Aesthetics - Tristan

Reading List

• Envisioning Data
  • Chapter 2: Micro/Macro
  • Chapter 3: Layering and Separation
  • Chapter 5: Color and Information

Micro/Macro

• General
  • Large view, e.g. country map, cityscape
  • Lots of details, e.g. provincial statistics, windows on a building
  • However don't show too much, which details do you show? Which ones are appropriate to leave out? (pg 51 first blockquote)

• Material must be organized appropriately. Examples include:
  • Organization of names on Vietnam War Memorial (pg 43)
  • Table of Hospital costs (pg 57)

• When organizing and laying out information, there can be an aesthetic preference:
  • Simplicity || Complexity?
  • High Density || Thin Date?
  • Number/Table based || Graphic/Map based

Layering and Separation

• General
  • Reduce noise, enrich the content of the displays
  • Combine various elements of 'flatland' and make them interact "1 + 1 = 3 or more"
  • Visual attraction of negative space (pg 60)
  • Background and foreground elements (pg 65 blockquote)

Color and Information

• General
  • The trained eye can distinguish 1,000,000 colors, 20,000 otherwise. How can you use this to create distinguishable elements and enrich a visualization?

• Use of color to
  • Label, color as a noun, color coding data sets. (pg 82)
  • Measure, color as a quantity, color coding elevation on a map. (pg 82)
  • Decorative, color as beauty, make it pleasurable to the eye. (pg 82)
  • Clarity, color as distinction, as in slightly different hues of the same color to distinguish points. Also to clean up where black and white/grayscale fails, where 1+1=3 clutter. (pg 89)