“If we have data, let’s look at data.
If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.”
– Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO

Today, an enormous amount of data exists in the world thanks to digital technology, and the end result of analyzing it is often to develop insights that are valuable, informative, and engaging. A significant part of analyzing data involves visualizing it and within that process, we should carefully consider the type of visualization we intend to design that communicates insights.

To help us understand these different types of visualizations, a good source to refer to is Peter Hall, who wrote an article about placing visualizations into three distinct categories:

• Journalistic
• Artistic
• Scientific

We’ll also break visualizations down by the three objectives of visualization, by Column Five, a visual communication agency that specializes in infographics and visual storytelling:

• Comprehension
• Retention
• Appeal

Journalistic Visualizations

This type of visualization is driven by a moral obligation to inform, entertain, and make data accessible.

On this front page of the New York Times published in January of 2021, each of the nearly 500,000 individual dots represents a life lost in the United States to the coronavirus.

We understand it is a journalistic visualization not only because it exists in one of the country’s most popular news publications, but also because it informs us of how serious the Covid-19 pandemic has become.

Audience

The New York Times is distributed across the United States with 58% of the audience made up of Gen Z and Millennial readers.

Medium

Newspaper

Narrative

According to Lauren Leatherby, the graphics editor on the project said the graphic visualizes “the sheer speed at which it was all happening.”

Comprehension

The 500,000 lives lost up to the publication of visualization symbolized using the simplest design element: dots.

Retention

The human gaze scans the shape of the visualization from the top to bottom which could be quick, but it is interrupted by red lines that direct our attention to important events in the timeline. As the reader comprehends this, the effect of understanding how many lives have been lost compounds which keeps our attention.

Appeal

The visualization takes up about two-thirds of the full-page spread on the front page of the New York Times, so the proportion of the image in relationship to the text strikes our attention. The black, white, and red color scheme also attracts us due to the contrast and simplicity.

Artistic Visualizations

This type of visualization is aesthetic and veers toward cultural commentary that challenges the norm to offer new ideas.

In this collection of photographs, we see three years of self-portraits created by Noah Kalina. While it is quite surprising at the first understanding of the concept of a person photographing themselves every day for three years, we can inspect how Noah Kalina as a person grew physically and his environment changed over the course of his personal life.

Audience

Noah Kalina has 119k Instagram followers and as an artist, he has reached millions through his Youtube videos and art exhibitions. The intended audience is quite vague but his work has become viral multiple times online.

Medium

Digital photography

Narrative

Daily self-portraits depicting the visual appearance of the artist himself and his environment over the course of three years from 2000 to 2013.

Comprehension

The 1095 photographs express the amount of change in Noah Kalina’s life. This is understood by observing the differences between individual photos or groups of photos across the visualization.

Retention

When viewed on a small screen, the viewing experience is mostly noted by the change in color and contrast of the small photographs that create a grid of portrait photographs. When the viewer looks closer at individual photographs and begins to compare them, the amount of time spent looking is entertained for as long as the viewer is finding differences and entertained by the evolution in Noah Kalina’s appearance and location.

Appeal

Kalina’s visualization is an example of contemporary photography that is contextualized by Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year: selfie. The extreme example of taking a selfie per day to document the evolution of human life is a perfect example of a humanist (as opposed to scientific) visualization that entertains us while causing us to marvel and wonder about the phenomenon of human life.

Scientific Visualizations

Visualizations that rely heavily on logic, statistics, computer science, and cognitive psychology.

The visualization by Federica Fragapane shows space debris categorized according to their average distance from Earth and the type of object. In the bottom part of the visualization historical data on the number of objects by type are shown.

We understand it is a journalistic visualization not only because it exists on a popular journalist publication, but due to several factors:

Audience

BBC Science Focus is a British monthly magazine and the UK’s best-selling science and technology monthly magazine. The publication claims it’s the perfect read for curious minds who want to understand and marvel at the complexity of our world.

Medium

Digital image

Narrative

Space junk has been increasing over the last few decades and collisions could increase if the problem is not kept in check. This visualization helps people understand the data behind the problem.

Comprehension

This visualization is remarkable in how it is understood due to how it synthesizes the topic of space objects (the subject of the visualization) and the size of the dots representing those space objects (the form or visual language used by the designer).

Retention

The amount of data illustrated in this visualization is substantial. The viewer is required to look at various places within the visualization to comprehend the problem being presented and as long as the viewer is able to understand the relationship between the different parts of the visualization at a conceptual level, the viewer will study the relationship between different space objects to discover how much of it is man-made.

Appeal

The amount of synthesis and basic geometry within this diagram is aesthetically powerful. The synthesis of the dark sky and the dark background as well as the size of the dots with the size of space objects is a true success of the designer’s work. The modern simplicity of the shapes, lines, and typography provides lots of room for us to enjoy the diagram in a way that reminds us of what it’s like to look up at the night sky.

Conclusion

In an era where the amount of data and visualizations presenting that data can be overwhelming, perhaps this clarity will help us comprehend the truth or meaning behind them.

Citations

1. Crooks, Ross, et al. Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling. John Wiley & Sons, 2012.
2. Fragapane, Federica. Space Junk. 2019. BBC Science Focus.
3. Hall, Peter A. Bubbles, Lines and String: How Visualisation Shapes Society. 2017. In: The Graphic Design Reader. Bloomsbury Academic, London. ISBN 978–1472536204
4. Kalina, Noah. “January 11, 2000 — January 11, 2020”. Photograph.
5. Leatherby, Lauren. “The Toll: America Approaches Half a Million Covid Deaths” New York Times. February 21, 2021. https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/02/21/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf. Accessed on September 16, 2021.
6. Science Focus. BBC. https://www.immediate.co.uk/brands/bbc-science-focus/. Retrieved on September 15, 2021.