Survey on newspaper graphics

Dear visitors,

I would like to ask you to share your experiences in capturing graphics that you usually find when reading newspapers.
This survey is related with my thesis about the use of infographics in the newspaper.
Check out the link:
http://s-fshxx-2146.sgizmo.com

Drawing in Perspective

Taken from: Basic Principles of Perspective Drawing for the Technical Illustrator

by Kevin Hulsey

Drawing in Perspective

The following diagram Fig. 7 is a sample of the typical reference material you might expect to receive on a technical illustration project. All of the major plan and elevation views are represented here as well as an Isometric view. From this reference, we will construct a variety of perspective views in the tutorials that follow this page.

In the following six examples, you will see a perspective grid and our subject in various aspects discussed in the previous paragraph. Fig. 8 is a Normal View 1 Point Perspective drawing. Fig. 9 is a Worm's Eye View 1 Point Perspective drawing. Fig. 10 is a Bird's Eye 1 Point Perspective drawing. Fig. 11 is a Bird's Eye or High 3/4 View 2 Point Perspective drawing. Fig. 12 is a Bird's Eye 3 Point Perspective drawing. If you were to extend the vertical vanishing point lines downward, they would converge at the Nadir Station point.

2 Point vs 3 Point Perspective

Perspective vs Isometric Drawing

By now you may have noticed that perspective drawing techniques differ from other types of commonly seen technical imagry. In Fig. 13 you have three examples of 3/4 view illustrations that are not in perspective view. They are classified as Isometric, Dimetric, and Trimetric drawings. In these types of illustrations all parallel lines remain parallel and therefor, never converge at a single point. Although they can be very useful for conveying technical information, they lack the quality of realism when compared to the perspective view drawing example in Fig. 14.

The Feynman-Tufte Principle

Here is a good article from Scientific American.com:

The Feynman-Tufte Principle

A visual display of data should be simple enough to fit on the side of a van

by Michael Shermer

I had long wanted to meet Edward R. Tufte--the man the New York Times called "the da Vinci of data" because of his concisely written and artfully illustrated books on the visual display of data--and invite him to speak at the Skeptics Society science lecture series that I host at the California Institute of Technology. Tufte is one of the world's leading experts on a core tool of skepticism: how to see through information obfuscation.

But how could we afford someone of his stature? "My honorarium," he told me, "is to see Feynman's van."

Richard Feynman, the late Caltech physicist, is famous for working on the atomic bomb, winning a Nobel Prize in Physics, cracking safes, playing drums and driving a 1975 Dodge Maxivan adorned with squiggly lines on the side panels. Most people who saw it gazed in puzzlement, but once in a while someone would ask the driver why he had Feynman diagrams all over his van, only to be told, "Because I'm Richard Feynman!"

Feynman diagrams are simplified visual representations of the very complex world of quantum electrodynamics (QED), in which particles of light called photons are depicted by wavy lines, negatively charged electrons are depicted by straight or curved nonwavy lines, and line junctions show electrons emitting or absorbing a photon. In the diagram on the back door of the van, seen in the photograph above with Tufte, time flows from bottom to top. The pair of electrons (the straight lines) are moving toward each other. When the left-hand electron emits a photon (wavy-line junction), that negatively charged particle is deflected outward left; the right-hand electron reabsorbs the photon, causing it to deflect outward right.

Feynman diagrams are the embodiment of what Tufte teaches about analytical design: "Good displays of data help to reveal knowledge relevant to understanding mechanism, process and dynamics, cause and effect." We see the unthinkable and think the unseeable. "Visual representations of evidence should be governed by principles of reasoning about quantitative evidence. Clear and precise seeing becomes as one with clear and precise thinking."

The master of clear and precise thinking meets the master of clear and precise seeing in what I call the Feynman-Tufte Principle: a visual display of data should be simple enough to fit on the side of a van.

As Tufte poignantly demonstrated in his analysis of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, despite the 13 charts prepared for NASA by Thiokol (the makers of the solid-rocket booster that blew up), they failed to communicate the link between cool temperature and O-ring damage on earlier flights. The loss of the Columbia, Tufte believes, was directly related to "a PowerPoint festival of bureaucratic hyperrationalism" in which a single slide contained six different levels of hierarchy (chapters and subheads), thereby obfuscating the conclusion that damage to the left wing might have been significant. In his 1970 classic work The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Feynman covered all of physics--from celestial mechanics to quantum electrodynamics--with only two levels of hierarchy.

Tufte codified the design process into six principles:
(1) documenting the sources and characteristics of the data,
(2) Insistently enforcing appropriate comparisons,
(3) Demonstrating mechanisms of cause and effect,
(4) Expressing those mechanisms quantitatively,
(5) Recognizing the inherently multivariate nature of analytic problems,
(6) Inspecting and evaluating alternative explanations.

In brief, "information displays should be documentary, comparative, causal and explanatory, quantified, multivariate, exploratory, skeptical."

Skeptical. How fitting for this column, opus 50 for me, because when I asked Tufte to summarize the goal of his work, he said, "Simple design, intense content." Because we all need a mark at which to aim (one meaning of "skeptic"), "simple design, intense content" is a sound objective for this series.

Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic (www.skeptic.com) and author of Science Friction.

Newspaper Graphics by Peter Sullivan

This is a very good book about information graphics written by Peter Sullivan.
I found it laid in my office's library, looked like a very old design book and still black and white. After took a few look, I got fell in love with it. I tried to buy the book from the store but still couldn't find one. So I decided to make a copy from the original book.

The book was first published in 1987 but the content still really match with today situation.
It covers all aspects you need to know in creating information graphics for the newspaper, starts from the history, form&function, problems and the future of infographics.

The book is well-written and illustrated nicely with various kind of information graphics which aren't only suit the theme but really help readers to understand what do the writer try to explained.

If you are interested in information graphics, then it might be the book that you will looking for.

What are information graphics

After two-year worked as news designer, I got more interested to know more about information graphic. Even though it is popular among news workers but not many people know what it means.


From Wikipedia:
Information graphics or infographics are the visual representations of information, data or knowledge.
These graphics are used anywhere where information needs to be explained quickly or simply, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education. They are also used extensively as tools by computer scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians to ease the process of developing and communicating conceptual information. They are applied in all aspects of scientific visualization.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infographics

In the book of "Newspaper Graphics", Peter Sullivan describes information graphics as:
Any combination of drawings, words, and photographic images to create visual means whereby news and feature coverage is extended in order to help the newspaper reader towards a fuller understanding of the word of the page.

“Editorial Design, is it a social science?”

I am currently doing my master in Editorial Design Utrecht School of Arts. I find that Editorial Design as a name of a study program is somewhat still not popular yet. When I introduce myself and my major of study, I often been asked what Editorial Design means. With my background working in a newspaper, some people thought that I’ve turned my path and decided to continue my study in a social science related to journalism. It is obviously a design program from the last word, but if we had just heard it from a person we met and didn't listen carefully, we won’t have much chance to think. Sometime people just capture the most noticeable and appealing word in the phrase. In this case, to some people, the word editorial has influenced their mind more.

Worked as a graphic designer in newspaper, the term Editorial Design attracted me the most. Since the word editorial related closely with news expression, my first impression about editorial design is that it will explore and analyze design structure on representing news in media.
But apparently it has more broad and wider scope.







On the Mahku website, editorial design is described as:
An interdisciplinary course concerned with structuring information for publication media. In general terms, Editorial Design is the craft of organizing complex assemblages of information into a meaningful and accessible multiplicity, balancing function (the interface aspect) and aesthetics (the expressive aspect).

Furthermore, honestly, I never really sure about how the editorial design differs from graphic design since both try to communicate information using text and images. But I guess editorial design is simply graphic design which try to emphasize more on publication media with its title.

The new beginning

This is my first blog, my first attempt to participate in the world of new media. This blog will be an important part of starting and finishing my research in Editorial Mahku.

“Remember today, for it is the beginning of always. Today marks the start of a brave new future filled with all your dreams can hold. Think truly to the future and make those dreams come true.”
(E. L. Doctorow quotes; American Author and Editor, b.1931)