Unlike any time before in our lives, we have access to vast amounts of free information. With the right tools, we can start to make sense of all this data to see patterns and trends that would otherwise be invisible to us. By transforming numbers into graphical shapes, we allow readers to understand the stories those numbers hide. In this practical introduction to understanding and using information graphics, you’ll learn how to use data visualizations as tools to see beyond lists of numbers and variables and achieve new insights into the complex world around us. Regardless of the kind of data you’re working with–business, science, politics, sports, or even your own personal finances–this book will show you how to use statistical charts, maps, and explanation diagrams to spot the stories in the data and learn new things from it. You’ll also get to peek into the creative process of some of the world’s most talented designers and visual journalists, including Condé Nast Traveler’s John Grimwade , National Geographic Magazine’s Fernando Baptista, The New York Times’ Steve Duenes, The Washington Post’s Hannah Fairfield, Hans Rosling of the Gapminder Foundation, Stanford’s Geoff McGhee, and European superstars Moritz Stefaner, Jan Willem Tulp, Stefanie Posavec, and Gregor Aisch. The book also includes a DVD-ROM containing over 90 minutes of video lessons that expand on core concepts explained within the book and includes even more inspirational information graphics from the world’s leading designers. The first book to offer a broad, hands-on introduction to information graphics and visualization, The Functional Art reveals: • Why data visualization should be thought of as “functional art” rather than fine art • How to use color, type, and other graphic tools to make your information graphics more effective, not just better looking • The science of how our brains perceive and remember information ¿ • Best practices for creating interactive information graphics • A comprehensive look at the creative process behind successful information graphics ¿ • An extensive gallery of inspirational work from the world’s top designers and visual artists On the DVD-ROM: In this introductory video course on information graphics, Alberto Cairo goes into greater detail with even more visual examples of how to create effective information graphics that function as practical tools for aiding perception. You’ll learn how to: incorporate basic design principles in your visualizations, create simple interfaces for interactive graphics, and choose the appropriate type of graphic forms for your data. Cairo also deconstructs successful information graphics from The New York Times and National Geographic magazine with sketches and images not shown in the book. All of Peachpit's eBooks contain the same content as the print edition. You will find a link in the last few pages of your eBook that directs you to the media files. Helpful tips: If you are able to search the book, search for "Where are the lesson files?" Go to the very last page of the book and scroll backwards. You will need a web-enabled device or computer in order to access the media files that accompany this ebook. Entering the URL supplied into a computer with web access will allow you to get to the files. Depending on your device, it is possible that your display settings will cut off part of the URL. To make sure this is not the case, try reducing your font size and turning your device to a landscape view. This should cause the full URL to appear.

No matter what your actual job title, you are—or soon will be—a data worker. Every day, at work, home, and school, we are bombarded with vast amounts of free data collected and shared by everyone and everything from our co-workers to our calorie counters. In this highly anticipated follow-up to The Functional Art—Alberto Cairo’s foundational guide to understanding information graphics and visualization—the respected data visualization professor explains in clear terms how to work with data, discover the stories hidden within, and share those stories with the world in the form of charts, maps, and infographics. In The Truthful Art, Cairo transforms elementary principles of data and scientific reasoning into tools that you can use in daily life to interpret data sets and extract stories from them. The Truthful Art explains: • The role infographics and data visualization play in our world • Basic principles of data and scientific reasoning that anyone can master • How to become a better critical thinker • Step-by-step processes that will help you evaluate any data visualization (including your own) • How to create and use effective charts, graphs, and data maps to explain data to any audience The Truthful Art is also packed with inspirational and educational real-world examples of data visualizations from such leading publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Estado de São Paulo (Brazil), Berliner Morgenpost (Germany), and many more.

"Design [does not equal] Art presents distinctive functional designs that share the limited palette, materials, and elegant, geometric abstract forms characteristic of Minimalist and post-Minimalist art, including pine desks and porcelain tableware by Judd, stone and steel tables and chairs by Burton, lamps by Tuttle, folding screens by LeWitt, rugs by Rosemarie Trockel and Barbara Bloom, daybeds by Whiteread, and much more." "Filled with hundreds of photographs and drawing on candid conversations with many of the artists, Design [does not equal] Art is an authoritative, essential resource for designers, scholars of Minimalist and post-Minimalist art, collectors, and anyone interested in furniture and design of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning offers a deep insight and comprehension of the world of Art. Contents: What is Art? The Structure of Art Significance of Materials Used in Art Describing Art - Formal Analysis, Types, and Styles of Art Meaning in Art - Socio-Cultural Contexts, Symbolism, and Iconography Connecting Art to Our Lives Form in Architecture Art and Identity Art and Power Art and Ritual Life - Symbolism of Space and Ritual Objects, Mortality, and Immortality Art and Ethics

They're all made from wood and glass. Yet in the hands of international artisans, these traditional crafts are transformed into interesting and marvelous objects. Pore through projects featuring découpage on ceramics or glass. Consider making medieval folk art or painted icons. Maybe painted furniture hits a chord with you, or woodturned bowls, wooden clocks, or gilded flowers. From all parts of the earth, and from all periods of history, these artists find inspiration in sources that excite the imagination, and you will too, once you see these projects in all their impressive photographic splendor.

A leading data visualization expert explores the negative—and positive—influences that charts have on our perception of truth. We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous—and easier to share than ever. We associate charts with science and reason; the flashy visuals are both appealing and persuasive. Pie charts, maps, bar and line graphs, and scatter plots (to name a few) can better inform us, revealing patterns and trends hidden behind the numbers we encounter in our lives. In short, good charts make us smarter—if we know how to read them. However, they can also lead us astray. Charts lie in a variety of ways—displaying incomplete or inaccurate data, suggesting misleading patterns, and concealing uncertainty—or are frequently misunderstood, such as the confusing cone of uncertainty maps shown on TV every hurricane season. To make matters worse, many of us are ill-equipped to interpret the visuals that politicians, journalists, advertisers, and even our employers present each day, enabling bad actors to easily manipulate them to promote their own agendas. In How Charts Lie, data visualization expert Alberto Cairo teaches us to not only spot the lies in deceptive visuals, but also to take advantage of good ones to understand complex stories. Public conversations are increasingly propelled by numbers, and to make sense of them we must be able to decode and use visual information. By examining contemporary examples ranging from election-result infographics to global GDP maps and box-office record charts, How Charts Lie demystifies an essential new literacy, one that will make us better equipped to navigate our data-driven world.

Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson offer an in-depth philosophical study of the relationship between function and aesthetic value, breaking with the philosophical tradition of seeing the two as separate. They begin by developing and defending, in a general way, the concept of Functional Beauty, exploring how the role of function in aesthetic appreciation has been treated by some notable thinkers in the history of aesthetics. They then consider the relationship to Functional Beauty of certain views in current aesthetic thought, especially what we call 'cognitively rich' approaches to the aesthetic appreciation of both art and nature. Turning to work on the nature of function in the philosophy of science, they argue that this line of enquiry can help solve certain philosophical problems that have been raised for the idea that knowledge of function plays an important role in aesthetic appreciation. Although philosophical discussions of aesthetic appreciation tend to focus largely and sometimes almost exclusively on artworks, the range of aesthetic appreciation is, of course, much larger. Not simply art, but also nature, architecture, and even more mundane, everyday things—cars, tools, clothing, furniture, and sports—are objects of frequent and enthusiastic aesthetic appreciation. Accordingly, in the second half of the book, Glen Parsons and Allen Carlson consider the place and importance of Functional Beauty in the aesthetic appreciation of a broad range of different kinds of things. The final chapters explore Functional Beauty in nature and the natural environment, in architecture and the built environment, in everyday artefacts, events, and activities, and finally in art and the artworld. In each case, Parsons and Carlson argue that Functional Beauty illuminates our aesthetic experiences and helps to address various theoretical issues raised by these different objects of appreciation.

Within every picture is a hidden language that conveys a message, whether it is intended or not. This language is based on the ways people perceive and process visual information. By understanding visual language as the interface between a graphic and a viewer, designers and illustrators can learn to inform with accuracy and power. In a time of unprecedented competition for audience attention and with an increasing demand for complex graphics, Visual Language for Designers explains how to achieve quick and effective communications. New in paperback, this book presents ways to design for the strengths of our innate mental capacities and to compensate for our cognitive limitations. Visual Language for Designers includes: —How to organize graphics for quick perception —How to direct the eyes to essential information —How to use visual shorthand for efficient communication —How to make abstract ideas concrete —How to best express visual complexity —How to charge a graphic with energy and emotion

The Art and Science of Analyzing Software Data provides valuable information on analysis techniques often used to derive insight from software data. This book shares best practices in the field generated by leading data scientists, collected from their experience training software engineering students and practitioners to master data science. The book covers topics such as the analysis of security data, code reviews, app stores, log files, and user telemetry, among others. It covers a wide variety of techniques such as co-change analysis, text analysis, topic analysis, and concept analysis, as well as advanced topics such as release planning and generation of source code comments. It includes stories from the trenches from expert data scientists illustrating how to apply data analysis in industry and open source, present results to stakeholders, and drive decisions. - Presents best practices, hints, and tips to analyze data and apply tools in data science projects - Presents research methods and case studies that have emerged over the past few years to further understanding of software data - Shares stories from the trenches of successful data science initiatives in industry

In the 1970s, Kelly's transgressive projects helped to instigate conceptual art's second phase; her daring critiques of the female body as a fetishized, allegorized, commodified site were debated long after they were first seen in galleries and discussed in catalogues, and long before the debut of the "bad girls" in the 1990s. In fact, the debates currently surrounding Kelly's work are a necessary and defining element of theoretical discourse about art today.