_______ __ _______
| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
(HTM) Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) I spent 50 hours drawing a line graph
waqarjaved wrote 49 min ago:
Hi, the irony of spending 50 hours on something specifically designed
to communicate quickly is not lost on me. Would love to see a
time-lapse.
crtified wrote 2 hours 43 min ago:
I held the role of (land) surveying draftsman, during the early 2000s
years when the surveying profession was partway through the transition
between manual drawings and digital processes.
Being a young man then, I was our offices champion of new technology,
but years of legacy projects still being tied off meant I had no choice
but to learn and practice many of the manual skills.
So my job was a weird mix of pushing everybody into the cutting edge of
tech, then having to go and do some 50-100+ year old processes using
special pens and papers and even chemicals.
For example, the look up the 'diazo machine' -style of copier. Then
imagine going into a small room with an armful of 30 x A1-sized
engineering plans, and standing next to this machine for 2 hours slowly
feeding in each page while surrounded by ammonia fumes. These days, the
Wikipedia page says : "When making multiple copies of an original no
more than four or five copies can typically be made at a time, due to
the build-up of ammonia fumes, even with ventilation fans in the
duplication room", but back then the working reality was more like
"Junior staff member! I need four copies of these! ".
Much cooler was the Houston Instruments pen plotter. A machine whose
vacuum bed (think of air hockey) held the paper down while rollers
ratcheted it back and forth at high speed, and a robotic pen arm
'printed' out a plan by physically drawing it with pens. It
automatically changes to different pens when it needs different line
thicknesses (or even colours). All done at such a whirlwind of
organised precision, it was a joy to watch.
Another aspect of the manual age was the notion of Originals, or Master
Copies. That is, for important documents, there'd be a master copy
printed out on high grade stock - often archival grade, multi-layered
Mylar or similar, for stability and durability. It could be hard work
when a project made a late change, because at worst you might find
yourself having to (e.g.) manually remove and extremely-carefully
redraw an entire table of figures on a master plan. Sometimes just
because row 1 of that table had changed such that the rest had to be
moved down. The removal involved caaarrrefully buffing the ink off the
page using a rotating electric eraser. If you put a hole in the plan by
rubbing too hard on one spot, god help you. Doing that, then having to
get 5 different signatures from high people in various offices redone
on a new master copy, while a large project could be held up for weeks
while delays and interest and costs accrue, would be considered a
fairly notable faux pas.
bvan wrote 4 hours 47 min ago:
Reminds me of process I went through to create the charts for my humble
grad thesis (1990-ish), by hand, with letter templates and one very
expensive rotring pen. Then would transfer the figures to
transparencies as backup for my defense. The real presentation was done
using a slide projector (this was cutting edge back then, like
over-the-top). Yes, took actual photos of my charts..
baalimago wrote 14 hours 57 min ago:
One day I wish to be in a stable enough place that it's possible for me
to pursue activities like these. It's a true privilege
Lucas12546 wrote 20 hours 58 min ago:
What a astonishing and intrsting journey! Nowadays with AI with
software everyone is rushing in everywhere everydays. Especially the AI
come out. Sometimes in this life. We forgot how we feel this world and
hot to do something in one heart. Your story tell me that. Why the
world need so fast? Why we can't just enjoy the process of doing
things, rather than just focusing on the result.
This may me wonder that. Why people like things to be done so quick?
Because life is short. You can do limit of things in your life. So just
do as many as possible.
Why? Why we can't just slow it down. Why we just enjoy the life. Is
that we slow down we can't survive? Is we slow down that we will left
behind? So be it! Just change a life, maybe is difficault, maybe is
hard. But you slow down. you can concentrate to do one thing. You can
enjoy the prccess. May be meet some beautiful thing.
I envy you can focus on one thing for 50 hours straight. This is what
we can't do in this noisy, rush, busy plase in this very downtown.
A comment from who live in a city and cage here can't getaway.
devmunchies wrote 17 hours 45 min ago:
The amount of typos in your post⦠cheers!
Lucas12546 wrote 17 hours 41 min ago:
Which saying that I'm not using AI to post lol
Terr_ wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
Seeing the artistry involved in old "paperwork" also helps drive home
how years of computing (and printing) technology has dramatically
reduced the "price per diagram."
Even if they aren't always as nice, a kid can have graphs for weekly
homework that would have been hours of work by a professional back
then.
ropable wrote 22 hours 55 min ago:
Never, ever ask for forgiveness for, purely for the love of it,
learning skills and creating by hand anything that can be
mass-produced. Learning and craftsmanship are their own rewards.
nelox wrote 1 day ago:
With the advent of AI, Iâd expect these resources to become a
goldmine within about 20 years. Libraries will become hives of activity
as dens of nostalgia.
LoganDark wrote 1 day ago:
I don't like how the clickable area for images extends to the full
width of the page even though the image itself does not.
sebastianconcpt wrote 1 day ago:
My dad had that lettering kit!
Even look like exactly that model and typography.
yearesadpeople wrote 1 day ago:
This is a lovely toy project. But please do not do this for real;
imperfections - even minute imperfections - in data visualisations have
consequences. 'Non-techy' people take for granted shapes and lines over
numbers and sequences simply because computers are accurate.
Correctness of data is a separate matter of course
_qua wrote 1 day ago:
I absolutely love the graphs that were used in old medical physiology
papers. Something about the hand-drawn nature makes you appreciate both
the underlying concept the graph is trying to convey as well as the
work that went into it. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge techie. I love
computers and computer graphics, but sometimes a hand-drawn graph just
takes the cake.
keithnz wrote 1 day ago:
I did technical drawing at school (pre computers... pencil, paper,
t-square, compass, etc). It really was quite fun constructing things
with pencil and paper. I think one good thing about it is you'd end up
with a very intimate understanding of the thing you are designing
because every tiny aspect took you mental effort to construct. I also
think it really helped me understand projecting 3d into 2d, though on
my old Atari 800XL, that was tricky and I dreamed of the day of high
resolution screens...like 800x600 and 256 colors :)
sula9000 wrote 1 day ago:
Short and simple: slow work teaches you things automation hides.
ano-ther wrote 1 day ago:
Very nice and a beautiful result.
Since I usually cannot spend 50 hours on a chart, I wonder why it is so
hard to make decent graphs with the usual Office packages. They make it
easy to create something and for others to contribute, but have really
bad defaults. Even when you make the effort to adjust, you can still
tell the program. And templating does not really work either.
What do you use?
projektfu wrote 1 day ago:
And remember that perfection is the enemy of the good. I needed a
little bit of drafting to design a sun room and started looking at
software options. I didn't immediately like anything so I grabbed a
ruler and a piece of paper and drew what I wanted pretty quickly using
the standard 1/4"=1' scale. Precision is actually unimportant,
everything will need to be fitted by the builder in the end, even if an
architect measured and drew everything in AutoCAD/Revit. But very
quickly you can get good results without even a drafting table and
T-square. I have the T-square and triangles, but didn't have the space
to work with them, and I'm happy enough with the result.
2b3a51 wrote 1 day ago:
The list of books was welcome, and the work is impressive. I always
made do with section pad and a hard pencil and a simple stencil, but it
wasn't for camera ready publication use or anything. Just visualisation
and discussion.
My book suggestion is more illustration than technical drawing but
still has a 1940s/50s vibe: Thinking with a Pencil by Henning Helms.
Covers illustrations, tracing, tables, maps and diagrams as well as 3d
sketches.
I gather that Tufte was influenced by John Tukey's 1977 book
Exploratory Data Analysis which introduces the box and whisker plot,
dot plot and so on.
As to software, another poster has mentioned Tikz (usually used with
LaTeX) and yes it is amazingly flexible and can produce just about any
kind of plot (or diagram) you want. But there are older tools such as
the groff (GNU Troff) system's pic and a pre-processor for pic called
grap which is much more barebones. The latter was also influenced by
Tukey's book. The groff/pic/tbl/eqn/grap install is something like 30Mb
and it is available in most Linux distribution package repositories.
[1] Oh and remember star charts for astronomers! Many hand plotted
before the photographic surveys were produced. Norton's Star Atlas is a
famous one (prior to the 2000.0 epoch edition) that was hand drawn.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.lunabase.org/~faber/Vault/software/grap/example/
dougdude3339 wrote 18 hours 57 min ago:
I try to âthink with a pencilâ every single day - Iâm excited
to browse this book. When digging into hand drawn data viz I did not
have older software on my mind. Itâs analogous to this project and
something Iâm excited to try - and maybe, it wonât take 50 hours.
Thank you for sharing these.
hardlianotion wrote 1 day ago:
This reminds me of the great pleasure I got from technical drawing at
school.
slackr wrote 1 day ago:
Delightful!
While not as authentic as a hand-drawn chart, I find Decker can produce
HyperCard-like graphs nicely.
dougdude3339 wrote 1 day ago:
Never heard of Decker - I can tell I'm gonna have fun with it. Thanks
for sharing.
kasperset wrote 1 day ago:
Nicely written and I thought D3.js was very verbose and time consuming.
Makes me appreciate all the computational tooling we have today.
pickleballcourt wrote 1 day ago:
Reminds me of the movie the great arch where the main lead who was an
architect refused to use computer simulations.
gobdovan wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks, the article puts into perspective the Bret Victor's point about
William Playfair, who invented many of the data diagrams we use today,
including the line graph. It was strange to see something as basic to
how we think about data was invented only in late 18th century. But
seeing the amount of work you put to design them properly clarifies the
amount of creative thinking that was required to get something like
this going on.
I'd also wish more graphs would come with this level of detail as this
image from the article [0]. It would be so useful to see precisely
where the data points are and how the line and interpolation are
constructed.
[0]
(HTM) [1]: https://www.dougmacdowell.com/images/hand-drawn-data-outline.w...
po1nt wrote 1 day ago:
This the most hackernews post I've ever seen. Doing something in 50
hours that could have taken 20 minutes because vibe.
I love it.
The peak irony is that most of us work in a field that exists so that
people don't need to do that stuff for 50 hours.
apitman wrote 1 day ago:
Reminds me of
(HTM) [1]: https://www.dear-data.com/theproject
dougdude3339 wrote 1 day ago:
Classic.
gjm11 wrote 1 day ago:
And your coffee-maker apparently still had all its coffee when it
finally got back from from Russia!
(But the temperatures should have been recorded on the Réaumur scale.)
mauvehaus wrote 1 day ago:
I build furniture and while I do my design work digitally for remote
clients, I do my shop drawings by hand.
One super helpful tip I got from an actual trained draftsman is to use
harder pencil lead for your layout and construction lines. Like 6H to
9H. You'll get a much lighter line to erase later. It'll also hold a
finer point for longer.
I prefer lead holders to wooden pencils. They take 2mm lead, and you
sharpen them with a lead pointer. K&E pointers are readily available on
eBay, as are the abrasive cups that do the actual sharpening. The
plastic trash can ones will get the job done, but are unsatisfying from
a tactile standpoint.
A decent lead holder is a trick to find. The Alvin one I bought is too
loose and the lead slips up into it. The Staedtler one doesn't close
tightly at the tip and support the lead well enough to prevent
breaking. The Prismacolor one is satisfactory, and I inherited a
vintage one that I love from the aforementioned draftsman.
I recommend an erasing shield to make revising your pencil work without
erasing too much. Another person I know with an art background tipped
me off to putting tracing paper over your main drawing to iterate on
details before committing them to paper to reduce erasing.
Drafting vellum is pretty forgiving of erasing, but it has a toothier
surface that can get a little dingy if you're working on a drawing for
a while. I've never tried Bristol board; I don't need immaculate
drawings for reproduction, just good enough ones to build from.
Happy drawing. It's an immensely satisfying process for me. If you're
detail oriented, you'll likely find it enjoyable too.
hydrogen7800 wrote 11 hours 13 min ago:
This takes me back, as well as some of the replies to your post. I
still have most of my drafting tools from high school, including
eraser shields, etc. one thing I didn't see you mention, and would
help with dingy vellum, is a pouch with eraser granules you squeeze
to put a thin layer of dust on your drawing. This will pick up
excess graphite as you slide your t-square or parallel over the
drawing.
dougdude3339 wrote 7 hours 59 min ago:
I used one of these bizarre pouches as a gentle final pass to clean
up drawings. The graphite "smear" from the t-square happened with
every drawing - thanks for sharing this top. Before starting a new
drawing I would wipe down the tools to start fresh!
otherme123 wrote 16 hours 36 min ago:
> Like 6H to 9H. You'll get a much lighter line to erase later. It'll
also hold a finer point for longer.
With 6H you get lighter line, but only in colour. It can be actually
harder to erase, because you naturally tend to push the pencil harder
to see it, thus denting the paper and leaving the graphite at the
bottom of a groove where the eraser cannot lift it. Those harder
leads have great amounts of clay that very easily scratch the paper.
I go on the opposite direction, being my favorite lead a 4B: you need
very low pressure to leave visible marks, that you can erase very
easily with a kneaded eraser.
You are right that a 6H will hold the tip for way longer. Only if I
don't need to remove the marks I would use the harder leads.
mauvehaus wrote 7 hours 17 min ago:
You definitely have to let the tool do the work with the harder
lead for that exact reason. I'm typically going for really faint
lines, and I don't erase or ink anyway. I usually get into the
groove trap when I'm going over my lines to darken them with a
softer pencil, which suggests I should go softer still.
Pay08 wrote 17 hours 10 min ago:
> One super helpful tip I got from an actual trained draftsman is to
use harder pencil lead for your layout and construction lines. Like
6H to 9H.
I should try that. I got the exact opposite advice in university, and
I have terrible line thicknesses.
lemonberry wrote 1 day ago:
I'm old enough that I took drafting in 7th grade. One tip I remember
is to turn the pencil slightly as you use it. I think this was to
help maintain the pencil's shape, but there my be other less obvious
reasons.
I took woodshop too. The shop teacher seemed to enjoy scaring us with
stories of the students that goofed off in shop to horrific
consequences. That's also where I learned to be careful with air
compressors around open wounds.
drcode wrote 1 day ago:
There are fun japanese mechanical pencils that have built-in
rotation:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.unibrands.co/collections/kuru-toga
gcanyon wrote 11 hours 53 min ago:
That is fun! As an aside, it took me four times clicking into
that before I realized there was an expandable-but-collapsed
product detail section that included the rotation information I
was looking for.
Make your web sites obvious, people!
rickydroll wrote 1 day ago:
> That's also where I learned to be careful with air compressors
around open wounds.
That sounds like you may have learned the same way I learned that
1: when a USGS topo map indicates an unimproved road, it may be out
of date, 2: don't take your father's four-wheel-drive truck down a
late-winter, corn-snow-covered dirt road when the temperature is
starting to drop in the late afternoon 3: Don't go down a dirt road
on a hill covered in corn snow without walking the path first to
make sure you can get out or get back up. 4: When looking for a
winter campsite for your Boy Scout troop, tell your parents where
you're going.
ctxc wrote 20 hours 36 min ago:
Haha! Made me chuckle
dougdude3339 wrote 1 day ago:
Finding tools that clicked was a nice process to discover. I also
tried harder leads and like them for the reasons you mention - but
for whatever reason, kept coming back to a basic BIC mechanical
pencil.
An eraser shield is a good addition to the tools list - that came in
handy often.
Love the tracing paper tip - thatâd be helpful to remove the
digital aspect of taking a picture a digitally sketching on top.
mauvehaus wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, you're working a little finer than I am. Drawing furniture
full or half scale, I'm not too bothered by a thicker line as the
pencil dulls. Drawing a graph, I'd probably want a more
consistently fine line too.
I like the basic Pentel P205/207/209 pencils, but the basically
disposable plastic Bics would probably be well suited to the short,
brutal life they'd lead in the shop.
Loved the article and the joy of the process. The outcome is
spectacular and shows the care that went into it.
deepsun wrote 1 day ago:
Btw, construction tools have thicker lead holders, like 5.6mm, and
red color too.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.homedepot.com/b/Tools-Hand-Tools-Marking-Tools-L...
mauvehaus wrote 21 hours 20 min ago:
I own one, but it's an almost completely different tool. The fat
lead doesn't stay sharp, and isn't really something you'd use for
drafting or drawing figures for inking. They are great for marking
lumber though.
bobek wrote 1 day ago:
Graph paper FWT :)
malshe wrote 1 day ago:
Fantastic article! Reminded me of my favorite engineering drawing class
from the undergrad days.
georgeburdell wrote 1 day ago:
I ended up dropping my drawing class because I kept getting docked
points for my handwriting no matter how much I practiced. I think I
was on track for a B or C.
malshe wrote 17 hours 17 min ago:
This was indeed a polarized class with the majority hating it with
passion!
bluejay2387 wrote 1 day ago:
Great article, enjoyed reading it.
JKCalhoun wrote 1 day ago:
I (perhaps mistakenly) saw the article as metaphor.
50 hours to draw a line graph vs. a few minutes trying various styles
in PowerPoint.
Stop letting machines make graphs, pay a draftsman like we used to do!
(I'm fairly dense though, so I probably completely missed that the
author was instead simply espousing the joys of learning a new
handicraft.)
dolmen wrote 1 day ago:
Powerpoint will soon be a lost craft.
estetlinus wrote 1 day ago:
Love it. Are any of your viz up for sale?
jinnyto wrote 1 day ago:
Amazing process (such patience in this day and age!), and special
thanks for sharing links to the data viz books! Tufte was my gateway
too but I didnât think to look into books on technical sketching,
engineering drawing, and draftsmanship.
Love hand-drawn viz, recently Iâve been looking at the French
National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) and they
have a great collection of all their reports, from pre-1900s to now. I
especially appreciate this beautiful one about people with mental
illness in the Seine department⦠from 1889. The typography is
chefâs kiss [1] (After years of reading Hacker News this post
motivated me to finally make an account and upvote. Data viz is so fun)
(HTM) [1]: https://www.bnsp.insee.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b52510983q/f49.item.z...
dougdude3339 wrote 19 hours 49 min ago:
This is exactly what I hoped for when writing this article. The
"Atlas de statistique graphique de la ville de Paris" from 1889 has
stunning hand drafted data visuals I may have never seen unless you
shared. Thank you for making an account and adding to this catalog of
resources about data viz. I plan to add this to the list in my next
update.
dolmen wrote 1 day ago:
Thanks for the link to this archive. A very welcome contribution very
a propos in relation to the article.
An amateur of old hand drawn maps (Michelin road, and older).
jakeydus wrote 1 day ago:
If you enjoyed this I'd highly recommend checking out A Semiology
of Graphics[0]. I was a little surprised to not see it mentioned in
the article, but I recognize the article was less about types of
data visualization than it was about how we create data vis.
[0]:
(HTM) [1]: https://books.google.com/books/about/Semiology_of_Graphics...
dougdude3339 wrote 19 hours 39 min ago:
I dream of stumbling across a book like this in the used book
store... I'm striking out finding a digital copy or availability
at libraries.
Daub wrote 1 day ago:
I teach digital art and am also a painter. When I was a student I loved
filling sketchbooks with drawings - like a collection of ideas. To a
large degree my web bookmarks and screen grab library have taken over
this function. That being said, if I want to quickly communicate visual
ideas to students or craftsmen I much prefer a paper and pencil. It
feels so much more nuanced, comfortable and expressive.
dougdude3339 wrote 1 day ago:
I've taught digital art classes too. I was pleasantly surprised at a
writing assignment where most students (un-prompted) turned in a
hand-written response.
petesergeant wrote 1 day ago:
Does he explain what the red dots in the titles of his work are meant
to be? Possibly I didnât read carefully enough
archargelod wrote 18 hours 25 min ago:
You can see the full work in his other blog post[0]. There you can
clearly see that red circles coincide with vertical blue lines on the
graph. And the very fine print in the bottom left corner explains
that "Displayed years indicate when Coffee Maker computers were
built". Overlapping the red points with title text is probably just a
stylistic choice.
[0]
(HTM) [1]: https://www.dougmacdowell.com/hand-drawn-data-visualizations...
flir wrote 1 day ago:
Heh. Which if y'all borrowed the Tufte book?
It's ok, I can wait...
apwheele wrote 1 day ago:
You should add in Calvin Schmid's Handbook of Graphic Presentation into
your list Doug -- [1] Unfortunately I do not see specific discussion of
how to make the lines a consistent thickness. It does have notes on how
to sharpen your pencil and how to use a carpenters spline to draw
smooth curves though.
(HTM) [1]: https://archive.org/details/HandbookOfGraphicPresentation/page...
dougdude3339 wrote 1 day ago:
This will be an excellent addition to the list. Curve lines are a
challenge I have yet to tackle in depth.
thaumaturgy wrote 1 day ago:
You may also like Information Graphics:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.taschen.com/en/books/graphic-design/44653/info...
mauvehaus wrote 1 day ago:
Technical drawings pens are held upright and have a circular tip that
gives a specific line width based on the diameter of the tip.
If you're inking your drawings, you probably don't need to worry all
that much about the exact line width and consistency of your pencil
work.
N.b. I don't ink my drawings. I've used drafting pens a couple times
to experiment, but it's not part of my regular workflow.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.jetpens.com/blog/The-Best-Technical-Drawing-Pens
nakedneuron wrote 15 hours 22 min ago:
Thanks for sharing! Today I discovered the Jibun Techo. Always
great to discover products made by people who put so much thought
and craft in. Not surprising the Japanese excel in this art.
Set the mood for today.
Unfortunately can't upvote.. your karma says 6666. May return when
the spell is broken.
antiquark wrote 1 day ago:
> lines a consistent thickness
A "ruling pen" would help. It's like a fountain pen where you can
adjust the width of the ink.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruling_pen
codeduck wrote 1 day ago:
This is my favourite kind of post here
Biganon wrote 1 day ago:
Same. Any kind of hyper fixation is infinitely more interesting than
AI bullshit.
zamadatix wrote 1 day ago:
There is a hyperfixation on AI to the point you can't even read a
post about drawing graphs by hand without it coming up!
microsoftedging wrote 1 day ago:
I don't even think it's a hyperfixation, it's just putting time
into a craft (which is also vanishing these days)
max-ch wrote 1 day ago:
Fantastic read!
In the mid-2010s, I was interning at the German federal statistical
office. Some of the team assistants were there since the 1980s/90s and
had still learnt to use those tools as part of their vocational
training.
They also showed me the tools and the instructions for drawing exactly
aligned tables by hand and the resulting bound sets of tables with
hundreds of pages. Completely mind-boggling how much time they must
have spent on a single project, now all automated away.
dougdude3339 wrote 19 hours 24 min ago:
That seems like a valuable internship. I think the documentation in
books about hand drafting techniques only contains so much
information. How much knowledge was passed from professionals to
apprentices alone? And does this knowledge disappear when they leave
us?
bananaflag wrote 1 day ago:
What I'm curious now is how one could use software (even PowerPoint) to
make graphs that replicate that handmade aesthetic.
grayclhn wrote 1 day ago:
matplotlib has an xkcd style for a different sort of handmade
aesthetic. And as reluctant as I am to bring this up as a comment to
this post, âplot xyz and make the graph look like it was published
in the financial times (but without ripping off their visual
brand)â is a remarkably effective prompt after a little tweaking
and I imagine something similar would work for other styles.
card_zero wrote 1 day ago:
This should be a competitive sport, like gymnastics. He's attempting
the bevel! With extra-wide lines! Very ambitious, but unfortunately he
often fails to stick the corner alignments, the bevel distances are
poorly controlled, and the data is unsuitably spiky for that choice of
line joint. 7/10.
longerthoughts wrote 18 hours 33 min ago:
I can't be the only one who read this in that old-timey radio voice
hombre_fatal wrote 7 hours 29 min ago:
My mind went to Jerry Seinfeld imitating one in a bit.
jansan wrote 1 day ago:
When you say bevel, do you mean the miter limit?
wiml wrote 1 day ago:
The miterlimit just controls when to change between a miter join
and a bevel join.
selimthegrim wrote 1 day ago:
Wait until you hear about compulsory figures in figure skating.
matja wrote 1 day ago:
I loved hearing this comment in my mind :)
satisfice wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs nice to see something on HN that isnât about writing a prompt
so that you can pretend to work.
dnnddidiej wrote 1 day ago:
Username checks out
pram wrote 1 day ago:
They look really good. I really enjoy looking at midcentury engineering
charts/diagrams and stuff like jeppesen charts. NASA has a lot of good
ones. The way the text looks, the line economy, the general aesthetic.
Well worth the effort imo!
rafterydj wrote 1 day ago:
I'm glad I'm not the only who seemingly has a taste for "older"
diagrams from that period. It makes me think of the same aesthetic
roots of what's now called "cassette futurism" or "NASA-punk". Older
engineering charts really feel like there was more care and thought
put into each line or facet, even though I'm sure it's a trick of
time.
jakeydus wrote 1 day ago:
I was a big fan of two fonts (Draft Paper and Parts List) by Beth
Matthews [0] that call back to this era, you might enjoy them as
well.
[0]:
(HTM) [1]: https://www.bethmathews.com/shop/partslistdraftpaperfontbu...
dougdude3339 wrote 19 hours 16 min ago:
Certainly reminds me of the fonts produced by the vintage
lettering kits.
What if for digital fonts, there was a way to write the same
letter 2 or more different ways? Adding slight variations to the
same letter would mimic the effect of using hand tools.
jakeydus wrote 13 hours 42 min ago:
I think OpenType allows for this! Most font designers donât
take advantage though, since even two variants per glyph means
2x the design work and 2x the file size. It would be cool to
see it done more though.
yvdriess wrote 1 day ago:
And here I thought drawing graphs in TikZ was doing it manually.
Love the article, this is why I browse HN.
dougdude3339 wrote 1 day ago:
Learning about something like TikZ is exactly what I hoped for from
writing this article. Thank you for sharing.
jstummbillig wrote 1 day ago:
> A professional draftsman of the 1920's may cringe at the
imperfections in my line graph above. They can suck it.
I am willing to suck it but the kerning is still killing me. (I love
everything about this btw)
asixicle wrote 18 hours 21 min ago:
Kerning is staggeringly difficult to do manually with stencils, and
at the same time the imperfections show "touch" which is part of what
makes TFA's work so appealing.
dougdude3339 wrote 1 day ago:
The kerning deserves the criticism - I'm glad someone said it :)
dougdude3339 wrote 4 days ago:
What's been more interesting to me lately than using software to design
data visualizations is learning to draw data by hand. It's a time
consuming process but incredibly rewarding. The feeling of erasing
graphite to reveal clean, crisp lines is something that software cannot
recreate.
otherme123 wrote 1 day ago:
What do you use to erase pencil? The words "Using an eraser and a
light touch" suggest a gum or a vynil eraser. I make a ball with the
kneaded eraser and roll it with the palm against the paper.
khoitsma wrote 1 day ago:
I use the Pentel Hi-Polymer eraser. Minimal abrasion of the paper,
clean removal of graphite.
dougdude3339 wrote 1 day ago:
I found myself using the Prismacolor Artgum eraser the most. It had
a nice way of shedding the used parts and staying clean. I like the
kneaded erasers too but I tend to dirty them up too much.
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