Thursday, August 3, 2017

Cartographies of Time - a mini-review


We have an internal library here at Tableau and like any library, we can check out books to read or study.  We had the same setup at Microsoft as well, with a heavy emphasis on technical books.  Any computer company will have books on programming habits, design patters, Agile and other fields like this.

Tableau also has a large section on data visualizations.  The whole spectrum is covered here from books on how to efficiently write a graphics routine to how to best present data on screen in human readable form. 

A new book arrived this last week called Cartographies of Time and it is a history of the timeline.  I saw it on the shelf and grabbed it since I am a fan of medieval maps and the cover has a map in that style on it.  It is a fascinating book that covers the very first attempts at timelines and brings us up to the modern day.

The most striking aspect of this so far - I've not gotten too far into the book - is the sheer artistic skill of the early timelines.  The people that created those timelines worked very hard to get a vibrant image, a workable color scheme and a tremendous amount of data all put into one chart.  It is simply amazing to see this and if you have the opportunity I recommend picking up a copy of this book for yourself.

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,
John

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