A few months back, while splashing around in the happy bookstore mud that is Amazon, I came across David McCandless’ infographics atlas, The Visual Miscellaneum (also titled Information is Beautiful for the UK hardcover edition). As a total graph & data junkie I immediately sleuthed up some details around the author/designer, and found that, aside from the two books under his belt, the writer has contributed visual information & great writing to the likes of The Guardian, Tank, and one of my all-time favorites, Wired. Well, lucky for me, I got the chance to dissect The Visual Miscellaneum / Information is Beautiful page by page and ask David some questions about his approach to visualizing data in a world of rather staggering & bleak stats. Read on…

Copyright David McCandless, Courtesy of HarperCollins, from The Visual Miscellaneum

Q. First off, I would love to hear more about your creative process. Can you map out the steps/stages you go through when creating a visualization?

I find a subject that I’m curious about and research it. Or sometimes I have a question I want answering. I particularly love mashing up different sets of data to find hidden relationships between things: the story behind the story. Then I’ll spend a while mulling over different design styles. I try to link the design to the subject in some way. What color is this subject? What are the shapes of this subject? Sometimes it takes a few drafts to find the right metaphor. I usually do some hand-drawn sketches. Then I move onto screen work, creating images by hand in Adobe Illustrator CS4. It’s an amazingly powerful drawing package. Data visualization wise, it can output a few basic graphs, but otherwise, it doesn’t render data. That means, yes, I have to hand position every data point on every single image I create. And, yup, I am that anal.

Q. Describe your workspace!

You probably don’t want to know about my workspace. Trust me. If I say: “piles of stuff” is that enough? Books, magazines, clippings, photos. Stuff. Lots of Macs. I’d like to say I work in a minimalist, airy studio, but I don’t. The beautiful design concept of my book is at odds with my working environment. (Should have probably kept that secret.). It’s more of an engine room than a design studio. Smells like one too.

Q. Clearly a person in infographics must have a love affair with mapping, charts, factoids – were you always this way? Can you look back at your childhood and recognize the signs of your current career?

My youth was dominated by video games (I was a video game champion). So, I guess navigating virtual environments, mapping dungeons on graph paper, and looking at blocky graphics and pixels all influenced me.

Although, I got bored of playing video games pretty early. I started hacking them instead. I would rewrite the code to give myself infinite lives or to walk through walls. I sent my hacks to a magazine and they gave me my own column. That’s how I started out as a journalist at the age of 14.

Since then I’ve written about technology, the web, web culture and pretty much anything else that’s aroused my curiosity. Journalism taught me about story and how to structure information to keep it interesting.

Design is a more recent thing for me. I’ve been designing for around four years. The weird thing is that I’ve had no formal design training – I just “knew” how to do it. I guess it comes from being such a web/information junkie and looking at visual media all the time.

Copyright David McCandless, Courtesy of HarperCollins, from The Visual Miscellaneum

Q. I love your glossary of Types of Information Visualisation (above). Are there certain charts that prove more challenging to design and why? Are there some graphing structures that readers interpret with more ease than others, and why?

One of the most challenging graphics was Timelines: Time Travel in TV and Film. It’s such a tricky concept to visualize. I went through 36 drafts!

People tell me that graphs with recognizable symbols/icons/etc are the easiest to interpret. For example, anything that uses a world map, a human body or a silhouette of a face… My Salad Dressings visualization is popular because you get the info in a second – no need to look at a conventional recipe. Silhouettes are also a good convention. Because your big old pattern-recognizing brain can understand them in a millisecond.I think it’s getting easier to use experimental or highly graphical displays of information.

I think, generally, we’re bored of line charts and pie charts – years of dull graphs in school and even duller powerpoint presentations have worn these forms thin. We’re hungry for anything new.

Q. Your Left vs Right concept-map created quite a spirited string of comments on your site. Do you ever feel that mapping (based on stats and exactitudes) looses the very real area of gray that a subject such as politics carries?

Fair point. Like any map, an infomap just renders the contours of an area. You can’t get too detailed or you overwhelm the reader. I sometimes think of them as satellite photos of subjects. A 50,000 foot view, so you can see the rough layout and some of the detail. That can help begin your own journey into a subject. Your own zoom-in. The Left vs Right has some flaws for definite. Not least my own left-leaning bias! But it excites me because it’s a way to give shape and form to immaterial things like relationships, ideas and connections that only really exist in the “group mind” or inside peoples’ own stories and beliefs.

Q. Charts like International Number Ones and Stock Check display some pretty grim facts about today’s world. Do you ever find yourself recreating the same maps with your own, more optimistic statistics? if there was just one spread from your book that you could alter, which would it be?

If I could recreate any graph about climate statistics and substitute positive info – that would be the stand-out choice I think. But, if you look, the evidence is unflaggingly grim.

Copyright David McCandless, Courtesy of HarperCollins, from The Visual Miscellaneum

Q. Fortunately, your book does have several light-hearted interludes. Let’s talk about The Poison and The Remedy diagrams: the source says Google… but were you curious enough to engage in some hands-on research? If yes, what was your personal favorite poison/remedy?

Martinis are my favorite poison. (I watch far too much Mad Men.) My favorite remedy? Full British and Medical. The only combo.

Q. Many of the topics in your book focus on the plight of countries, environment, individuals: has your awareness of these tough facts changed how you live your life? What do you hope others will do with this knowledge? Is there a way for readers who are particularly moved by an issue in your book to get involved and help change the numbers?

Good questions! If I’ve got the choice out of plane or train travel I’ll try to choose the latter, but in general I’m like anyone else: I try to maximize the “good” things I do and minimize the “bad” things – without getting too righteous about it. I think some of the environmental issues are overwhelming and it’s hard to know how to respond to them on an individual, practical level. Having an informed awareness of a difficult issue is the starting point. Often actions can naturally flow from that. I’m not very good at being prescriptive though.

Q. Did the results of any charts take you by surprise? Have you added or taken away any day-to-day rituals/products/foods based on your findings?

Yeah, doing Snakeoil and rifling through 3000 scientific studies on the effects of dietary supplements opened my mind. There’s so little evidence for the efficacy of supplements. Every time I walk past a health shop window I’m aghast at how much ineffective, overpriced bottles of snake oil are being sold. It’s outrageous.

Copyright David McCandless, Courtesy of HarperCollins, from The Visual Miscellaneum

Q. The Insurance Value Body is ROTFL hilarious!! How did the concept for the Body By… chart come about? Where and how does the format of each graph take shape? What kind of data makes for a good visualization? is there a set criteria that a topic must have to be an effective graph?

I can’t remember where that came from. I wanted to do a set of bodies visualized by different criteria. Insurance seemed like an obvious choice.

Often, it’s not the data itself that makes a good visualization, but the comparison with other data. Striking comparisons make brilliant graphics. So just one image of a body visualized by insurance would be quite interesting. But put it alongside three other datasets and you’ve got a page.

Copyright David McCandless, Courtesy of HarperCollins, from The Visual Miscellaneum

Q. It would be fascinating to see how charts such as Selling Your Soul (above) would evolve over a longer period and if trends based on time, location, politics etc would emerge. Are you continuing to gather data for some of these? Any plans to turn certain charts into larger long-term investigations?

Yes! Selling Your Soul is a project that fascinated me. I’d love to collect long-term data and see what emerges. There’s scope for quite a few more books in that!

Q. Any plans for The Visual Miscellaneum posters? I saw a mention about it in the Left vs Right post and got very excited.

Yes! You’ll soon be able to buy my Left vs Right visualization in poster form. And a bunch of other posters too. Stay tuned! (I’ll keep saying that).

Copyright David McCandless, Courtesy of HarperCollins, from The Visual Miscellaneum

Q. There are oodles of facts in your book that would be very useful in the day to day: Which Fish are OK to Eat? Taste Buds, Not Nice, Pass the… Any plans for a portable version of these diagrams? An Information is Beautiful app perhaps?

That’s a great idea. I’ve yet to think about the range of possible spin-off products, but it’s exciting. I’ve got some interactive projects looming. Stay tuned!

Q. I’m assuming that the data for Making a Book is autobiographical. In retrospect do you still find the chart accurate?

Yes, although I guess it would be interesting to add a bits of data on say, amount of prosecco consumed during the week of publication. Or magnitude of flinch when I spot misprints in the finished copy. That’s getting less by the way. The making of the book was so intense, for a good few months after publication, I couldn’t look at the book without feeling sick. Now I look at it and think wow – it’s actually a pretty cool book. Mad, but cool.

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