20INFORMATION DESIGN INDEX CARDS

GRAPHIC SYSTEM

Jacques Bertin’s

Jacques Bertin was born in 1918. He is a French cartographer and theorist. Bertin is well known for his book Sémiologie Graphique (Semiology of Graphics). Semiology of Graphics provides a theoretical foundation to Information Visualization. Bertin’s interests and research are in the field of geography, cartography, and Information Visualization. The interest in Information Visualization was low before the release of his work.

SÉMIOLOGIE GRAPHIQUEsemiology of graphics

Jacques Bertin’s book Sémiologie Graphique was published in 1967. Bertin’s theory is a coherent and reasoned framework for the analysis and representation of data on paper. It is founded on Bertin’s practical experience as a geographer and cartographer, rather than on empirical research. This work provides a close study of different graphic techniques for locating and signaling quantitative variation, often over geographic space or over time. The book contains several thousand illustrations, produced by Bertin and his colleagues. A quest for the reason of the ineffectiveness of graphics had led Bertin to reflect on how to make graphics in a way that could render them useful, identifying their visual variables and finding the rules to build graphics properly. Bertin proposed the study of the visual signs along with their “grammatical” rules. The basis of Bertin’s Graphical Semiology is the acknowledgement that (in the words of Serge Bonin) “graphics is a set of signs that allow you to transcribe the existing relations of difference, order or proportionality amongst qualitative or quantitative data”.

BELGIUM

GERMANY

SWITZERLAND

ITALY

Map of French Industries, 1962Semiology of graphics, pg 156-157

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Information Design Index Cards is a set of cards designed and produced by the students of DAI 523, Information Design 1, a fourth-year course in the Design and Industry Department, San Francisco State University, Fall 2009. The set, by no means complete, is composed of 1+22 cards on Information Design topics. Coordinated by instructor Pino Trogu, each topic was chosen and researched by the students. DAI 523 provides students with an introduction to the field of information design, covering a variety of applications across print, screen and environmental media. This is card number 20 and it was designed byJose Ramirez.

DAI 523Information Design IDesign and Industry DepartmentCollege of Creative ArtsSan Francisco State UniversityCalifornia, USA – October 2009Information Design Index Card No.20Printed by JASK Digital Printing

THE VISUAL VARIABLESThe designer has eight variables to work with that are called visual variables. The visual variables that can be drawn in different modes on a 2D plane. These graphical variables consist of clear logical symbols that analyze information. They are: size of marks, value, shape, orientation, color, and texture.

Size (Si)It is a variation in the dimension of the mark (area) which constitutes the perceptual stimulus for size variation.

Value (V)The ratio between the total amounts of black and white perceived on a given surface.

Texture (T)At a given Value, the texture is the number of separable marks contained in a unitary area.

Color (C)Is simply the perceptible difference which can be perceived between uniform areas having the same value.

Orientation (Or)It is the difference in angle between fields created by several parallel signs which constitutes the perceptible ”stimulus” for orientation and variation.

Shape (Sh)It is the element of “similarity” recognized in the shape which constitutes the stimulus for the variable and confers its principal characteristics upon it.

LEVEL OF THE RETINAL VARIABLES

Jacques BertinSémiologie Graphique

PLANAR DIMENSIONS ASSOCIATION

SIZE

VALUE

TEXTURE

COLOR

ORIENTATION

SHAPE

SELECTION ORDER QUANTITY

Semiology of GraphicsDiagrams Networks Maps

by Jacques Bertin

Translated byWilliam J. Berg

The University of Wisconsin Press, 1983

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