Fab, originally uploaded by densitydesign.
[img: Fab/ Summer 2005 /Leonora Sartori+Francesco Meneghini]

As Peter Turchi says (in Maps of the Imagination: the writer as cartographer): “To ask for a map is to say: Tell me a story”.

A selected story, surrounded by blank spaces, sometimes more significant than the story itself, a story from the skew mental map of ourselves

In the 100 pages of first chapter of Umberto Eco new book From the tree to the labyrinth (Dall’albero al labirinto. Studi storici sul segno e l’interpretazione, Bompiani, nov 2007), Eco writes about semiotic dictionary and encyclopaedia and discusses – trough diagram and charts – the problem of definition and classification. I found it very thought-provoking and it remember me the Nietzsche quote that I tell to my students when I want to point out they have to incorporate indeterminacy when working as designers:

I was just hanging around in a library close to my office and I bought George Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces. While my friend was driving us back home I started to read it out, and that book became our map of a different city, a bright inspiration for the debate about space and urban planning. Try the experiment:

RESHAPING COMMUNICATION DESIGN TOOLS
During the last thirty years the level of interest in Complexity Science has been constantly increasing. Combining the opportunity offered by the findings of the Complexity Science with the framework of the multi-disciplinary debate on the meaning and use of diagrams, we propose a design methodology to help designers support their interventions in complex environments.

Thanks to Daniele@Mentegrafica for sharing his experience at idea2007 Here you can download PDF (with images) via RSS2PDF

The Indo-European Family of Languages, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

This diagram from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has a delightful family tree of Indo-European languages, but it does not explain the complexity of the language evolution and his hystory.

brief message, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

A Brief Message features design opinions expressed in short form (200 words or less).

According to one definition1, engineering is making things based on scientific principles – as opposed to the intuitive making that defines a craft. Information visualization (InfoVis) is practiced like a craft today, based mostly on practical examples, but not on theoretical basics. Here is a sketch of not only InfoVis as an engineering field, but [...]

Jeff Conklin nicely summarises wicked problems as follows: You don’t understand the problem until you have developed a solution. Indeed, there is no definitive statement of “The Problem.” The problem is ill-structured, an evolving set of interlocking issues and constraints. Rittel said, “One cannot understand the problem with knowing about its context; one cannot meaningfully [...]

The wisdom of crowds, originally uploaded by densitydesign.

While our culture generally trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses, New Yorker business columnist Surowiecki argues that “under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.” To support this almost counterintuitive proposition, Surowiecki explores problems involving cognition (we’re all trying to identify a correct answer), coordination (we need to synchronize our individual activities with others) and cooperation (we have to act together despite our self-interest). His rubric, then, covers a range of problems, including driving in traffic, competing on TV game shows, maximizing stock market performance, voting for political candidates, navigating busy sidewalks, tracking SARS and designing Internet search engines like Google