Weekly Reading: The functional Art - Profile 10 & VizUM2018 Conference


This week I read the last profile of Stefanie Posavec. Her goal is that translating words of language into visualization with tools of playful, illustrative and attractive.

Why choose literature visualization? According to Stefanie’s self statement, I draw two points from it: 1). Having a sensitive sense to language and implication of understanding which is cultivated in her childhood; 2). She did not choose books casually, but selected books that have abundant contents and cover broad themes.

Like one of her works, "Writing Without Words: Sentence Drawings",  According to the high density of rectangles and colors, we could know that the first two chapters are dominated by short sentences; and there are many obvious changes of themes. Then we could make a good guess (if have not read the book) that the author was in a process of thinking burst. Such passionate visualization just reminds me of Czárdás.


All her works are no scripting but just handmade drafts. She made color-marker records on the book directly, which makes book itself an artwork just like a rainbow.  When putting the book on the hand, I guess there must be a big satisfaction and sense of success which the E-book cannot give. 

Voice over: I do not know if it is a coincidence or not,  there is a word "言叶(ことば)" in Japanese meaning "language", which could also interpret as "every word is the same as a leaf of tree".  How poetic this metaphor! Stefanie's conception is quite similar as it: every book has its sprits just like all life on earth.

About the inspiration... The shape of song (mead Wattenberg). No wonder I feel that the former design reminds me of the dance music😝

P.S. : If there are too many kinds of colors, we could divide them into bright/dazzling/dark.

Last one is her work "Origin of Specie", which makes me "wow" at first glimpse – so beautiful like a kaleidoscope! Although I do not know what is the meaning of it – whether the words of former edition are used in the later one, I was totally attracted by it and generate interests in the book. In a nutshell, as Stefanie said, the creation of her own work is casual and artistic;  There is no right or wrong, useful or useless in her world of visualization.

For the conference, I learned two useful methods to make the design of visualization more quick, convenient and maybe, also beautiful. 
Since I'm learning the R programming, the learning platform gives a good summary of its features:

And for the Charticulator, I've already apply it in my project in anther class: 


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