The only time I have found the Bible to be beautiful.

 

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I know it looks like a cross between the Aurora Borealis and a seismometer gone mad, but this is actually a graphical representation of the Bible (King James version).

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Each of those tiny grey icicles near the bottom represents a chapter from the Bible, while the length of each shows how many verses are contained therein. The multicoloured arcs, in the meantime, show where there is cross-referencing going on; this may even only be some kind of allusion to an idea presented elsewhere, but often there will be events or people represented.

Obviously, each extreme of an arc will the be the appropriate verses, while the colour (and height, to prevent it becoming an unmanageable mess) shows just how far apart these verses are.

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Reaching across the Atlantic, this amazing image was developed as a result of a collaboration between Lutheran pastor in Germany and a doctoral student of computer science in Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

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Defusing panic has never been so artistic.

 

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Yeah, I know, snappy title, eh? Unfortunately, the quote I was going to use (the alternative title for the film Dr. Strangelove) had already been used by the guy whose work I'm featuring today; David McCandless. He's been a bit of a writer (The Guardian, Wired), a bit of a satirist (Crackbook is hilarious and clever) and is even responsible for a fun little flash game (Fly it here). The particular skill that concerns us today, however, is his ability as a "visual & data journalist" (his term).

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Basically, David got pissed off with all those so-called helpful diagrams that newspapers used to accompany news items. He found that, like us, he couldn't really make head nor tail of what the diagram was really supposed to be telling us. And that's in spite of - or maybe because of - all the clever pictures tagged with apparently exciting facts and figures.

Reckoning that he could do a lot better, he decided to sit down with a batch of relevant facts and figures and come up with his own set of diagrams with which he could make a point.

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The things is, he's managed to do the job far more clearly and far more objectively than any other person/committee of graphic designers ever could. In fact, to rub salt vigorously into the wound, he's even managed to do so with just the right pinch of humour and made the diagrams look aesthetically pleasing into the bargain.

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Take, for example, the following diagram:

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(click on the picture to see a larger view - or just go to the main article.)

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Essentially, the diagram above is a response to the one featured in The Grauniad (sorry, Guardian) attempting to illustrate just how 'fragile' the state of nuclear affairs are in the world:

 

Messy, isn't it?

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By contrast, David's work is almost beautiful - and it dispassionately presents the facts that humanity is a lot safer than the panicmongers seem to want us to think.

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To see more of his work, got visit his site; Information Is Beautiful. You'll be glad you did.