Visualization: The Medium - Data Points: Visualization That Means Something - page 70

Taxonomies and frameworks are important to advance research, if only to make
it easier to discuss topics, but from a practical standpoint, the definition of
visualization or what you call your work has little to do with what you make.
Even while working with potential clients, a quick glance at a portfolio makes
it easy to see what you do.
Who knows what visualization will be in 10 years? After all, a web search for
visualization only 10 years ago returned results for a mental exercise to set
goals and calm your nerves.
HUMOR
Along the same lines as Ma's charts about love, a genre of graphs have popped
up in recent years used to tell jokes. They seem to stem from everyone's love
(that is, hate) of PowerPoint presentations, starting as satire and morphing
into a chart subclass.
Jessica Hagy was one of the first to do this online with her blog Indexed , which
she started in 2006. As shown in Figure 2-20, Hagy uses line charts and Venn
diagrams to communicate observations and ideas. Even after several years
of regular updates, Hagy's cards never fail to make me smile. Sometimes she
explores complex ideas and other times simple observations, but the hand-
drawn sketches seem to lend a dose of clarity that only charts can provide.
Although Indexed is in its own genre that's some hybrid of reports and sat-
ire, charts have found their way into comics, too. For example, Doghouse
Diaries often uses charts to make people smile. In Bed Cartography, shown in
Figure 2-21, the odd sleeping zones of one's significant other are described.
Dog and cat areas are not shown, nor is the child scared by nightmare.
Manu Cornet caricaturized organizational charts for major technology com-
panies in his comic Bonkers World , as shown in Figure 2-22. They range from
the strict, top-down structure at Amazon.com to Facebook's seemingly
self-managed, small groups.
Taking it down to the human level, don't forget The Trustworthiness of Beards
by Matt McInerney, who mapped beard types against a range of trustworthy
to disastrous, as shown in Figure 2-23. Never trust a werewolf, no matter how
hunky or shirtless he might be.