Illustration

Cf. Representation, Representation, Illustration

Types of illustration and related concepts

  • design illustration/representation
  • scientific illustration
  • botanical art
  • scientific and data visualisation

Botanical illustration is more akin to music with its subjects that require a systematic approach because they are less familiar and intuitive to humans.

What design and engineering representation typically focuses on?

  • industrial objects
  • standards and regulations
  • marketing and promotion
  • standard and typical arrangements
  • human-made and human-controlled entities
  • a narrow range or spatial and temporal scales (human organism, not even human generations)

What is important to represent for ecocentric design?

  • evidence, data, numbers, information
  • meaning, stories, subjectivities, perspectives
  • constraints, restrictions, hidden voices, the ways some voices are too powerful
  • diverse actors
  • relationships and interactions
    • mutualisms, symbiosis, parasitism
    • connectivity
    • spatial and temporal scales
  • processes
    • cycles
    • life histories
    • events and disturbances
    • stabilities and relative durations
  • contrasting states and other comparisons

What are the existing sources of relevant representational practice?

Examples and Context

Visualizing Science: Illustration and Beyond

Christiansen, Jen. Building Science Graphics: An Illustrated Guide to Communicating Science through Diagrams and Visualizations. New York: A K Peters/CRC Press, 2022.

Design for an Audience | Science Graphics at the New York Times


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