Diabetes UK

Whilst writing my dissertation and four days after I produced the posters for the local doctor’s surgery, Diabetes UK launched a new campaign. They have used case studies of ‘real’ people to hit home how diabetes can affect everyone. The people are not the ‘typical’ overweight stereo type and look like ‘everyday normal people’! They are also using stronger language than in previous campaigns and a more direct approach.

Since this report was published there has been a lot of media activity to raise awareness of Diabetes. The results of the year-long inquiry have been published in Taking control: Supporting people to self-manage their diabetes. The language used – ‘taking control’ is inferring that they are or should take control and the term’ self-manage’ is placing the bus on the patient but using the

APPG-Diabetes-Report-Education-Final-Report

There have also been guidelines and policy changes to cope with caring for people who have long term illnesses and need ling term care, which diabetes comes under that.

Our system, designed for the 20th century, has to change and adapt to meet the challenges of the future… Personalised care which understands and supports the individual is vital. There is no magic bullet which will support the delivery of personalised care but there is evidence that thinking systematically about the essential components does. … we have adopted the House of Care as a framework to enhance the quality of life for people with long term conditions, not matter what their conditions. Implementing the intent of the House of Care will be a challenge.

Enhancing the quality of life for people living with long term conditions

The House of Care 

APPG-Diabetes-Report-Education-Final-Report ltc-infographic

 

Long Term Conditions Info graphic – A simple demonstration of key information at a national level related to long term conditions, aimed at commissioners and health and social care providers. It gives an overview on current challenges and the impact living with long term conditions can have on a person’s quality of life. The measures presented include:  the proportion of people aged over 85; the proportion of people who smoke; prevalence of LTC comorbidity; information on quality of life and on service utilisation for people with LTCs

An info graphic has been produced to highlight the facts of where we are in terms of care andprivision. I do not think this is particularly good but the facts are pretty shocking. The use of blue colours visually connect with the NHS, and the use of burgundy colour is similar to my designs in that they have not used red as a danger colour which wants, but there is an element of emphasis. I find this infographic too complicated, my eye is not guided around the page in stead frenetically jumps around to try and read all the information without success. This, for me is a good example of a bad infographic not working!

ltc-infographic

 

 

 

up to date

I haven’t reflected for a little while as I was getting obsessed with it all and really couldn’t sustain the level of commitment required so I have a word with Sam and realised that I can continue to reflect but not in quite so much detail, which was great to hear.

I have been up to a lot of things since my first presentation mainly to do with Infographics and data visualisation.

Seeing David McCandless‘ talk and meeting up with infogr8 was great and both said about how important it would be to go to Visualized.io, a conference held in London on Saturday 22nd Nov. So I emailed and managed to get a ticket which was a sell out.

The room was full of creatives, designers, artists from UK, Europe and America which was excellent and gave a real buzz to the conference. The speakers were brilliant and it was great to see such a wide range of styles, different ways to use, collect and present data.

I particularly liked Valentine D’Efilippo’s work, her beautiful Poppy Field work is stunning. What is amazing is that Valentine draws it all in Adobe Illustrator which is great because this programme I know but also recommended open source programmes such as RAW and PREZI. She is also doing a masterclass at the Guardian, “The essentials of info graphic storytelling” which I can hopefully go to.

This is all totally awe inspiring and my head is spinning with ideas – the problem I am finding is I need someone to tell me, show me, talk me through the process as I can only look at books to get an idea and I have a great deal of them…

I’m also then thinking am I just barking up the wrong tree?

Is this really what I want to do?

And then I say ermm YES I want to know how to do this, how to think like a mathematician, marketing analyst and a designer all at the same time.

So I am on this journey.

Valentina D’Efilippo

Andy Kirk

Stefanie Posavec – data artist

Marcin Ignac

Andy Kirk

Annabeth – LCA

 

events I have signed up for…

How funny – things happen for a reason…

I buy this book: Knowledge is Beautiful. I contact the author via email: David McCandless, about some information and the costs to see him at an event or talk, which is horrendously expensive and so is getting any information from him about these processes – so I resigned myself to reading his book…

Then a friend this week emailed me, “Saw this and thought of you” and it was a link to a talk by David McCandless, who is giving a talk in Canary Warf at a very affordable rate. So I contacted my dear friend in London for a couch for the night, bought a ticket and will hopefully be able to go to the talk.

There is also a Kanwar Information is Beautiful Awards competition which I presume McCandless is involved with. Some of this years entries are absolutely stunning – the different ways in which data can be visualised is amazing and a completely different world from the designs world I have been trained in.

My practice will definately be taking a new direction as I am so inspired by all of this – there is a fire and a desire to know more.

I will then hopefully try and catch up with the people who collaborated with FutureEverything on the Olympic Games.

FutureEverything started in Manchester and is also holding a conference which I have bought early bird tickets for – just to be in the presence, the experience and see all this “stuff” for want of a better word, is and will be mind blowing…

The scentst Paul Genever was very interested in the 3D resin visuals of the tweet produced at Emoto – somehow using the DNA data or osteoarthritis data in the Royal Society exhibition would be brilliant. Ive emailed various people to start the ball rolling on this discovery and MA journey.

Future Everything [2014] are also holding a conference and will be celebrating their 20th anniversary where they are asking, “What now?” and they hope the festival will bring together art, academia, design and business to forge ‘new visions, hone values and figure out a path forward.’ Such vision and action is exciting but unfortunately I will be in Warsaw hopefully visualizing my own vision connecting with the city and its people. Visualisation and Insight (2014)

olympic games’ data

Future Everything – Data Arts looks at artworks and social innovations which use real time data. Future Everything worked with Emoto who captured and visualised the social media responses around the Olympic games on Twitter and produced an online visualisation they also produced a data sculpture which had individual heat maps projected onto it of the most interesting themes identified during the Games.

The use of the technology and graphics produced as a result of this research is inspirational.

http://emoto2012.org (retrieved 28 June 2014)

infogr8

While investigating data visualisation I came across a company Infogr8, who use new emerging design techniques, processes, some would perhaps would even say new design methodology. Where we find ourselves in a new wave of incessant, overwhelming collection of data, on everything and everyone and no-one really knows what to do with it all – until now!

I have attached a downloaded document from infogr8 which is really their Trend Report, “2014 – the year data visualisation turns from an afterthought to an essential starting point when informing an audience”.

http://infogr8.com/infogr8-trend-report-information-design/#sthash.EwVMGtZT.dpuf

They are so passionate and are also inspired by a host of other creatives, I feel this is only the beginning of my journey and it may be a little overwhelming and yet inspiring to learn  new ways of thinking, interpreting information as well as new technologies I have yet to explore…

Information-Design-Trend-Report

Thinking this was “new” way of using date I was amazed to have found a historical reference, which was relating to an exhibition I sadly missed and will hopefully excite my budding MA peers. Farr’s information graphic is beautiful and is amazing consider ing when and how it was produced.

Beautiful Science: Picturing Data, Inspiring Insight

“Turning numbers into pictures that tell important stories and reveal the meaning held within is an essential part of what it means to be a scientist. This is as true in today’s era of genome sequencing and climate models as it was in the 19th century. Beautiful Science explores how our understanding of ourselves and our planet has evolved alongside our ability to represent, graph and map the mass data of the time. From John Snow’s plotting of the 1854 London cholera infections on a map to colourful depictions of the tree of life, discover how picturing scientific data provides new insight into our lives.”

William Farr, Report on the Mortality of Cholera in England 1848-49, 1852

I now have to find an extra day in my 9 day week to sit, allow myself time to be consumed, inspired and to reflect.

 

 

visual narratives

As was the work of Mark Lombardi, whose produced the most interesting data visualisation that were beautiful and complelety contradicted the content, conspiracies, relationships, his data uncovered. I love the the words, “visual narrative” it draws you in to investigate, read, understand and “make sense” of what you are looking at.

The story in my case was initially Mark Lombardi’s visual structures as noted on the project description, “Mark Lombardi (1951-2000) draws on the major political and financial scandals of the day to create large-scale linear diagrams that at first glance look like celestial maps; a closer reading reveals the intricate web of connections that lurk beneath current headlines. From Whitewater to the Vatican Bank, Lombardi uses dotted lines and broken arrows to chart the paths of illicit deals and laundered money, keeping track of it all in a handwritten database of 12,000 index cards. By scrutinizing the mutable boundaries that separate artistic practice from daily life, Lombardi wrings visual poetry out of dirty secrets – the results are a chillingly beautiful guide to the facts of life.”

“Lombardi’s drawings outlining connections between people and organizations, which he called ‘Narrative Structures’ were the result of meticulous research and careful draftsmanship. He collected mentions of individuals, corporations, and government bodies from newspapers, indexes of books, and magazines, and catalogued this data on index cards – at one time he had more than 14,000 cards on file. He began using diagrams as a way to makes sense of this huge store of data, intending to put his discoveries together into writing; but the diagrams themselves quickly became his central form of output. These charts and maps are often extremely complex and typically focus on conspiracies.”

http://blog.blprnt.com/blog/blprnt/data-consipiracy-and-concept-mark-lombardi

Jer Thorp, a co-founder of The Office for Creative Research, and an Adjunct Professor at New York University, was inspired by Lombardi.

He produced his own visual narratives which apparently only took minutes to render but are, in my opinion, absolutely stunning, perhaps these would only appeal to a narrow interested audience, but none the less beautiful, intricate and incredibly detailed using a vast amount of data.

To use his own words,“These visualizations show the top organizations and personalities for every year from 1985 to 2001. Connections between these people & organizations are indicated by lines.”

I am going to contact Thorpe and hopefully enter into a dialogue regarding the software he uses and develops,  what are his views on how to connect with a less sophisticated audience and making links with health & social issues in our society today…

He has a blog and having just read this statement I am even more excited to contact him, “When text becomes data it opens up a phenomenal amount of possibility for insight and creative exploration.”

book, emails and the internet…

I began investigation information graphics, data storytelling and came across McCandless, who describes himself as an author, data journalist and information designer. He has just written “Knowledge is Beautiful” which I have just purchased along side 2 other books as equally as exciting. It will be interested to delve deeper to see how these beautiful visualisations could really bring home a serious underpinning message and connect with the general public to take informed decisions about their health & well being.

McCandless writes; “After 15,832 person hours of effort over two years (yes, I tracked them), I would like to announce the completion of my new infographic ultra tome, Knowledge is Beautiful. Published by HarperCollins this autumn, it contains exactly 196 new hand-crafted infographics and visualisations, free-ranging across many subjects areas. Science, power, money, health, space, art, thought and dogs. Yes, dogs.”

• Publisher: William Collins (25 Sep 2014)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007427921
• ISBN-13: 978-0007427925

The other books I have purchased are as follows with some extracts of text, I have put in links if you want to investigate this yourselves.

Data Visualization: a successful design process Paperback – 26 Dec 2012 by Andy Kirk. The insert about the book

“This book will benefit anyone who wants to discover effective, attractive ways to visually analyze and communicate data. With no special knowledge required, it’s an inspirational guide that teaches through examples and illustration.

A portable, versatile and flexible data visualization design approach that will help you navigate the complex path towards success. Explains the many different reasons for creating visualizations and identifies the key parameters which lead to very different design options.”

• Publisher: Packt Publishing (26 Dec 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1849693463
• ISBN-13: 978-1849693462

An Introduction to Information Design Paperback – 31 Mar 2014 by Kathryn Coates

“Information design is the visualization of information through graphic design. This invaluable guide provides a creative, informative and practical introduction to the general principles of information design. With chapters on understanding the audience, structure, legibility and readability, selection of media, experimentation and multi-platform delivery, An Introduction to Information Design gives a complete overview of this fundamental aspect of visual communication. Fully illustrated case studies from leading designers provide professional insight into the challenges involved in creating information design for print, interactive and environmental media. Practical exercises and tips enable the reader to put this learning into practice.”

• Publisher: Laurence King (31 Mar 2014)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1780673388
• ISBN-13: 978-1780673387