Today’s Plan:
- Publishing Career Preparation Website
- Neal Cross Poet: Monday at 7:30 in the Campus Commons [extra credit]
- Rest of Year Calendar
- Ethical Treatment of Data Workshop #1
- Homework
Publishing Career Preparation Website
An email, forwarded to me:
Hello!
It is I, the couped president. I’m just sending this over if you wanted to share it with all the editors over there. This is a resource created by my boss and another person in my department over at the University Press of Colorado. I thought it might be a nice thing to have if any of you Crucible folks want to continue in the world of publishing. Feel free to pass it along to profs and such. I’m sure there is an English major out there who would put it to good use.
It is a nice resource, especially because getting into publishing is really about knowing someone inside the sphere already.
https://pathsinpublishing.wordpress.com/
Catherine King-Burke
Rest of Year Calendar
Here’s the idea:
- Friday, Apr 14: Ethical Treatment of Data #1
- Monday, Apr 17: Helvetica Part 2
- Wednesday, Apr 19: Ethical Treatment of Data #2
- Friday, Apr 21: Go West Film Crit
- Monday, Apr 24: Ethical Treatment of Data #3
- Wednesday, Apr 26th: Go West Film Finals
- Friday, Apr 28th: Final “Exam”
Ethical Treatment of Data
As we near the course’s conclusion, I want to do a mini-unit on presenting data and information. I’m planning this as a three part series.
- Workshop #1: What We Should And Shouldn’t Do
- Workshop #2: Learning How to Make a Graph in Illustrator
- Workshop #3: Visualizing Some Data
Most of this class has focused on the fundamental “rules” (genre expectations developed/transformed over time) for designing print documents: alignment, typography, color, spacing, etc. Those elements come into play when designing even a simple visualization like a chart or graph. But communicating information, especially to lay audiences, demands ethical attention to scale and clarity. We must resist (and insist other designer’s resist) the temptation to either manipulate for persuasive effect or sacrifice clarity for impact.
We started this course learning Golumbiski and Hagen’s design sins. That is, I introduced design by showing examples of bad design. And so, let’s get a sense today of what not to do. First, let’s just cover the day one basics. Three types of visualizations. What are they used for?
- Line Graph
- Bar Graph
- Pie Chart
From that reading, we can discern a few clear commandments:
- Thou shalt not complicate (clarity is key)
- Thou shalt not distort perspective (no manipulation)
- Thou shalt probably not use a pie chart (unless labeling and emphasizing an extreme discrepancy)
Let us turn to something perhaps more authoritative, A Reader on Data Visualization produced by Michael Schermann’s 2629 Information Science class at Santa Clara. A worthy read all the way through, but we only have enough time today to look at the Ethics section and the Data Visualization Hippocratic Oath.
We should also have time for Ryan McCready’s “5 Was Writers Use Misleading Graphs to Manipulate You.” I want to look specifically at his Going Against Convention section.
As time permits, we’ll look at a few examples.
[Another good analysis that we don’t have time for: Berinato’s “Is That Chart Saying What You Think It’s Saying?”]
A point I want to make: there is no such thing as “neutral” or “objective” data visualization, in the same way that there is no “neutral” or “objective” language we can use to describe an event. Language, as Kenneth Burke reminds us, is a process of selection. Burke:
Even if a given terminology is a reflection of reality, but its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must also function as a deflection of reality.
And the consequences of such an observation:
If action is to be our key term, then drama [becomes our key way of understanding/analyzing human existence–humans “narrate” their world to themselves and develop vocabularies that validate that understanding]; for drama is the culminative form of action [since we, by nature, develop “plots” to rationalize all of our actions]. But if drama, then conflict. And if conflict, then victimage. Dramatism is always on the edge of this vexing problem, that comes to a culmination in tragedy, the song of the scapegoat. (“Terministic Screens” from On Symbols and Society 1989)
Here’s a quick something I developed a long time ago to try and prove this point.
Still relevant.
Time for an exercise. The following articles both contain a series of graphs. Using the material I’ve covered today, what do you make of them?
