The Functional Art: An Introduction To Information Graphics And Visualization / quote 2 of 18
Visualization as a form of information architecture
For my purposes in this book, information graphics and visualization is a form of information architecture. But how can we be more precise in describing the relationship between the branch and the trunk? [...] Among the most relevant disciplines is information design, defined by Stanford University’s Robert E. Horn as “the art and science of preparing information so that it can be used The goal of the information by human beings with efficiency and effectiveness.”8 designer is to prepare documents (both analog and digital) and spaces so they can be navigated effortlessly. [...] A significant part of information design is information graphics and visualization. Academic literature sometimes separates infographics from visualization and defines the latter as “the use of computer-supported, interactive, visual repre-sentations of data to amplify cognition,” [...] To visualize is “to make certain phenomena and portions of reality visible and understandable; many of these phenomena are not naturally accessible to the bare eye, and many of them are not even of visual nature.” [...] graphical displays can be either figurative or non-figurative. To understand figurative displays, think of a map as a scaled portrait of a geographi-cal area, or a manual that explains through illustrations how to use your new washing machine, [...] Other graphics that display abstract phenomena are non-figurative. In these, there is no mimetic correspondence between what is being represented and its representation. The relationship between those two entities is conventional, not natural.