person:maria popova

Ursula K. Le Guin on Suffering and Getting to the Other Side of Pain
“All you have is what you are, and what you give.”
▻https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/11/29/ursula-k-le-guin-the-dispossessed-suffering
That indelible relationship between suffering and life is what Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018) explores throughout The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (public library) — the superb 1974 novel, part science fiction and part philosophy, that gave us Le Guin’s insight into time, loyalty, and the root of human responsibility.

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W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits

▻http://www.papress.com/html/product.details.dna?isbn=9781616897062

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The colorful charts, graphs, and maps presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition by famed sociologist and black rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois offered a view into the lives of black Americans, conveying a literal and figurative representation of “the color line.” From advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery, these prophetic infographics—beautiful in design and powerful in content—make visible a wide spectrum of black experience.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits collects the complete set of graphics in full color for the first time, making their insights and innovations available to a contemporary imagination. As Maria Popova wrote, these data portraits shaped how “Du Bois himself thought about sociology, informing the ideas with which he set the world ablaze three years later in The Souls of Black Folk.”

#WEB_Du_Bois #visualisation #états-Unis #précurseurs #cartoexperiment

Radical Kindness Is Liberating
▻https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/radical-kindness-is-liberating

A few years ago, Maria Popova wrote an article on how to criticize with kindness, based on the work of philosopher Daniel Dennett. The basic idea is to set the bar very high for how we respond to...

I, Pencil: An Ingenious Vintage Allegory for the Invisible Hand and How Everything Is Connected | Brain Pickings

▻http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/06/03/i-pencil-leonard-read

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I, Pencil: An Ingenious Vintage Allegory for the Invisible Hand and How Everything Is Connected
by Maria Popova

“If you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing.”

For an object this seemingly simple, the pencil is not only an artifact with a remarkably fascinating history but also an enduring staple of creative culture — from John Steinbeck, who kept exactly twelve sharpened pencils on his desk at all times, to David Byrne, who captured the human condition in pencil diagrams. But although it is one of humanity’s humble masterpieces of design and ingenuity, we continue to underappreciate the pencil’s genius.

#crayon #allégorie

The Exposed City: A Brief History of Mapping the Urban Invisibles | Brain Pickings

▻http://www.brainpickings.org/2011/08/16/the-exposed-city-nadia-ambroso

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The Exposed City: A Brief History of Mapping the Urban Invisibles

by Maria Popova

From Ptolemy to MIT, or what Edward Tufte has to do with Google Earth and the future of understanding cities.

Cities, maps and data visualization are frequent obsessions around here, and the intersection of the three hits a sweet spot of the finest kind. But how did urbanism, cartography and information visualization first come together, and where are they going as bedfellows? That’s exactly what Nadia Amoroso explores in The Exposed City: Mapping the Urban Invisibles — an ambitious study of the invisible elements of the city, from demographics to traffic patterns to crime rate to environment, through “map-landscapes.” With a foreword by iconic information architect and TED founder Richard Saul Wurman, the book traces the work of pioneers across cartography, information design, urban planning and other disciplines that have historically shaped our understanding of place and spatial relations, alongside bleeding-edge projects from contemporary innovators across data visualization, open-source mapping and other facets of technology-empowered urbanism.

#urban_matter #cartographie #urban_design #visualisation

Creative Cartography: 7 Must-Read Books on Maps | Brain Pickings
▻http://www.brainpickings.org/2011/01/07/must-read-map-books

Creative Cartography: 7 Must-Read Books on Maps

by Maria Popova

From tattoos to Thomas More’s Utopia, or what Moby Dick has to do with the nature of time.

We’re obsessed with maps — a fundamental sensemaking mechanism for the world, arguably the earliest form of standardized information design, and a relentless source of visual creativity. Today, we turn to seven fantastic books that explore the art and science of cartography from seven fascinating angles.

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▻http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568988826/braipick-20

#cartographie #art #bibliographie #maria_popova

The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization: “Cool” and “Awesome” (Soviet) infographics

▻http://www.thefunctionalart.com/2012/07/cool-and-awesome-soviet-infographics.html

It turns out that modern “cool” and “awesome” infoposters (a term coined, if I am not wrong, by Connie Malamed) have illustrious —albeit unintended— precursors: Soviet-era infographics. Thanks to Maria Popova, I have just found a very nice collection in Ripetungi, a website that I recommend you to visit every now and then. The graphics showcased are taken from Duke University Libraries.

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The stylistic similarities between USSR propaganda graphics and modern displays of skewed, cherry-picked, and grossly simplified data are striking. The funniest thing is that Soviet propagandists seemed to be more sophisticated in their understanding of statistical representation than their current heirs. One of the examples, for instance, uses what it seems to be a fixed-based index (the year 1937 = 100). This would be almost unthinkable among contemporary infotaiment designers, always willing to dumb their stuff down as much as possible.

#visualisation #cartographie #images #soviétisme #alberto_cairo

Visual Language: Otto and Marie Neurath, The Story of Isotype | Brain Pickings

►http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/03/08/the-transformer-isotype

Une belle évocation du grand Otto Neurath par Maria Popova

In the 1930s, Austrian sociologist, philosopher and curator Otto Neurath and his wife Marie pioneered ISOTYPE — the International System Of TYpographic Picture Education, a new visual language for capturing quantitative information in pictograms, sparking the golden age of infographics in print.

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The Transformer: Principles of Making Isotype Charts is the first English-language volume to capture the story of Isotype, an essential foundation for our modern visual language dominated by pictograms in everything from bathroom signage to computer interfaces to GOOD’s acclaimed Transparencies.

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#visualisation #neurath #otto_neurath #graphiques

Obey: How the Rise of Mass Propaganda Killed Populism | Brain Pickings

▻http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/02/06/temujin-doran-obey-film

Obey: How the Rise of Mass Propaganda Killed Populism
by Maria Popova

“A populace that can no longer find the words to articulate what is happening to it is cut off from rational discourse.”

▻http://vimeo.com/59002146#

British filmmaker and illustrator Temujin Doran has previously delighted and stimulated us with his visual love letters to language and illustration, his opinionated meditations on democracy and the art of protest, and his poetic documentaries about a small Arctic town and a dying occupation. His latest film, made entirely out of footage found on the web, is based on the book The Death of the Liberal Class (public library; UK) by cultural critic and foreign correspondent Chris Hedges and explores how the rise of the Corporate State precipitated everything from income inequality to environmental collapse to the mainstream media’s metamorphosis from a tool of public service into a weapon of private interest.

►http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/28/mark-pagel-wired-for-culture

Maria Popova ne finira pas de nous étonner avec ses trouvailles. Tout est dans le titre, le reste dans les images... Une réflexion importante sur le language.
Wired for Culture: How Language Enabled “Visual Theft,” Sparked Innovation, and Helped Us Evolve
www.brainpickings.org
Why remix culture and collaborative creativity are an evolutionary advantage. Much has been said about what makes us human and what it me

Inside the Sketchbooks of the World’s Greatest Type Designers - Maria Popova - Life - The Atlantic
►http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/12/inside-the-sketchbooks-of-the-worlds-greatest-type-designers/249476

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From prolific design writer Steven Heller (previously) and collaborator Lita Talarico comes a fine new addition to both the 10 finest books on typography and our favorite peeks inside the notebooks of great creators. Typography Sketchbooks is like a visual window into the minds of the world’s most exciting type designers and, in turn, the intricate art-science of typography itself — a medium both creative and practical that has to walk the tightrope between centuries-old tradition and bleeding-edge innovation with equal parts grace and agility in an era of changing reading habits and design expectations.

#typographie

Creative Cartography: 7 Must-Read Books about Maps | Brain Pickings
►http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/01/07/must-read-map-books

Creative Cartography: 7 Must-Read Books on Maps by Maria Popova

From tattoos to Thomas More’s Utopia, or what Moby Dick has to do with the nature of time.

We’re obsessed with maps — a fundamental sensemaking mechanism for the world, arguably the earliest form of standardized information design, and a relentless source of visual creativity. Today, we turn to seven fantastic books that explore the art and science of cartography from seven fascinating angles.

#cartographie #visualisation #art #cartographieradicale