Infographics, cartography, and e-readers
Posted by Peter Blaiwas on Tue, May 03, 2011
Over the course of the past few blogs, I have been discussing some issues that designers need to address when formatting content—specifically text—for e-readers and PC tablets. That the technology for these devices and their apps are still in the early stages of development is evidenced by the limited, cumbersome presentation of much reading material. If you want to read a novel and are not too particular about its formatting, you are well-positioned to be an e-book reader, and judging from ebook industry sales reports, a great many people are more than satisfied with the products as they now stand.
When it comes to displaying art of any kind on an e-reader, however, it's a different story. Imagery can be problematic because digital reproduction for both video and still pictures were developed for viewing on computer monitors, which, on average, have grown consistently larger. With all that room to spread out, larger and more detailed images became available to a wider computer audience.
The recent shift toward much smaller e-readers and PC tablets re-introduced the conundrum of how to display large, complex images efficiently as well as effectively. Even zooming in or out of details is an ungainly process on a portable digital device, in part because magnification and reduction ratios are still based on the dimensions of a laptop or desktop monitor.
This becomes particularly problematic for the display of charts, tables, graphs, and especially maps. Generally, in order for them to be useful tools for comparison and contrast, information graphics must be seen in their entirety. A map used as a reference tool, rather than solely for navigation, needs to be divided into a grid so one can employ one or more reference point(s) from the smaller quadrants to the whole.
I wonder if the key to presenting info-graphics on smaller devices will be found in that familiar grid of quadrants that helps locate a desired detail within the larger picture. After all, isn't that old standby, the folding-paper road map, both an information graphic and a hand-held navigation device?