Bayer's World
Bayer's World
How to create a $5 million information-design masterpiece.
Welcome to Chartography: insights and delights from the world of data storytelling.
Two announcements and then: A new book about the famous World Geo-Graphic Atlas inspires deep thoughts on information design. Let’s go!
On the horizon
🧭 The fourth biennial David Rumsey Map Center shindig, officially titled the Barry Ruderman Conference on Cartography, is happening this October at Stanford. Barry is the proprietor of RareMaps.com. His enthusiasm for old graphics is perhaps only bested by David Rumsey himself.
This edition of the conference is all about data graphics. Attend in-person or virtually. (I’m told in-person tickets are already about halfway gone.) Register for the *free* October three-day event here:
I’ve been involved with the event for several months and am so excited: The unannounced speaker list is a sparkling mix of legends and new voices. There will also be a foldout keepsake for attendees. Plus, it’s at the Rumsey Map Center, the most joyful room in the world to experience information graphics.
📚 Visionary Press: I have a few hundred of each of our Information Graphic Visionary titles still in stock. I want to move them by the holidays and plan to open an Amazon seller’s account to do so.
As part of that transition, I will have to remove the current discount on titles. To take advantage of the existing discount, shop now directly:
Bayer’s World
A review copy of Benjamin Benus’s new book (2023) about Herbert Bayer’s iconic work, The World Geo-Graphic Atlas (1953) hit my mailbox a few weeks ago.
It is a real treat and deserves your attention ($60 via RIT Press). Reading it challenged how I think about our relationship with past and future data graphics.
Hero
Herbert Bayer was a Bauhaus designer with specialties in printing and advertising. The Nazis included his work in the propaganda exhibition "Degenerate Art" and Bayer, like many other Bauhaus luminaries, fled.
Bayer eventually made it to America, where his talents were quickly appreciated in advertising, art, and architecture. His first splash was in New York, creating for example, advertisements for TIME magazine . . .
. . . and an exhibit for the Museum of Modern Art:
By 1946, Bayer was in Aspen, helping lay the groundwork for the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. Yes, that Aspen Institute.
From there, Bayer embarked on his World Geo-Graphic Atlas. It is a grand tour of America, the world, and the universe employing cartographic, graphic statistic, and printing design sophistication gained over the prior decades.
The book showcased immense ambitions. It was financed by the Container Corporation of America to the tune of $400,000—which would be a lot of money today for a book project. (That’s about $5 million in today’s dollars.)
To me, Bayer’s Atlas is the punctuation on over a century of progress in popular information design that began with 19th century student pictorial encyclopedias, extended through national statistical atlases, and crested with the Isotype Institute’s publications.
An opening choice detail from the book’s contents—a map explaining the circuitous order of its pages of U.S. states with a snaking red line—reveals the quirky attention given to its finest details.
You can see the original Atlas in beautiful detail at the David Rumsey Map Collection.
Mythology
Benjamin Benus’s new book reveals loads of behind-the-scenes about the conception, production, and reception of Herbert Bayer’s Atlas. It is boasts delicious reproductions of the atlas’s pages.
I particularly appreciate how Benus shows how Bayer referenced his own work. For example, compare how this big red dot compositions from 1926 . . .
. . . compares to this spread in his 1953 Atlas about astronomy:
And how Bayer’s experimental oil paintings . . .
. . . compares to Bayer’s spread about clouds in his 1953 Atlas:
(Aren’t his arrows wonderful?)
Benus’s book offers loads more: Pictures of surviving drafts and compositions, plus looks at reference material (which was not always properly credited) juxtaposed with Bayer’s published images.
Books about books
The shelf of beautiful books about visionary information designers is filling up.
We have books on: W. E. B. Du Bois’s Paris exhibition, Charles-Joseph Minard thematic maps (both from Princeton Architectural Press), and Isotype Institute’s pictorial charts (Hyphen Press). I’ve heard that works on Joseph Priestley and William Playfair are coming soon. And, of course, there are my own Information Graphic Visionaries Emma Willard, Florence Nightingale, and E.J. Marey.
(I wish that all of these visionaries could receive the full Visionary Press treatment, but am glad that they are being examined in other capable hands.)
I find it wildly satisfying to create this type of book. It is a joy to get lost in the dollhouse world of another time and put its pieces all in place. But, this personal enjoyment threatens to distract bookmakers like me from knowing if the experience is as delightful for their audience.
Benus’s book brought this threat into focus for me. Of course, I enjoyed reading it and learning the rich story behind the creation of Bayer’s Atlas. But an unexpected boon also arrived with it. You see, I don’t own a copy of Bayer’s 1953 Atlas. Honestly, I haven’t been able to—they are always just too darn expensive. So, while it would always be fun to have one at arm’s reach, I don’t feel any need to any more. Benus’s book, with its big colorful images, is enough.
For a neurotic collector and perfectionist publisher like me, that realization is heartening. My resolve has strengthened in the belief that going to great lengths to bring these classic designs to readers is invaluable. Holding them holds real value.
Insecurities no more
I am astounded by the volume of production of historic designers. Working without the speed of digital computers, they produced more than seems possible.
After researching my Florence Nightingale book, my main takeaway was a terrifying knowledge of the level of effort required by Nightingale and her colleagues to pull-off their designs.
It calls into memory a challenge by my college rowing coach who, encouraging us to push through some grueling exercise, described our upcoming Princeton competitors: “they are smarter than you and they work harder than you.” Perhaps design icons like Herbert Bayer and Florence Nightingale are just that. Smarter and harder-working.
Beyond personal capabilities, Bayer’s success surely resides on his vibrant ecosystem. Bayer had the interdisciplinary Bauhaus—propagating great design across the free world. (We have Twitter, and now that vibrant community is a shell of its glory days.) The MoMA let an information designer do an entire exhibit. (Today we are over-the-moon by a small acquisition.) Bayer had truckloads of cash to make a pretty book. (We have Seattle tech-billionaires propping up a few dozen data journalists.) To put it bluntly, I find our present culture lacking.
So what should we do? What can I do? I may not be as smart, but I will work hard. We may not yet have the community we need, but we can build.
Onward!—RJ
About
Data storyteller RJ Andrews helps organizations solve high-stakes problems by using visual metaphors and information graphics: charts, diagrams, and maps. His passion is studying the history of information graphics to discover design insights. See more at infoWeTrust.com.
RJ’s recently published series, Information Graphic Visionaries, a new book series celebrating three spectacular data visualization creators. With new writing, complete visual catalogs, and discoveries never seen by the public. His first book Info We Trust, How to Inspire the World with Data—will be published in a remastered edition in 2024.