I got my cards out on time this year, but have neglected posting this to the blog. As my long-term readers (both of you) will remember, a few years ago I posted a subway-inspired graphic I used for my annual New Years cards. Well, this year I decided to revisit this idea with a) more homage to Harry Beck’s original Tube Map, and b) more meaningful cartography (tempography?). This is what I came up with:

(Download a PDF here.)

I may revisit this idea every few years. Perhaps I’ll take on New York or Moscow as a model next. (Montreal would be good too, but I’d hate to go through all that black ink.)

Update 2010-01-19: I received a thoughtful note from Jane Sarasohn-Kahn at Health Populi — more thoughtful than perhaps I deserve, in light of my snarkiness — thanking me for the observation and letting me know she’s replaced the chart in her original post. I confess that I still have some trouble making the direct connection between this data point and EHR, but as a fellow believer in the potential for EHR and PHR to improve the healthcare landscape on many dimensions, I appreciate her trying to connect the dots. Original post below…

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I’ve done a bit of work related to Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Personal Health Records (PHR), and as a result, I follow several blogs that cover these issues. I’m also very interested in data visualization, good and bad. Today, these worlds collide.

I’m a believer in EHRs, but today Health Populi takes a tiny data point (from a somewhat off-kilter outfit called the National Center for Policy Analysis) and not only places it entirely out of context, but also commits a major dataviz sin: screwing around with the origin point.

In context, NCPA says that in Minnesota, for treatments of colds and sore throats in children, MinuteClinic (the largest retail-based walk-in clinic) follow evidence based-guidelines 91% of the time, versus an average of 86% of the time for all primary care clinics. A 5% difference can certainly be meaningful, although it might not be. They provide this helpful chart to illustrate the information:

NCPA's Original Chart; not great but not bad

It’s not a great chart; best practice suggests that 3D bar charts can be slightly misleading. But it’s mostly honest, and shows that the difference is effectively tiny.

For reasons passing understanding, Health Populi recreates this chart:

ZOMG! Huge difference!

And abra cadabra! The difference in conformity to guidelines now appears to be about 2.5 times greater among retail clinics, an effect achieved by setting the bottom of the chart to the 83% point.

What’s especially weird here is that this massaging of the chart doesn’t even bolster the argument the Health Populi post tries to make, which seems to result from this leap of logic: MinuteClinics show better compliance with guidelines (explicitly true) -> better adherence to guidelines equals better outcomes (probably true, but not explicitly shown by the source materials) -> MinuteClinics have adopted EHR and this must somehow be responsible for these amazing results (wait… what?).

Maybe I’m missing something, but I’m having an awfully hard time seeing how this argument hangs together, or finding any possible justification for juicing the chart like that. I’d welcome comments.

This morning, as I was drinking coffee brewed in my beloved Chemex, I saw that Boing Boing had linked to this wonderful article in Gourmet Magazine about the odd inventor who developed the iconic coffeemaker, Peter Schlumboum. A little Googling turned up some interesting contemporaneous articles about Schlumbohm, including a piece in Time Magazine from 1946, and another from Life Magazine in 1949. A very brief Talk of the Town entry from a 1954 New Yorker refers to the Chemobile, Schlumboum’s attempt at car design. (Also, an eBay search led me to this semi awful plastic Chemex warming element from the ’60s or ’70s, which I have to confess, I bought. I suspect Schlumboum had nothing to do with this design.) The Chemex itself sits in the MOMA permanent collection, along with his water kettle and the “Filterfan,” an alleged air filtration system.

Whatever one thinks of Dr. Schumbohm, the Chemex makes a damn good pot of coffee (although the secret may lie in its above average quality paper filters more than its beaker-like shape. And they’re still available.

I think I covered logos pretty thoroughly a few months ago, but really, who could resist passing this on?

I had intended to post about The Rather Difficult Font Game, but my brother beat me to it. However, he was somehow able to resist writing about a font game he and I used to play, an omission I’m happy to remedy. One of us would sing or hum the theme to a TV show, and the other would have to name the font used in the opening credits. (I know, I know… pretty sad, really. And not that good a game since we didn’t watch that much TV, and there are only so many times you can come back to Mary Tyler Moore, The Prisoner, and Baretta; or Peignot, Albertus, and a custom version of Stencil respectively.)

I scored only 29/34, which I find somewhat humiliating, particularly in light of my brother’s 30/34 showing.

I’m pretty sure I’ve pontificated here before about the slightly surprising emergence of typography awareness in popular culture. Adding to this meme this month is a terrific Atlantic Monthly article by Virginia Postrel, which sadly, they only make available to subscribers. On the upside, they do feature two web-only extras though, an interview with Gary Hustwit, director of Helvetica; and a video with type designer Michael Bierut.

Update: Yesterday, just days after this post, the Atlantic dropped their subscriber model and made all its content free to all visitors, so you can now access the full article. Were they motivated by the thoughts of thousands of J-Blawg readers clicking through to their site? I’m sure they were. (And they were hoodwinked.)

Speaking of the holidays, I am now (thanks to Virginia) a proud owner of a HomeHero fire extinguisher, surely the snazziest fire extinguisher ever designed. Apparently, everyone but me has been talking about this product for months, but despite articles about it appearing in several magazines I read, I seemed to have totally missed it. So it was a funny coincidence that just a few days after receiving this thoughtful gift, I ran across this excellent piece about HomeHero in Rob Walker’s Consumed column.

Walker examines one of HomeHero’s more interesting claims, namely that its good looks will encourage owners to keep the extinguisher out where it can be seen and admired and — by extension — be closer at hand when needed in an emergency.  As Walked concedes, it’s hard to say whether or not this claim holds up. But it’s still an interesting idea that injecting good (or, at least, attractive) design into health and safety tools might enhance their effectiveness.

It’s an odd coincidence, but suddenly I’m awash in links about logo redesign. First there was this series of NY Times posts about the much maligned (justifiably) new NYC Taxi logo. Then a blog post, and a whole blog dedicated to before and after comparisons of various logo changes. Funny how these things come in waves.

(Those interested in such things may also have fun with the Retail Alphabet Game.)

I’ve been mulling a post about online graphic visualization tools, and I may still write one. But I was impressed today to see that Smashing Magazine has a terrific writeup of tools for creating those most basic of graphic visualizations, charts and graphs. (Via SVN.)

Two years ago, I didn’t use Print Gocco for my New Years cards because much as I love it, the project wasn’t right for the little screen printer. But last year I didn’t make the card I originally intended to make because supplies of Print Gocco supplies had dried up thanks to the announcement that Riso, the manufacturer, was discontinuing production. Like a lot of fans, I was disappointed.

But this weekend’s Consumed column from Rob Walker bring the potential of good news: Riso has heard our pleas, and may reconsider its decision!  I bet my friend Brandy is even happier than I am. Keep your fingers crossed.

I’m all for innovative uses of technology in preparedness training, but couldn’t the producers of this virtual laser fire extinguisher accomplished the same thing by writing software for a Wii and attaching the controller to an empty extinguisher? I’m just sayin’…

The map referred to below is also mentioned in this interesting article in Smashing Magazine about modern approaches to data visualization. Some of the techniques described definitely skew more towards novel than useful. In particular, it seems to almost exclusively emphasize complex techniques over simple and elegant displays like Tufte’s sparklines. But I would still say this is a terrific thought piece for anyone interested in finding new or better ways of adding a visual element to a large amount of information.

I’ve been meaning to link to this since early July: a subway map-inspired web 2.0 trendmap from Japanese firm Information Architects. Gorgeous and functional, it also has links to all kinds of interesting sites you may not have heard of before.

It’s been a busy few weeks here at Jblawg central, but really, even I’m embarrassed to have gone so long between posts. Still, as the title implies, I’m hoping that another type post right above the one from way back in early July may at least give the impression of flow.

In that vein, I really enjoyed the article in this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine about the creation of Clearview, a new font for use on interstate highway signs, and a vast improvement over Highway Gothic.

On a related note, is it just me, or is discussion of typography getting kind of hip these days? My brother and I used to play a game in which one of us would sing the theme to a television show, and the other would have to name the typeface used in the show titles. It’s simultaneously exciting and horrifying to think that we might soon be able to recruit some additional players.

Since a design theme seems to have emerged in today’s posts, I’ll also mention Jessica Helfand’s recent post from Design Observer called “Why is this font different from all other fonts?” In it, she explores roman character typefaces designed to evoke cultural, racial, and linguistic connections. Entertaining, even for non-type geeks.

I’ve recently stumbled across an incredibly sharp, insightful, well-written, and consistently interesting blog about Designing Magazines, which is also the name of the blog writer’s forthcoming book. By a remarkable coincidence, the writer also shares my last name, and my brother’s first name. Weird. But just a coincidence, I’m sure.

(And since I’m engaging in such brazen promotion, I should finally give a shout out to Mike Littman, someone else’s brother, who’s been asking me for a link to his pool cues site for quite awhile now. If I knew anything about billiards, I could say something intelligent about his wares. I can’t. But I can say he’s a good guy.)

I love old ‘message’ posters of all kinds, so I really enjoyed this gallery of Chinese public health posters. I wish the site included a little more information, though, particularly approximate dates of publication. Still, a neat find. (Via Your Daily Awesome.)

I had intended to spend a little quality time late last week putting up a new post or two, but instead, most of my energy got consumed trying to leave Albany, where I was helping to facilitate some training. Thunderstorms, delays, and cancellations kept thwarting our attempts to come home, and it took us a couple of days to finally make it back to Chicago.
Albany natives, and They Might Be Giants, might suggest that our problems stemmed from insufficient respect shown to “The Egg,” a cornerless performance venue built as part of Nelson Rockefeller’s , um, masterpiece of dictatorial-regime-inspired government architecture, the Empire State Plaza. Next time we’ll be more careful.

Sometimes I think I should start a separate category for subway/underground related entries, given how many times I’ve posted on the topic. Anyway, today’s bumper crops of links on the subject all come via SVN, who got started with their own post about the utility of distorting the maps for the New York and London subway systems, and Eddie Jabbour’s efforts to “fix” the standard NYC transit map. (NY Times article here.)

They followed up a couple weeks later with a great link to an outtake from the film Helvetica, featuring designer Massimo Vignelli explaining his original 1972 design for the NYC map. Great stuff.

Among the things I’ve been meaning to post for the last couple of weeks is this New Scientist blog post about new scary AIDS awareness print ads in France. Well, I suppose it’s just as well that I didn’t get around to it, because now I can also include links to Wired’s coverage of these spiffy (and much more upbeat) French TV ads for AIDS awareness. Two interesting, and completely opposite approaches. (And also, in case you’re reading this from the office, very NSFW.)