Humanizing Data Design
Charles Kostelnick · 2019
Chapter 6 examines the perceptual, rhetorical, and cultural aspects of visualizing data with human forms in several modes: recurrent, figural, iconic, and abstract. Data design with human forms began with the repetition of figures to compare dress, gestures, or movement, and later human forms were used to encode quantitative data with their area, height, or volume, as well as abstractly with color and shading. With twentieth-century modernism, human forms were deployed to visualize data as icons in pictographs, a practice that remains popular and now extends to icons on maps and other online displays. Human forms are also integrated into charts and graphs to add thematic or narrative value, make emotional appeals, and invoke cultural identity.