Crazy-good data graphics

TIME capsule volume 3 + Black Friday event

Welcome to Chartography: insights and delights from the world of data storytelling.

First, the promotion: I’m thrilled to announce the first Black Friday event for Visionary Press. We’ll launch privately for subscribers to Chartography, that’s you! Look for an email with your link to the exclusive promotion this Thursday, November 16th. And get excited for the biggest discounts yet on books and prints—perfect gifts for lovers of gorgeous information graphics.

Second, the crazy charts: We found thousands of information graphics in the TIME magazine vault. Below are the very best ads from the 1930s with statistical charts. Let’s go!

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In TIME capsule vol. 1, we saw a primordial titan divine profits by separating sales and expense curves. A decade later, the same company used a similar visual, but this time the curves are bent by a modern titan of business.

The sales-bending businessman is one of several charts used to demonstrate the Addressograph’s high-fidelity Multigraph Duplicator.

The same campaign insists you: PRESENT THE FACTS, SHOW THE DETAILS, CHART THE TREND, and SAVE MONEY. Still practical advice today—and a fitting start to our tour through pre-WW2 charts in TIME magazine ads.

Many of our favorites from this period occurred in a series, repeating the same statistic over and over. For example, The Country Home repeated the same awkward 80/20 statistic about how most farm income comes from a small portion of farms. Below, a squeezed bust representing one of the underperforming farms scowls at a properly proportioned over-performer.

In another example, the same bars are repurposed as sleepy and virile gas pumps.

The Container Corporation of America produced many sophisticated black-and-white ads to show the importance of paperboard.

In the left ad, note their expert composition of illustrated subject (a roll of paper), big-ass-number, and unskewed chart. I like the right ad’s index curve labels and fuzzy background indicating the Great Depression.

Shell claimed its gasoline performed better in stop-and-go driving. The two ads below use bar chart rectangles as illustration-masks. These hybrids show that the mileage of a trip may double in heavy traffic, from your engine’s perspective.

In addition to masks, Shell illustrated the distance your engine experiences with sketchy doodles.

Happy upward curves were used incessantly to show that everything is swell. Three examples below stand out. Bankers Life Company (left) shows its assets’ steady growth despite a chaotic background business environment. The rightmost ad, for The Saturday Evening Post, frames a 300%-increase curve as artful testament to the power of advertising within its pages.

The center ad claims “the trend to Dictaphone sweeps on” with an anonymous chart that only vaguely gestures that more businesses are using the product.

Dictaphone was originally founded by Alexander Graham Bell as Volta Laboratories, merged with American Gramophone Company, and later evolved into Columbia Records. Dictaphone was spun off in 1923 as a standalone company. It operated through a series of nine-figure acquisitions to 2007, when it was finally acquired by Nuance Communications, which was later acquired by Microsoft for nearly $20 billion.

The following two ads, for a bearing manufacturer and insurer, use lines that tell different stories. They each feature a kind of graphic poetry that uses words (SLIP DOWN and FLUCTUATING) that mimics the shape of their curves.

Bell Telephone also used a line-graph in a sophisticated way, showing consumers the daily “ebb and flow” of its long-distance network usage. This chart also sports a lovely illustrated background that fades a sunny sky to starry night.

The Philadelphia Inquirer published a massive three-page ad loaded with colorful charts showing its rise, in red, to local prominence. The way its colors overlap, fade, and blend allows four overlapping areas to be discerned.

(I don’t know if all ads at this time were national. Perhaps this issue from the TIME vault is from the Philadelphia area? Please tell me if you know!)

The eye-catching chart below sports a friendly old man, brush-stroke title, and calligraphy characters. But it has nothing to do with China. Its style is just there to attract your attention. (And it does!)

Translating the title of each bar shows that this is yet another ad for The Saturday Evening Post—this time stacking up how much food advertising it rakes in compared to competitors. The ad’s footnotes compliments their translator for “wangling” Collier’s in Chinese.

That’s nearly all the charts that can fit in an email! But we have one more.

Today I am introducing a BONUS GRAPHIC for all paid subscribers. To all material supporters of Chartography, thank you for your support and please keep scrolling to see your bonus chart below. (Hint: it’s a wild pair of happy curves.)

To everyone else, I appreciate your consideration in becoming a paid subscriber below and helping us continue celebrating the art of information graphics.

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.

Guest contributor Byron Raco is an avid bibliophile and curious mind. He journeyed through investment banking, strategy and CFO roles before settling into a life of investing and exploring the world while enjoying the printed page.

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