BibliOdyssey has put together a fantastic collection of vintage Victorian Infographics. All illustrations are collected from books like Mitchell’s New General Atlas or General Atlas Of The World from the time between 1830 to 1890. The visualizations are great examples of how abstract representation let’s a viewer grasp quantities that are hard to imagine. I strongly recommend to have a look at all of the images on Flickr.

“Visualizing gender stereotypes” is a personal research into gender stereotypes focusing on how children become aware of these and how they receive stereotyped messages through visual communication. I chose this topic because we all are daily influenced – positively or negatively – by stereotypes.

I am well aware of the complex nature of the field of stereotypes, and with this project I aim not to provide any conclusions to this issue, nor to break stereotypes completely. As a graphic designer I merely want to demonstrate an alternative approach to this topic and to emphasise my point of view concerning gender equality.

The outcome are two nicely crafted books:

1. “Visualizing gender stereotypes” illustrates the findings collected during a workshop, which was conducted in an Italian summer school with 42 children.
2. “Sam: Breaking gender Stereotypes” aims to communicate a positive message on gender equality through diversity. As a result of the info-design project, this book provides a response to children’s ideas of gender and offers them an image of genders without stereotypes.

From a data visualizer standpoint we would have to point out some difficulties with the charts and diagrams at hand. The playful look and feel may not suite analytical needs but in the context of the whole project, the visualizations correlate both to the content as well as to a big part of the target audience—the children themselves.

More impressions can be viewed on Valentina’s website along with a digitalized version of the first book.

Max shares not only the finished illustrations but more importantly his process in creating them. He talks about the decisions he made and the reasons behind them. It’s excellent to read his approach on information design that needs to communicate an idea to the reader without distracting them from reading the text beside the illustrations.

The blog also covers latest news and findings in the field of information design which makes his blog a must-read for folks intersted in infographics. We highly recommend going through some of his design explanations (like here or here) to get started with the large amount of content available.

Via Magical Nihilism

Enjoy the collection on Francescomugnai.com.

Via Cameron Moll on Twitter

(Via: Wehr In The World)