Thanks,

Joe Rotondi

DIY design is a much discussed phenomena among professionally trained designers. It provides some of the more basic tools to the not-so-professionals, so they can flex their creative muscles and make funny t-shirts like the rest of us. But, the lack of formal training is a huge avenue for criticism. Thanks to the internet, transparency of information and the dissemination of people’s opinions and analysis is much more possible, and its not hard to see why infographics can apply to these causes. Where there’s someone willing to put up raw data, there’s someone else to synthesize it into an infographic of their own, and maybe even one more person to host it on their website for all the world to see. By the time that graphic gets to you, there’s a lot of people you as the viewer have to trust, if you’re going to take their synthesis seriously.

Formal education on visual information and graphics most always involves the work of Edward R. Tufte, a world renowned statistician, professor and author (and hater of PowerPoint). One of the most popular terms he has coined in criticism of contemporary info-graphics is the pervasive use of “chartjunk” which employs unnecessary embellishments to infographics that distract the viewer and take away the main things a graphic should be made up of: the information to be synthesized, and the graphic representation of it.

Good Magazine produces a series of incredibly popular infographics both in print and on their website. However popular, they often employ chartjunk embellishments in an effort to walk the line between eye-candy and staggaringly simply explanations of complex data sets. For example their infograph titled Transparency, Which Countries Eat the Most Meat employs mysterious gradients to already complicated iconographic equations on the right.

Here the gradient on the right could be taken as a practical element denoting special focus as part of the information synthesis, not just a decorative element.

Now, distracting visual information isn’t the only thing that can hamper a graphic’s effectiveness or even validity. Statistical mistakes can also lead the viewer to draw confusing or conflicting conclusions from an infograph. One good and recent example is a home-grown graphic depicting newspaper circulation over the past 20 years. Moving past the incremental construction, that makes the graphic almost impossible to read in one look (without scrolling), the graphic misses one key sample. USA Today, the most popular newspaper in the United States was left of the list, the creators reasoning:

(We excluded USA Today, because we don’t care about it. If you’re in a hotel? You’re reading it now. That’s nice.)

Taking into account that USA Today is a newspaper, is national, and does operate in all the distribution channels as the New York Times and others included, this is an unnecessary omission that takes context away from the representation of similar newspapers’ decline. Had USA Today been included, it would have been very timely, as it was recently reported a huge loss in circulation putting them slightly below 1.88 million readers.

I know what you’re thinking: “why, that would be right under the Wall Street Journal on this graphic… I wouldn’t have ever thought that the WSJ would be the most popular newspaper in America!” Well, that’s because it isn’t. The WSJ is hovering around 2 million subscribers because, as the graph notes, they are the only data set which includes online. The graphic after the year 2003 is pretty much useless for the Wall Street Journal because those are the only numbers that include their paid web accounts.

These are just a simple few points about web infographics. In DIY design, there are many mistakes to be made through the course of executing what one wants to do, but unlike designing your own t-shirt, your mistakes are viewable to the entire connected world with web infographics (in the Newspaper Circulation Graph’s case, even liked by 614 people on digg). And, which the points listed here are just a few, the topic of synthesizing information in visual representations is a large field where there is much to learn. If your interested in making your own infographs, whether you are a designer or just a design lover, then I’d suggest exploring some of the theory that’s out there. And even if you’re just a viewer, don’t get fooled by someones shoddy amateur statistical analysis, educate yourself a little.

The Last Supper, Photographed, at American University 2009

As part of a project that I had for a photography class I was taking last year, I chose to recreate 3 famous paintings as photos for a series.  I rounded up my friends and I blurted out really basic instructions I had drawn up from studying Leonardo’s painting down the line to each person behind the table.  From about 20-30 shots from differing angles, I added some light effects in Photoshop and this was the final print.

1,2,1,2,3,4
We accept her, one of us, we accept her, one of us!
Gooble gobble gooble gobble!
We accept her, we accept her!
We accept her, one of us, we accept her, one of us!
Gooble gobble gooble gobble!
We accept her, we accept her!

(We-we) we came, we saw, we kicked it’s ass,
I was testing you – and you passed,
Dental plan! Lisa needs braces,
Be required to fart on a regular basis,
I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse,
Channel 13 – Eyewitness news!
Robocop, who is he?
Dead or alive you’re coming with me.

In a hurry to be fed, beady eyes and big blue head.

I’m telling the truth Doc, you gotta believe me,
Why does everything I whip leave me?
My beautiful chocolate! Candy is dandy,
Fava beans and a nice Chianti,
You can count on Slippery Pete,
Suicide will be nice and neat!
I didn’t build the Panama canal,
Open the pod bay doors please, HAL,

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,
These aren’t the droids we’re looking for,
I am not a number I am a free man!
Rosebud.
To The Idiotmobile!
Right away Michael,
I-I-I-I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.

We came, we saw, we kicked it’s ass,
You don’t understand I coulda had class,
Round and tasty on a bun,
Ooh Zippy look what you’ve done!
Finally! Cast off those lines!
No, I’ve been nervous lots of times,
Red Rum! What’s the matter honey?
Just robbed Boss Hogg all of his money!

We came, saw, we kicked it’s ass,
Writing checks your body can’t cash,
I was elected to lead, not read,
I feel the need – the need for speed,
Watch out for snakes, a good man’s loafer,
HQ – my hat looks like a muffin – over,
My god it’s full of stars,
There was no driver in the car..

In the car (repeat)

Well you see I’m in hot pursuit!

There are only two things I love in this world – everybody and television!
#The Simpsons
#Run With Us!
Ugh – you must be shrooming,
Wait for me Moomin!
Cross live to meet the host of that show, Meat Boy,
I want to go to there.

We came, we saw, we kicked it’s ass,
An oil tycoon – like a.. moustache,
Nice beaver! I just had it stuffed,
I don’t give a shit, close enough,
Where’s me washboard? I’ll get me coat,
Y-y-y-you’re gonna need a bigger boat,
What’d she say? I think she bought it,
Suck it monkeys! I’m goin’ corporate!
C’mon let’s take a drive! A drive?
Number 5 is alive!
It’s only a laugh, no harm done,
Pickles, french fries, yum yum yum,
Bueller, Bueller, Bueller,
It’s 2 degrees cooler,
The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long,
Six words in the whole song.

We-we-we accept her, one of us, we accept her, one of us!
Gooble gobble gooble gobble!
We accept her, we accept her!
You are number 6 5 4 3 2
I am not a number, I am a free man

We came, we saw, we kicked it’s ass,
Give me my 20,000 in cash,
We came, we saw, we kicked it’s ass,
I think you woke up the dead with that blast
We came, we saw, we kicked it’s ass,
I think fast, I talk fast,
We came, we saw, we kicked it’s ass,
Lois, this is not my Batman glass,

Now, I don’t want to be a snob, but it’s Andy Warhol, and although you do have limited gallery space, it is, again, Andy Warhol…. I’m sure they’ll take it next time.

1948

1959

1972

It’s hard to describe James Ensor as a painter. He was a member of the Belgian avant-gard, most prolific at the turn of the 19th century; he studied at prestigious art schools in France; he was dark, death obsessed, funny and insulting. Walking through the exhibit gives you a sense of his basic motifs and styles. Its not that he obviously matured and evolved as a painter, but his education from the École des Beaux-Arts nearly turned him into a much more generic painter at the time instead of the darkly comedic satirist that he is famous for becoming. Ensor wasn’t exactly an impressionist, but he painted through splotches and not the more simple inference of color and light through smaller brush strokes.

Much of his earlier work focused on basic scenes that one would expect from a painter at the time, depicting regular people on the street in their natural habitat, doing whatever it is they do. His subjects included two men slouched by a table in a drunken stupor on the street. One of his paintings which he constructed in an attempt to show off his education and traditional ability depicts a woman (modeled off of his sister) eating at a luxurious dining table adorned with every type of shiny glass surface one could image (the reflection of light meant to show-off his artistic eye).

Masks Mocking Death, 1888

In the late 1800′s that Ensor really created his own style and themes for his paintings, often focusing around masks, which his family sold in a shop under his studio. One of his most famous paintings, pictured left, depicts the character Death as a skeleton in the center, being teased by people in masks surrounding him. Ensor’s playfulness is obvious, the character usually reserved for paintings of fear and drama has been reduced to the butt of a joke by obnoxiously masked bullies. Its refreshing, even as Death is depicted as a dark and scary skeleton who looks as if he is attempting to hide behind an ironically white sheet and therefore is disarmed by Ensors other masked characters.

Skeletons Warming Themselves, 1889

The exhibit note’s Ensor’s penchant for inserting himself into his paintings, and one year later painted a few skeletons inhabiting his studio (and apparently his clothing) to warm themselves by his stove. Ensor references himself as the skeleton at the bottom of the painting under a cloth, his paint palette at his boots.  There’s something very funny about the skulls, and its emphasized in the exhibit where there is a similar photograph of Ensor himself painting in this studio by the stove. The skulls look like dolls who have snuck into the real work and put on Ensor’s clothes, not to haunt or torment anyone, but to play house.  These figures playing around Ensor’s studio are his muse, and he plays back with them with this painting.

After walking through most of the space, I started getting a feeling that the dates for all these paintings are very close, yet the man lived to be almost 90 (through two World Wars).  The reason for this is because he was most prolific in the period before WWI, and subsequently receded into his more obvious ideas of satirizing current events.

The Banquet of the Starved, 1915

The above painting depicts cartoonishly painted men at a banquet table, as well as one of his earlier (and substantially more famous) paintings Two Skeletons Fighting Over a Pickled Herring at the Top as a metaphor for those fighting over food while the conquerors of Belgium eat like, well, conquerors.  During WWI Ensor stayed in his native Belgium as the Germans invaded while the citizens suffered a food shortage.

While most of the pieces in MoMA’s exhibit came from abroad, there are a few notables missing, including his most famous Christ’s Entry into Brussels, for which his sketches are there to remind you what you’re missing. Other then that the exhibit is necessary and enjoyable coverage of an artist who is far too innovative and entertaining for him to be as little known as he is.

Designing is not a profession but an attitude. Design has many connotations. It is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function. It is the intergration of technological, social, and economical requirements, biological necessities, and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume and space. Thinking in relationships.

I remember being surprised to see one of his pieces on permanent display at the MoMA in New York.  The surprise came not at first sight but upon reading the small information card citing him as the creator through a rather innovative process for the time. That the small piece, a rectangle containing a few lines and boxes at dynamic angles, was made by Moholy-Nagy directly calling in the design to the press, without any direct visual exchange or proof between the designer and the producer.

My summer internship in the financial district has come to an end. I’d never really been down here before, but it didnt take me that long to get acclimated, but it seems like I am leaving just as soon as I was coming.

I worked as an intern for Standard & Poor’s creative department at their building on 55 Water St.  I’ll miss hearing and seeing helicopters taking off from the Wall Street heliport every few hours, I’ll miss getting to see work I did every week in the pages of CreditWeek (not to mention the cover), and I leave with a good feeling of accomplishment and gained experience.

I’m definitely happy with what I’ve taken away, apart from a ton of work for my book, I gained experience working in a Creative Department at the corporate level, having to get used to meetings, editors and many levels of review for each peice of work.  While I don’t know if I’ve learned to be as patient as I’d live, I’m sure I’ve gained much more then I had when I came in.