Meme Menagerie

http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

This is going up there with my Edward Tufte collection…  A hundred different visualization methods (72 in the main section, plus another 28 below), grouped into related clusters and graded according to certain attributes (e.g. divergent vs. convergent thinking).

I’ve seen many ”Iceberg” diagrams but who know ”Heaven ‘n Hell” charts were common enough to gain themselves a category?  And where is the ubiquitous Pyramid?  There seems to be a lot of granularity on mindmap/tree-type diagrams, but a simple Mendelian four-quadrant graph isn’t included. Oh the questions and graph-geek outrage this will spark! It’s marked “version 1 .5″ for a reason, I think.

Overall, on a scale of 0 to 5, where zero  is contrived drivel  and five is useful representation in order to facilitate better understanding, I’d rate this a 3.6  (Hey where is the simple 1-5 scale??  That whole Performance Charting thing is way too advanced… just give me a straight linear, integer graph!).  Too generous, you say?  Well, they really went the extra mile with those javascript pop-up examples, and I’m hopeful that version 2.0 will be even better.

Filed under: Information Design