Date

Tue 26 Apr 2022, 19:15 - 21:00

Speakers

Tiziana Alocci, David McCandless, Ciaran Hughes, Erik Nylund

Notes

As part of the Visualising Victorian News exhibition running from 1st April and 21st Aug 2022, the British Museum held a seminar, "Beautiful News / Visualising Victorian News" on the 26th April. The event led by David McCandless centred on infographics discussing both positive news as well as visualising historical Victorian news.

Infographics

Infographics for those unaware lies in the gap between art and maths. They transform information which are typically presented in bar charts and line charts into magnificent pieces of art.

Coupled with this, McCandless and his team has spent a year creating beautiful graphics to emphasis the the beauty of the world via the Beautiful News project. The project has highlighted the positive news which are frequently missed in favour of negative, clickbait news. McCandless's passion for data is enough to make anyone at the every least explore the world of infographics and it was a truly amazing experience to see him speak in real life. If you haven't done so, I highly recommend checking his work out as well as his Ted-ED.

The ability to consistently publish beautiful graphics for one whole year was also inspiring. Consistency is a frequent referred as a pillar for learning. However challenges have their unique issues as well as benefits. It enables one to constantly build upon knowledge and skill. In contrast, it can be taxing and is a true testament to complete such a project over the pan of one year.

The other speakers were all contributors to the exhibition, Victorian News. Learning about the creators and their life journey as well as their working process to create the infographics was also insightful. It specifically highlighted the artistic element of these graphs. Coming from a mathematical background where artistic elements were never a major topic of discussion in any of my statistic classes, I felt like I had missed out. Whilst the typical graphs are straightforward, fascinating graphics can engage with the audience more.

It should also be acknowledged that as Alocci highlighted remembering the audience, the more specific the better is key. This perhaps is the reason why in academia the artistry is side-lined. If data is only central in a business environment, clear and direct information is all that is needed. On the other hand, the visualisations highlighted in the seminar as well as in the exhibition was directed towards a more wider audience who did not always have an in-depth understanding of data.

I must say at the time of this seminar, I was curious how these graphics were created. I discovered Iron Viz shortly after the seminar where I realised that software which I was previously acquainted with had the capability of making similar graphics.

If you are reading this before the end of Aug 2022, I highly recommend visiting the British Library and checking out the exhibitions.

Key Resources

The seminar mentioned a few key resources, some of which are included below:

Factfulness

Highly recommended read for anyone interested in data, "Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think" by Hans Rosling tackles some of the misconceptions that are prominent in society and encourages individuals to examine data and information individuals take for granted as being accurate.

How to visualise the data

Highlighted by McCandless, FT has an extremely useful guide on how to display specific types of data. https://www.ft.com/content/c7bb24c9-964d-479f-ba24-03a2b2df6e85