W.E.B. Du Bois’ Infographics

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/first-time-together-and-color-book-displays-web-du-bois-visionary-infographics-180970826/#Di2y0svJ5HrpDBhf.99

by Vigier • 8 years ago

73 14 8 years ago

smithsonianmag.com

howon92• 8 years ago

wow interesting

lucaluca1453• 8 years ago

I use these to teach students the principles of good data visualization. He had an incredible eye for contrast, detail, and believed infographics should tell a story, not just present a lot of data. Most relevant for today, he and his team did each one of these by hand, and most of the work was in designing the visualization's structure, not playing around with code and numbers.

The black and green chart about slavery is just incredible. With only 9 data points, he tells a moral story, he shares a perspective, and he educates the rest of the world on our peculiar institution. These visualizations are just incredible considering the tools they had to work with and the lack of formal data visualization science.

dang• 8 years ago

The article implies that they weren't widely known until recently. How did you run across them?

pvg• 8 years ago

Doesn't it say it's the first time they've been collected and printed in a book? Library of Congress has had them online for 15+ years at least.

User232• 8 years ago

I'm either spoiled by Tufte's work, or just not getting it. What dimensionality is the spiral capturing? I get that it looks neat, but in terms of helping me to understand what the data is telling me I just don't get it.

This isn't sarcasm, please explain what I'm missing.

Edit: This work is quite solid by the Tufte principles that I can see how to apply, such as using ink for data and not decoration.

no_protocol• 8 years ago

The length of the line corresponds to the number of people.

User232• 8 years ago

I got that, but why not just a bar chart? Is there something I should be learning from this design to use when I share information professionally? Because right now if I were to chart data in this format for work I'd raise a lot of eyebrows, and I'd like to know what the advantage is.

jonnybgood• 8 years ago

There are little '+' hovers on the image. I'm assuming you missed them.

Observe how the data visualization starts out like a normal line graph and then sharply tangents off in a series of colors that end in a generous spiral of red. "It literally looks like a piece of Modernist art," says Rusert.
The art of the data visualizations is partially what made the information so compelling. "We've now had it confirmed by a couple of different art historians that it seems like [Du Bois' team] were also developing novel and unique styles in order to grapple with and represent this data," says Rusert. Take the spiral design, she says. "it raises questions about why they were departing from these more geometric shapes in terms of representing data."
To Rusert, there's a lot of intent that can be read within the way the information is translated through the drop of the red spiral. "It sort of a reminds me of lynching and forms of racist violence that were happening during the period," she says. "It also reflects something about just the surreal nature of segregation itself, and what it meant for African-Americans to be living within this kind of regime that was wholly irrational and was also backward looking not forward looking."

0xcde4c3db• 8 years ago

I guess I should preface this by saying that I'm not being particularly trained in this; I've skimmed Tufte, but that's it.

To me, the interesting thing about it is that it captures both the utilization of two dimensions of the paper/screen and the representation of a one-dimensional quantity. Humans are notoriously bad at intuitively translating among quantities of different dimensions, e.g. translating the area of a circle to a population.

NelsonMinar3• 8 years ago

These works are meant as much to be artistic and emotional communication as they are a conveyance of numerical data. The image of the African American population spiraled in on itself in blood red is pretty striking.

nsajko• 8 years ago

The infographics here might also be interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte

NelsonMinar3• 8 years ago

Here are a few more charts from Du Bois and his students: http://allmyeyes.blogspot.com/2011/02/black-history-charts-1...

Du Bois is a unique and towering intellectual in American history; his history of Reconstruction remains full of truths and understandings that our society has not yet absorbed. So I don't mean to diminish his work to note that these infographics exist in a context of other beautiful graphic design and infographics from the 19th century. Some examples:

Florence Nightingale: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/florence-nightingale-i...

1870 census: http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?9thcensus

W.E.B. Du Bois’ Infographics

Related Stories