书籍介绍
Our ability to generate information now far exceeds our capacity to understand it. Finding patterns and making meaningful connections inside complex data networks has emerged as one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century. In recent years, designers, researchers, and scientists have begun employing an innovative mix of colors, symbols, graphics, algorithms, and interactivity to clarify, and often beautify, the clutter. From representing networks of friends on Facebook to depicting interactions among proteins in a human cell, Visual Complexity presents one hundred of the most interesting examples of information-visualization by the field's leading practitioners.
目录
The book is divided in seven chapters and I like to think of it almost as a symphony, with the first three chapters providing a foundational opening for the lavish visual burst of chapters 4 and 5 - the sonata’s allegro or vivace - immediately followed by its final cadence, “Complex Beauty” (perhaps my favorite chapter) and “Looking Ahead”. Here’s a bit on the book’s structure, as explained in the Introduction:
01 | The Tree of Life
The book opens with “Tree of Life,” an exploration of the sacred meaning of trees and their widespread use as a classification system over the centuries. It showcases an assortment of ancient representations — as predecessors of modern-day network diagrams — where the tree metaphor is used to visually convey a variety of topics, from theological events to an encyclopedia’s table of contents.
02 | Form Trees to Networks
The second chapter, “From Trees to Networks,” makes the case for a new network-based outlook on the world, one that is based on diversity, decentralization, and nonlinearity. It explores several instances — from the way we envision our cities to the way we organize information and decode our brain — where an alternative network model is replacing the hierarchical tree schema.
显示全部
用户评论
excellent reference book.
Trees & networks retold by a rising star in knowledge visualization~
不是用来读而是用来翻阅的一本书，有很多惊喜。各种不错的信息图表以及图表的一点历史。。之前做mapping的时候就一直在想很多information怎么样可视化出来，看着简单做着难啊。。。
到UK 买的第三本专业书 好贵··················
最大的惊奇是发现前老板早年的一个作品被此书收录。
很用心的一本书（收集了各种可视化的例子，从历史的到当代的），适合冥想。但在漂亮之外，此类数字人文项目依然没有能够说服整个学科：象征性的意义可以被具体化的图和表进行表达吗？「意义／价值空间在现实世界的投影」能带我们走多远？
除了信息可视化的历史以外，第五章归纳的15种类型的信息图表达方法非常有洞见/看完Information Graphics，来把评价改成五星/捂脸。如果说IG一书是一本大而全的以Alphabet的结构组织的案例汇总，里面的案例信息的罗列与抽象兼有的话，VC一书则把重点聚焦在了更为深入与抽象的 信息的关系的可视化上，并总结出了15种基本的信息结构
殿堂级的信息可视化奠基类书，原汁原味
network