InfoD: Bookwatch (29)

      * InfoDesign Bookwatch *   (29)

        In this message:
        1) Digital Information Graphics (Matt Woolman)
        2) Leonardo's Laptop (Ben Shneiderman)
        3) Information graphics and visual clues (Ronnie Lipton)

        From the bookshelf:
        -  The aesthetics of comics (David Carrier)

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1)  TITLE: Digital Information Graphics

     AUTHOR: Matt Woolman

    SUMMARY: Digital Information Graphics confronts the issues
             that affect our interaction with the screen, whether
             for the World Wide Web, multimedia programs, or
             small-screen devices like mobile phones or PDAs.
             The book shows ways to present deep arrays of data.
             Through examples readers will discover how to display
             complex environment and infrastructure; analyze and
             present data gathered from demographics and news
             sources; convey complex events and situations; and
             push today's technology to its limits, resulting in
             alternative ways for navigating a website or
             interacting with the computer.

CONTENTS:
- Introduction

MAPPING
- Web cartography
- Spherical spatial diagrams
- Organic information design
- Diagrammatic representation of data
- Three-dimensional information structuring
- Mapping data paths
- Displaying search-engine results
- Visualising website structure
- MTV2
- Illustrating web-session links
- Web geography

INFORMING
- Web traffic interpretation
- Charting online behaviour
- Exploratory data analysis
- Datascapes
- Analyzing search-engine findings
- Data classification
- Information landscapes
- Immersive data display
- Linguistic relationships
- Identity systems
- Geographic comparisons
- Monitoring business performance
- Nicheworks + exploratory data visualizer

INTERACTING
- Web conversations
- Communication diagrams
- Analyzing semantic relationships
- Loom2
- Diagramming group behaviour
- Thought patterns
- Visual explanations
- Datascapes of communication
- Game design
- Diagramming software
- Graph manipulation

EXPLORING
- Digital nature
- User-controlled abstract art
- Rhizome
- Expanding three diagrams
- Typographic play
- Visual experimentation
- Equator interdisciplinary research collaboration
- Dynamic type
- Mapping the genome

Appendices
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Credits and Websites
- Index

Hardback, 176pp
Price: GBP 24.95
Published: 2002
Publisher: Thames and Hudson
ISBN: 0 500 51094 6

Webpages about this book:
http://www.thamesandhudson.com/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0823013537
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2)  TITLE: Leonardo's Laptop

     AUTHOR: Ben Shneiderman

    SUMMARY: Shneiderman proposes Leonardo da Vinci as an
             inspirational muse for the 'new computing'. He wonders
             how Leonardo would use a laptop and what applications
             he would create. Shneiderman shifts the focus from what
             computers can do to what users can do. A key transfor-
             mation is to what he calls 'universal usability',
             enabling participation by young and old, novice and
             experts, able and disabled. This transformation would
             empower those yearning for literacy or coping with
             their limitations. Each chapter ends with a
             Skeptic's Corner that challenges assumptions about
             trust, privacy and digital divides.

CONTENTS:
Preface
1  Learning from Leonardo
2  Unusable at any bandwidth
3  The quest for universal usability
4  New methods, new goals
5  Understanding human activities and relationships
6  The New Education: E-learning
7  The New Business: E-commerce
8  The New Medicine: E-healthcare
9  The New Politics: E-government
10 The quest for mega-creativity
11 Grander goals
Notes
References

Hardback, 256pp
Price: USD 24.95 /GBP 16.50
Published: November 2002
Publisher: The MIT Press
ISBN: 0262194767

http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/main/feature/leonardoslaptop/index.html
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262194767
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3)  TITLE: Information Graphics and Visual Clues
             Communicating Information through Graphic Design

     AUTHOR: Ronnie Lipton

    SUMMARY: Certain visual images scream their message to us loud
             and clear: a stop sign, a skull and cross bones, a
             handicapped parking sticker. The ability to take ideas
             and information and create visuals that allow us to
             'read' them is perhaps the most basic and difficult
             skill of the graphic designer. Information Graphics and
             Visual Clues argues that this way of seeing and
             creating is one that is part innate and part
             learned-and that without it, even the most
             technologically sophisticated designer is merely a
             technician. The book explains the theory behind this
             type of visual 'translation', walks the reader through
             examples of graphics ranging from signs and logos to
             advertising, packaging, and events publicity, and
             explains how each image was conceived and why it
             succeeds.

CONTENTS:
Introduction
1 Publication identity systems
2 Posters and other promotions
3 Logos and stationery
4 Illustrations
5 Holiday greetings

Hardback, 208pp
Price: USD 45.00
Published: November 2002
Publisher: Rockport
ISBN: 1-56496-864-2

http://www.rockpub.com/books.asp?book=4&bookid=1324
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1564968642/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1564968642/
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'From the Bookshelf' mentions books that were not recently
published, but that we have missed on introduction.

      TITLE: The aesthetics of comics

     AUTHOR: David Carrier

    SUMMARY: Comic strips have two obvious defining features. They
             are visual narratives, using both words and pictures to
             tell stories, and they use word balloons to represent
             the speech and thought of depicted characters. This
             book provides a full-length philosophical account of
             the comic strip. Philosopher David Carrier looks at
             popular American and Japanese comic strips to identify
             and solve the aesthetic problems posed by comic strips
             and to explain the relationship of this artistic genre
             to other forms of visual art. He traces the use of
             speech and thought balloons to early Renaissance art
             and claims that the speech balloon defined comics as
             neither a purely visual nor a strictly verbal art form,
             but as something radically new. Comics are essentially
             a composite art that, when successful, seamlessly
             combine verbal and visual elements. Carrier looks at
             the way an audience interprets comics and contrasts the
             interpretation of comics and other mass-culture images
             to that of Old Master visual art.

CONTENTS:
Introduction

Part one: The nature of comics
1  Caricature, representing casual connections
2  The speech balloon; or, the problem of representing other
    minds
3  The image sequence: or, moving modernist pictures
4  Words and pictures bound together: or, experiencing the unity
    of comics

Part two: Interpreting comics
5  The content of the form: or, seeing pictures, reading texts,
    viewing comics
6  Interpreting a populist art form; or, the liberating force of
    Krazy Kat

Part three: The place of comics in relation to art history
7  Posthistorical art: or, comics in the realm of absolute
    knowledge

Bibliography
Index

Paperback, 139 pp
Price: USD 22.70
Published: 2000
Publisher: The Pennsylvania State University Press, Pennsylvania
ISBN: 0-271-02188-8

http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01962-X.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/027101962X
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/027101962X
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InfoDesign Bookwatch is compiled and edited by Piet Westendorp
and Karel van der Waarde. Suggestions for titles are welcome,
and may be sent to: [email protected]
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