[HN Gopher] Information Is Beautiful
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Information Is Beautiful
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 84 points
Date : 2026-02-03 21:05 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (informationisbeautiful.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (informationisbeautiful.net)
| esafak wrote:
| From the heyday of infographics, when newspapers went online and
| explored its opportunities.
|
| edit: I did not mean to imply information design is dead.
| groby_b wrote:
| That's somewhat unfair to the site - they are very much still
| exploring how to visualize information understandably and
| aesthetically pleasing. Yes, they got started when infographics
| got really popular, but it's very much a site that's alive and
| continuing its work.
|
| And really, infographics are rooted in information design.
| Which in itself is _much_ older than the web. Heck, the
| canonical popular book - Tufte 's _The Visual Display of
| Quantitative Information_ - is from 1982.
|
| I know it's not the most popular thing if you can just ask
| Claude for a quick visualization, but the space is both very
| rich in information LLMs blissfully ignore, and continues to be
| fertile ground for explaration.
| igravious wrote:
| The Book: https://www.amazon.ie/Information-Beautiful-New-David-
| McCand...
|
| "A visual guide to how the world really works, through stunning
| infographics and data visualisations, thoroughly revised,
| recalculated and reimagined for this new edition.
|
| We are overwhelmed by information - from our phones, our
| televisions, our computers, our newspapers.
|
| This new edition of Information is Beautiful has been revised
| throughout with over 20 updates and 20 new visualisations. It
| offers shelter from the flood by visualising data in a new way
| that blends facts with their connections, their context and their
| relationships - making information meaningful, entertaining and
| beautiful.
|
| This is information like you have never seen it before - easy to
| flick through but also engaging enough to study - information
| that comes to life in your hands and your eyes."
|
| I remember it well (used to see it for sale in the gift shop at
| design galleries and the like), I _coveted_ it but never bought
| it :(
|
| Perhaps I should treat myself now that I'm not so impoverished :)
| tobylane wrote:
| I was given that book as a teenager, and only read it
| yesterday. It was an interesting look at an unintentional
| frozen point in history.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I used to browse r/dataisbeautiful. Kind of infuriating. Way over
| half the visualisations were objectively terrible and misleading.
| The worst was that trend of dividing countries into totally
| arbitrary equal-population areas.
| zX41ZdbW wrote:
| I once tried to post an interesting visualization to
| r/dataisbeautiful and received hundreds of upvotes, but then it
| was wiped for an unknown reason. Then I contacted the mods,
| both on Reddit and over email, to no avail.
|
| It was a very frustrating experience, don't recommend anyone to
| try.
| croisillon wrote:
| "community based on morals", how things change in 15 years
| https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/left-vs-ri...
| daveguy wrote:
| Not to mention flat out bs on the other side regarding
| "equality" being best over "freedom from power abuse and
| inequality." This "information" was misinformation 15 years
| ago. Not so beautiful.
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(page generated 2026-02-09 23:00 UTC)