This week we continued to look at visualisation and the use of charts. This will come in very useful as we start to build up layers to our project as we can decide how we want to visualise our weekly data.
We started the lecture series off looking at the hieroglyphic script which originated in 3100BC! The name hieroglyphics comes from the Greek word Hieroglyphikos which means sacred carving, which is exactly what it is. In the early years of it, the Egyptians would of carved these pictograms into stone walls which signified the sounds of the ancient Egyptian languages. However many years later many Egyptians could not read or understand these hieroglyphics and chose to use other forms of writing and communication as a way to visualise that they wanted to say. This meant by 390AD the hieroglyphics had died out and were no longer really used in their society.
To me this was extremely interesting the learn about as I knew the Egyptians has used hieroglyphics as a visual communication tool on the tombs and monuments of the rich as well as a way to communicate but I did not know about how many Egyptians did not actually understand it and was like a foreign language to them.
In 1869, Charles Joseph Minard published a figurative map which was thought to be one of the earliest and best statistical graphs ever drawn. Called “ Carte Figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’armee francaise dans la campagne de Russie 1812- 1813” this mapping shows the movement of the french army during the Russian campaign of 1812, using thick lines to show the soldiers and the bars to show the soldiers lost. Organised into several sections, I personally find it a bit confusing but each sections represents a different phase and shows the loses in terms of the number of men and percentages. The map also uses a scale to show the temperature variations the soldiers had to contend with during the campaign. It is well known due its way to display complex or confusing information in a more communicative way and many refer to it as a classic example of good data visualisation.
William Playfair, a scottish engineer is credited as the creator of the first ever bar chart in 1821 which outlined the cost of wages and shillings which showed the lowering cost of shillings and the wages getting higher from the book “The Commercial and Political Atlas”.
William Playfair is also well known for his line graph detailing the stock of bread between 1770 and 1830 which outlines the quantity of wheat in stock and the price of bread in England. People liked this visualisation due to Playfair using a dual axis, the quantity of wheat ran down the left axis and the price of bread on the right axis. Through this graph people could easily see when there were periods of high bread prices and low wheat stocks. To this day, the "Stock of Bread" graph is considered one of Playfair's most important contributions to the field of statistical graphics and data visualisation and is still studied and admired by data visualisation experts today.
In my opinion the London Underground Tube Map is a great example of data visualisation as it is effective and easy to use. However it was not created by a designer but instead Engineer Harry Beck who was working on the construction of the underground in 1931. His inspiration was taken from the New York subway designs which were geographical to attractions and buildings above ground and early versions of the London Underground map followed this same layout of being very much geographical. However Beck soon discovered that his map did not need to be relative to the world above the underground as when you were below you essentially were not aware of the world above. Harry Beck therefore changed the map to visualise relative positions and connections between stations rather than their exact geographic locations.
The actual design uses a range of coloured straight lines and circles which represent different things in a clear way. Each station is represented with a dot or a circle depending on is available at each station and the lines between them represent the connections. The use of each different line such as the Bakerloo, Elizabeth or Piccadilly being different colours allows the map to be easier to read and navigate for everyone, especially those who are tourists. People only need to remember that they are wanting to get on “the black line” rather than the Northern Line. It is also good for accessibility as it indicates which stations are wheelchair friendly and if they are wheelchair friendly from train to exit or platform to exit.
I really like visiting London and I would say the mapping for the Underground system is very effective and easy to use. It almost does not really require much understanding apart from remembering a colour and how many stops you must sit for before reaching your desired location. Around the world other cities have imitated the map for their own trainline or underground systems due to the success of London's and its clarity and simplistic feel.