I love metaphor, and all its family members: synecdoche, metonymy, simile. Anything that talks about one thing in terms of something else. So today, I’d like to bring together a few sites that do the same thing!
The tag line for David McCandless’s blog Information Is Beautiful is “Ideas, issues, knowledge, data – visualized!” And what visualizations they are! McCandless showcases images (his own designs and others’) that provide visual representations of concepts and statistics that might otherwise be hard to wrap our heads around. Some are more successful than others (does anyone actually find the illustrations of the Mayan prophecies about the end of the world helpful? Anyone?), but when they work, they’re very thought-provoking. Check out New Scientist’s illustration(above) of your pet’s carbon footprint or Susanna Hertrich’s Reality Checking Device, which compares the “Actual Hazard” of an illness or public issue to the “Public Outrage” it’s generated. Data in terms of image. Fun stuff.
Then there’s cards of change, where people who have recently been laid off send their old business cards to share the positive changes they’ve made in their lives as a result of losing their jobs. Many of the cards announce the creation of new businesses, moves to other countries, extended vacations, a general sense of liberation. One of the cards announces, “Going traveling!” and is propped on top of travel guides to prove it. Symbols of loss and uncertainty become declarations of independence. It’s hard not to admire these folks. I know I’m rooting for them.
Finally, the photographic dictionary claims that it is “dedicated to defining words through the literal, figurative, and personal meanings found in each photograph. Some of the photographs that “define” words are pretty straightforward. Others are cultural in-jokes; the entry for “curiosity” shows a cat peering under the curtain of a motor home window. Still others are quietly evocative, like the entry for “midnight“: a woman standing alone under a street lamp on an empty city street. Words in terms of images and associations. A very pleasant and thoughtful dictionary, indeed!
Post a Comment