. Argentina: Victor Leru S.R.L.
- Scott, R.G. (1958) Design Fundamentals. New York : McGraw-Hill

organising literature & practice review

I have been almost the last four weeks ‘diving’ into my literature & practice review. One thing that I found extremely helpful was to have a previous organisation of authors, subjects and fields, and, at the same time, from different points of view.
As I did a very systematic and well-organised material classification, I realised this approach can be applied as a research method. This research method is also another manner to show how powerful diagrams could be, as they are the main tool used to organise the huge amount of references.

So, the 5-variables method (as I called it) consists in ordering raw material (e.i. references, including books, articles, journals, thesis and websites) following five variables: who, what, when, how and where.
The images below explain each variable.

1) who? Alphabetical order. This first approach is the more common one, and it is usually used to find alphabetically and easily each author.

A-Z order.

2) what? Thematic order (themes, subjects, fields and disciplines). Sometimes, it is not easy to remember the name of the author, but, instead, it is easier to remember his/her specific subject. First of all, it is essential to define general thematic categories related to the research subject, to be aware of all the points of view covered (or that have to be covered). If the research theme is quite complex, it could be also beneficial to define sub-categories from each general category and distinguish them by colour-saturation.

Once I have all references divided into two main groups: literature and practice review references; I define thematic categories directly related to my theme (diagrams): history/context, diagrams/underground, psychology/perception, linguistics/semiology, methodology/research process, graphic/information design, and thesis. I attached a colour to each category.

3) when? Chronological order, following year of publication.
This is a useful approach for historical research, where knowing which period has been covered is key.
Having references chronologically ordered would help to notice if we have many new references, or that we are not taking into account previous authors. In addition, it can be noticed in which periods of time, a theme was most or less discussed.

Timeline. Each box represents an author/book, and it is organised following its year of publication.

4) how? Interdisciplinary order. Design is an interdisciplinary discipline, where many references come from academic disciplines beyond graphics, such as psychology, informatics, cartography, and so on… This approach shows the connections between authors and subjects from different disciplines (usually this approach follows the categories defined for the what variable). In a glance, it can be seen which disciplines are related to each other and which ones are not.

In the image, each box corresponds to one author, its colour matches with a theme, and its saturation indicates where within the theme this author is placed. A box has more than one colour when it is representing a theme related to another (the second colour). The more colours a box has, the more themes it is related to.

5) where? Geographical order (authors’ countries, cities). This is a useful approach for cultural research where, for example, the bias of a theme is crucial.

In this case, the circles are depicting quantity of author from each theme. The smallest circle is representing less than 10 authors for a specific theme that comes from a same country. The medium circle represents 11-15 authors and the biggest more than 15 authors from the same country. Again, this approach follows the categories defined for the what variable.

Of course, this classification can vary as more material is added, but it can be a useful starting point!

how would you define a diagram?

Yesterday, a friend, who is also doing her PhD related to diagrams (University of Granada), sent me an email asking me that question. She also sent me a kind of research she has been done in Google images. She introduced the word ‘diagram’ in English, Spanish and German in Google images and the results were quite interesting. See below some of the images.

Spanish results of the term 'diagrama' (Paloma Lopez)

English results of the term 'diagram' (Paloma Lopez)

German results of the term 'diagramm' (Paloma Lopez)

Analysing the images, it can be seen that in Spanish the term ‘diagram’ seems to be denoting more complex structures, while most of the English images are linear and simpler layouts. In German, images related to the term ‘diagram’ are basic diagrams, such as pie charts, bar charts, flow charts.

Undoubtedly, what is common in the three languages is that a diagram is composed by a visual (graphic or typographical) structure that employs synthetic and schematic language to represent connections between components, quantities, directionality, functions. In terms of diagrams layout, there is a long list of parameters that can define diagrams structure, for instance the kind of information represented, the media where the diagram is going to be, the purpose of the diagram, its audience, among others.

Design Classics. The London Underground Map

A 25-minute documentary of the London Underground Diagrammatic Map creation (BBC Four)

Watch the video!

Less and more

This is the title of Dieter Rams’ exhibition at the Design Museum. Rams was in charged of the German consumer electronics manufacturer, Braun, for more than 40 years, developing a synthetic, rigorous and pure visual language for its products. In this exhibition can be appreciated how his principles of design were applied in and followed by his designs.
Below are explained the 10 design principles defined by Dieter Rams:

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.

As a starting point of his designs, Rams applied a clear and well-defined structure (grid?) to organise the elements (information?) before moving on to the creation stage itself.

Design Museum. Dieter Rams' structure used in the creation of his designs to organise elements. (©Photos Sheila Pontis)

Rams’ objective was to create extremely functional objects where irrelevant information had no place. His designs are examples of simplicity and clarity. (see below). Rams also thought that sketching (analysing?) was an essential part of the design process. In addition, for Rams this stage of the process is independently of the media or technology, and cannot be done with computers. This stage is about taking the necessary time to carefully think about what to do, the characteristics and uses of the product/project.

Design Museum. Wall diagram of Dieter Rams' object. (© Photo Sheila Pontis)

Less and More. The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams. 18 November 2009 to 7 March 2010 – Design Museum London

diagrammatic-writing-up method

Last Wednesday I attended to one of the RNUAL lectures (UAL) about how to approach writing up problems (essays, papers, chapters, thesis). As a first general conclusion, to approach this problem, the best strategy is to have a clear framework –a plan? – as a starting point. This means, to know exactly what to write and discuss, before start writing and writing without having a define direction. For this, the selection and organisation of raw material is essential.
One of the methods introduced during the lecture was to organise the material/information in columns.

3-column-structure method. This method groups similar information in each column and enables to see new connections between the data. Black lines represent clear data connections, while dot lines represent new data connections, seen as a result of visualising raw material.

I called this method 3-column structure as it classifies raw material in three interconnected columns in a quite useful and clear manner.

So, a possible starting point can be the definition of the main themes (of the chapter/of a paper/of an essay). These are the themes that are key for a subject and that can be used to structure a piece of writing. That is to say, the most relevant issues that will be discussed and explained.

After this, as a second stage, it is important to select the authors related to those themes. This means, who has said/written something significant about that themes. Besides the authors’ names, quotations can also be included into this category. Ideally, each theme should match with one or more authors from the literature and practice review.

A third and last stage would be focussed on defining the specific things of the previous selected themes I would like to write about. For things are understood the individual elements that composed a theme, such as key terms, projects or interviews.

Information/raw material can also be classified following a different stages order. For example, starting with the selection of things and leaving the themes for the end. Or by identifying key authors and then matching them with their main themes and terms. The order of the stages depends on the subject being analysed and the kind of text that has to be written.

Different approaches that the 3-column-structure method can be applied. The stages order depends on the kind of material and the purpose of the task.

In addition, it is important to notice that it was also highlighted during the lecture the importance of using diagrams and mind maps as a way of organising information. This is one of the reasons that this 3-column structure method is useful: it visualises the collected material, emphasising and ordering the important points. Moreover, these diagrammatic structures also show how different parts or components are related and enable to see new points of view that with a traditional organisation (or without it!) are not seen so clear.
Once again, this method shows how powerful tools diagrams are for organising and visualising complex information.

Following this (or any other) way of organising information, as a result ideas and thoughts will be also organised, and the task of writing up (or any other!) would be easier, as there is a previous plan.

what does it mean?

Some terms related to diagrams (and also to design) strategies, language, layout, and so on are often misused or misunderstood:

- When is a diagram simple?
- When a diagram is simple is because it has few elements… and when it has more elements it becomes complex and less clear..
- Additional information is useless and complicated the message…
- Is additional information irrelevant?
- To make simpler a diagram, the best solution is to delete elements…

These terms are simplicity, complexity, clarity, additional, and irrelevant.

Simplicity. The Oxford dictionary defines simplicity as something being free from complexity or intricacy and absence of ornament. Shedroff (2007) synthesises these concepts explaining that clarity deals with one particular message or goal at a time, rather than the communication of everything at the same time; and that simplicity is misused producing meaningless messages rather than clarifying them. Referring to the concept of design simplicity, Per Mollerup (2005) talks about minimalism. He explains that minimalism deals with the fact of having few elements: simplicity of elements, number of element types, number of elements, and their size. However, both Bertin (1983) and Tufte (1990) explain that simplicity can be reached with an appropriate information organization, rather than with a low number of elements.

Complexity. Complexity deals with the number of dimensions (informational variables, level of reading, levels of information) that can be represented on a 2D design. Similarly than simplicity, something complex is not related to the number of graphic elements employed in a diagram, but with how they relate to each other.
Tufte (1983) describes a diagram as complex when it contains multiple layers of information that create multiple viewing depths and multiple viewing angles. He adds that complex diagrams need to have at least three viewing levels: 1) general structure: What is seen from a distance as a summary of the content, first level of content analysis; 2) main structure: What is seen up close as the primary idea of the content, second level of content analysis; and 3) hidden structure: What is seen implicitly and is understood besides the diagram itself, third level of content analysis.
High-information graphics combine several layers of close reading with an overview.

Clarity. Clarity is defined as the quality of being clear, distinct and easily perceived or understood and free from ambiguity. Clarity deals with the kind of message that a diagram communicates, focussing on the content, and not in the quantity of elements used to represent that content. The number of elements is not a parameter of clarity. A diagram can have only few elements but if all of them are at the same visual level with equal values, equal textures, equal colours, equal shapes, as a result there would be failed communication. When everything is emphasised, nothing is emphasised. If, on the contrary, a diagram has a high number of elements but well organised and differentiated, the result would be an extremely clear diagram. I believe that Tufte’s (2007) definition about this concept is undeniable. He states that ‘it is not about how much of empty space there is, but rather how it is used. It is not how information there is, but rather how effectively it is arranged’.

Additional. The Oxford English Dictionary defines additional as something extra, something that complements, enriches or improves a main subject. Tufte calls ‘evidence’ the information that adds details and enriches a diagram. A difference of meaningless information, additional information can sum details from multiple sources and levels to a diagram. Diagrams that contain additional information do not rely in one type of data or stay at one level of analysis. Detailed information helps to explain a complex content of a diagram, and makes it easier to understand. Furthermore, additional information enriches reading and amplifies content. Tufte suggests that for clarifying, the answer is to add details.
However, it is important to notice not additional information is considered useful. Mollerup explains what redundancy means. He argues that when additional information is purposefully used, it becomes meaningful information, eventhough it can be redundant. Furthermore, he adds that sometimes a message with no additional information is extremely vulnerable to misunderstanding. Nevertheless, not all additional information qualifies as useful redundant information. Sometimes, much additional information is just useless. As an example, both Mollerup and Wurman (2001) classify fashionable and trendy graphic ideas as additional information that causes graphic noise, has no useful meaning and makes the information less understandable.

Irrelevant. On the contrary, irrelevant is defined as something that is not pertinent or applicable, or not closely connected or appropriate to the matter being considered. Irrelevant elements are unnecessary elements. Moreover, a big difference with additional/detailed information, when unnecessary information is given more than once, it becomes meaningless and redundant.

- Bertin, J. (1983). Semiology of Graphics. Diagrams, Networks, Maps. UK: The University of Wisconsin Press
- Mollerup, Per (2005). Wayshowing : a guide to environmental signage : principles & practices. Baden : Lars Müller
- Shedroff, N. (1994). Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design. http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/unified/index.html [accesed on 14th September, 2009]
- Tufte, E. (2006). Beautiful Evidence. Cheshire, Connecticut, USA: Graphic Press.
- Tufte, E. (1990) Enviosing Information. Cheshire, Connecticut, USA: Graphic Press.
- Tufte, E. (1983). The Visual Display of Quantitative Infornation. Connecticut, USA: Graphic Press.
- Tufte, E. (1998) Visual Explanations. Cheshire, Connecticut, USA: Graphic Press.
- Wurman, R.S. (2001) Information anxiety 2. Expanded & updated ed. Indianapolis, Ind. : Que