All Rhyme, No Reason
All Rhyme, No Reason
Even if not consciously detected, a chart can matter in subtle and surprising ways.
Today’s newsletter is the second part of a series about the value of data graphics. You can read the first part here. TL;DR: If we better recognize the ways data graphics are worthwhile, we might find that the biggest value of data graphics, even insightful charts, doesn’t have much to do with insight at all.
We can’t measure the value created by data graphics. At least not directly. Consider: How many lives did any single Florence Nightingale chart save?
The sanitary movement is credited with saving a billion lives. For a portion of the movement, Florence Nightingale was a, but not the, leader of sanitary reform. She used a variety of diagrams as part of her fight. Let’s pick one, a bar chart. It shows relatively high soldier mortality.
Again, how many lives did this single Nightingale bar chart save?
It’s a ridiculous question. Her movement obviously created value—a billion lives saved!—but I cannot untangle how it did so: The day-to-day guts of social reform are chaos. The movement’s counterfactuals are mostly imaginary.
After living years with Nightingale’s story (read it via VisionaryPress), my big takeaway is that her charts must have been valuable because she kept using them. This is similar to how I know when my client work is valuable: because they rehire me. It’s a crude and slow feedback mechanism, but it’s a truthful one.
Nightingale’s letters reveal one of her motivations for using data graphics. Charts attracted got the attention of highly influential, yet statistically-uninitiated, targets. These people would never read a table of data, but a colorful graphic might catch their eye. Nightingale likened them to a flock of common birds: “Diagrams are to catch the Sparrows.”
Nightingale’s sparrows point to how we will explore data graphics for the next couple weeks: as attention-goods. Charts are valuable because when they attract and sustain attention.
Data graphics are useful to audiences when they are simply seen. Before they are read, and before there is any chance for insight, charts are valuable. Let’s appreciate charts as an art critic might evaluate an Ellsworth Kelly installation: Charts as pure-form aesthetic objects.
But before we proceed, let’s remind ourselves of the doorman-fallacy caveat from part one: Most charts offer a multitude of values, just as a gemstone has many facets. No chart offers only one value mode. Data graphics excite different values across their lifespan, to various degrees, depending on context.
Charts as background furniture
Boston conductor Benjamin Zander once described a common relationship with classical music. “You've come home from a long day, and you take a glass of wine, and you put your feet up. A little Vivaldi in the background doesn't do any harm.” Sometimes, music is heard without really being listened to.
Like music and wallpaper, charts shape the atmosphere, even if not consciously detected. And there’s nothing wrong with that!
Abstract chart geometry appears throughout today’s corporate interior design, as analog wall decorations and on digital displays. Chart geometry can also be spotted as webpage background wallpapers. As ornamentation, these charts have no legends or text. They could not be read if you wanted to.
Here’s the entrance lobby of a NYC tech office, designed by SITU. Its panels have an encoding to their perforations, but they aren’t supposed to be read. It’s all rhyme, no reason.
Background charts also function by filling a space that would be awkward if left empty. After leaving a room, you’d be hard pressed to describe a corner chair that was never sat in. But, the room would have felt different if it didn’t have that unnoticed chair. Sometimes, plugging the hole counts.
Readable charts can also be used as decoration too. We have been framing and hanging data graphics for centuries: Joseph Priestley’s timelines were plastered as literal wallpaper in the 1760s. Queen Victoria had a supersized timeline of the British monarchy in her Osbourne House, hanging too high to be actually read. Today, my cross-section of California (link) hangs in houses all over. People may read these decorative graphics a little bit, but they are mostly not read.
It is not glamorous to admit that your data graphic will hardly be read. Nor is it fun that they serve mainly as backgrounds or visual foils to other engagements. But in many cases it is true.
Readable charts often appear in business webpages, presentations, and reports. Some may read these filler charts, many don’t. Why are they there? One reason is because it would be (more) boring without them! They serve the same purposes as stock photography: to break the monotony of a wall of text. They create visual rhythm.
It is hard to highly value these background data graphics if we only consider them as wallpaper and fillers. I expect we could peg their value to the price of their substitutes such as literal wallpaper, stock images, and geometric art.
Maybe we should analyze them in the terms of consumer surplus, in the same way that an additional tree in a public park is beneficial and wanted: The overall atmosphere is more enjoyable with the extra tree, even if we could never claim to notice that extra tree nor discern by exactly how much more enjoyable it made the park.
Going forward
I believe that including a well-designed chart can enhance the atmosphere. The vibes that background charts create is a hint of what’s to come: I will next write about charts as advertisements and signalers. As we will see, these modes are much more exciting than wallpaper, in a Darwinian sexual selection kind of way. They are two of the most worthwhile and underrated ways that data graphics create value.
If you have some thoughts about how charts create value in your life, I’d love to hear from you. Some notes and suggested sundries follow below.
Onward!—RJ
Notes:
Steven Johnson credits the disease-cleansing sewers of the sanitarians as one of only three innovations that saved a billion lives. The other two are immunity-bestowing vaccines and hunger-busting artificial fertilizer. Read more in Johnson’s book Extra Life.
This is the first of many planned value-modes. In the spirit of cartographer Kenneth Field, this is my typology, show me yours.
The Ellsworth Kelly painting is Blue Relief Over White (2012). It was auctioned in 2020 by Christie’s for $3.45M. link
If you haven’t, stop right now and watch Benjamin Zander’s TED talk on “The transformative power of classical music.” link
Map expert Alex Clausen related to me the story of rescuing Joseph Priestley timelines from an English manor house, where they had been plastered to the wall.
Sundries
🎧 I just heard art critic Jerry Saltz share two needed perspectives. The first was a snappy bit of encouragement to go create your thing. The second put the current AI-magic craze in proper historic context. Here them for yourself 42 minutes into the latest PIVOT podcast episode. Apple link
📄 I blogged about Florence Nightingale and data literacy for Ben Jones:
While Nightingale’s diagrams might be the most salient artifact of her persuasive power, her writing may be the most important. If you want to learn how to better communicate with data, study how she wrote about statistics.
Read the whole story at DataLiteracy.com here. You can also register on that page for a free virtual chat between me and Ben Jones about Information Graphic Visionaries.
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 is Info We Trust, How to Inspire the World with Data.