
W.E.B. Du Bois’ Infographics - Vigier
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/first-time-together-and-color-book-displays-web-du-bois-visionary-infographics-180970826/#Di2y0svJ5HrpDBhf.99
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lucaluca1453
I use these to teach students the principles of good data visualization. He
had an incredible eye for contrast, detail, and believed infographics should
tell a story, not just present a lot of data. Most relevant for today, he and
his team did each one of these by hand, and most of the work was in designing
the visualization's structure, not playing around with code and numbers.

The black and green chart about slavery is just incredible. With only 9 data
points, he tells a moral story, he shares a perspective, and he educates the
rest of the world on our peculiar institution. These visualizations are just
incredible considering the tools they had to work with and the lack of formal
data visualization science.

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dang
The article implies that they weren't widely known until recently. How did you
run across them?

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pvg
Doesn't it say it's the first time they've been collected and printed in a
book? Library of Congress has had them online for 15+ years at least.

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User23
I'm either spoiled by Tufte's work, or just not getting it. What
dimensionality is the spiral capturing? I get that it looks neat, but in terms
of helping me to understand what the data is telling me I just don't get it.

This isn't sarcasm, please explain what I'm missing.

Edit: This work is quite solid by the Tufte principles that I can see how to
apply, such as using ink for data and not decoration.

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no_protocol
The length of the line corresponds to the number of people.

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User23
I got that, but why not just a bar chart? Is there something I should be
learning from this design to use when I share information professionally?
Because right now if I were to chart data in this format for work I'd raise a
lot of eyebrows, and I'd like to know what the advantage is.

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candu
(For context: not a dataviz expert by any means, but I've done a bunch of work
in that space for the last several years.)

For sharing information professionally? Not much - but you have to remember
the context. Du Bois and his team were preparing these visualizations to be
shown at the World Fair in Paris, not for a business meeting. As important as
the data they portray is their underlying goal: to show that African-Americans
are the equals of their European / Caucasian counterparts in cultural and
intellectual endeavors. Presenting the ongoing socioeconomic plight of
African-Americans as Modernist data art - at a time when Modernism itself was
only just starting to spill over into the visual arts - definitely supports
that goal.

Now, on to the visualization merits of the spiral. We have four data points
spanning two orders of magnitude. To show those on a bar chart, you'd have to
either: a) use a logarithmic scale, b) use a linear scale and accept that
three of the bars are tiny, or c) use "scale breaks". Instead, Du Bois
presents the data in a way that draws attention to the most prominent data
point, while still preserving linear scale.

There are some highly effective techniques in the other visualizations as
well. The property valuation chart uses annotations to provide narrative
context. The freemen / slaves proportion chart uses filled-in space to lend it
a stark visual weight that, again, speaks to the narrative impact. Data
visualization is storytelling with data, and these charts are clearly designed
to get their narrative point across - quite effectively, I'd say.

Finally: Tufte was printed in the 80s, nearly a full century after these
visualizations. That, more than anything, makes these striking. With the
exception of Playfair's charts, Oliver Byrne's treatment of Euclid's Elements,
certain railroad timetables, and few others, the world hadn't seen much in the
way of truly effective visualization. They were literally inventing effective
visualization techniques. That we don't hear more about Du Bois' charts is
unfortunate.

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NelsonMinar
Here are a few more charts from Du Bois and his students:
[http://allmyeyes.blogspot.com/2011/02/black-history-
charts-1...](http://allmyeyes.blogspot.com/2011/02/black-history-
charts-1900.html)

Du Bois is a unique and towering intellectual in American history; his history
of Reconstruction remains full of truths and understandings that our society
has not yet absorbed. So I don't mean to diminish his work to note that these
infographics exist in a context of other beautiful graphic design and
infographics from the 19th century. Some examples:

Florence Nightingale: [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/florence-
nightingale-i...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/florence-nightingale-
infographic)

1870 census:
[http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?9thcensus](http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?9thcensus)

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nsajko
The infographics here might also be interesting:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte)

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howon92
wow interesting

