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Alex Lederer, Blog #8

The Felton reports are really pretty.  The maps in particular.  The first map of the 2009 Felton report and all of the 2008 report are beautiful, which is probably why he can print 2000-3000 of these little reports and get hella paid for it. The infographs, not just the maps, really help visualize data in context as well, which is a really important element that can be lost in traditional graphs.  It helps to create a mindset when looking at data, and this is a direct reaction to the choices made by the designer, which is an important tool and job not seen before in history.  Pretty interesting stuff.

The actual information does a good job at highlighting the top statistic.  Infographs, if anything, really do help highlight the differences between data, but the smaller or outlier information is generally ignored.  Besides the top 5, all other information is unimportant and ignored or made obscured in order to make the information look better.  Of course, making the data look appealing is a really useful way to remember it, and invite people to look at the data from the start.

The end always says what programs he used to create the reports, but I don’t know whether or not they do a lot of the visualizations or just organize the data.  I need to look into OpenStreetMap, and Amazon Mechanical Turf.  My area of focus, which is the phone phreakers of the early computer age, doesn’t rely of physical area so much, but I think making a map will be helpful regardless.  I know timelines will be very helpful, and  maybe some sort of grid visualization to show the way that the phone cables were connected allowing the phreakers to expliot the system to make free international calls.

~ by aledere1 on October 29, 2012 .



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