Welcome

If less is more, Barcelona is least. The city always has been a famous spot of Design. Antoni Gaudí and other considerable architects of the Catalan modernism, left his traces all over the city, thereunder the Sagrada Família. Picasso spent several years here, where he met the painter Ramon Casas. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Pavillon, unifying simple form and selected materials is located here. Even a chair, designed by the same architect, wears the city's name.

This blog unfortunately won't be lined up in a row with those legendary names, it only is created here. It will looking for Graphic Designs which transmit complex information. But being aesthetically pleasing, rather innovative and different at the same time . Also, the blog will reflect the question which value a pleasing form can have. Please feel invited to accompany my learning process and understand the blog as a platform of discussion.

 

The Tension Wheel: A useful analysing-tool

Alberto Cairo's Tension Wheel is an essential tool to comprehense and analyse the structure of an information graphic. I will relate to it when i analyze information graphics. It contains six polarized dimensions, whereat the first pole is deeper and more complex, and the second one more intelligible and shallower:

1.) abstraction vs. figuration

The specificity of this attribute depends on how clear and concrete the depictions are.

2.) functionality vs. decoration

The more elements you can move from the information graphic, the more superfluous features it has, the more decorative it is. 

3.) density vs. lightness

Look at the adjustment of the elements and the background of the information graphic to get an impression of its density. If it is complex and doesn't show much free space, crammed with information and you can't detect the most important aspects quickly, it is rather dense.

4.) multidimensionality vs. unidimensionality 

This point is refers to the different aspects and relations in which information can be presented. If the graphic contains some further background information with no direct link to the topic, it is rather multidimensional.

5.) originality vs. familiarity

The degree of innovation depicting facts. Simple bar charts e. g. are a usual, familiar, non-surprising pattern to depict rankings.

6.) novelty vs. redundancy

This dimension deals with the question, how often an information is mentioned. If it is presented in a graphic and explained in the label belongig to it, this would be repeating.