Manuel Lima, a Portugese-born visual designer, now teaching at the Parsons School of Design in New York, developed this amazing site as an MFA project (Visual Complexity). It is truly mind-bending. The display of network/complexity diagrams (282 as of this posting--08MAR06) presents many worlds that we would never see. The whole defies description, so I recommend you browse. The site entices in two ways: through visually exciting images and by offering a different kind of insight/presentation of dynamic systems--transportation, the Internet, knowledge webs, biological behavior, government intereconnections, and on and on.

Clicking on any of the images on the first page will take you to a brief explanation of the image. A link to the source of the work will take you deeper.

A Drawer of Stamps
Donald Evans died in a fire in 1977 in The Netherlands. When you see his work, you may understand why many mourn the early death of this extremely talented artist.

Evans' pleasure was creating stamp issuing programs for imaginary countries. His medium was watercolor--a difficult medium at ordinary sizes, next to impossible at postage stamp size.
The book The World of Donald Evans can be found in various used editions, at widely varying prices. Used Copies

 

And, while we're on stamps--two of my favorites


SG538 - T14a - Waterlow
To see the ragged entry of the lower right side of the frame, click on the image.


SG597 - T17a - De LaRue
To see the weak frame on the right side, click on the image.

Visual Information -- De-cluttered
In 1869, Joseph Minard illustrated Napoleon's march in Russia. It is one of the most striking graphs I have ever seen. The French Army starts out from Paris as a wide band, plotted against time and temperature on its way to and from Moscow. On the return trip it dwindles to a fine line. It is a stark one-image relation of a failure of epic proportions. This is a link to the poster of this graph.

I first came across this image in a book by Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. I would suggest to any incipient graphic designer that this be the first book you buy for your library. But, don't just look at it, read it. Available here.