Between art and history. HISTORY OF THE FACULTY OF GRAPHIC ARTS OF THE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS IN WARSAW PRESENTED IN THE FORM OF INFOGRAPHIC

"Design is not a profession, but an attitude"

László Moholy-Nagy

I am pleased to share a detailed overview of my doctoral thesis, which I prepared at the Academy of Fine Arts (Faculty of Graphics), under the guidance of Professor Lech Majewski.

One picture is worth a thousand words. Infographics have always been the most attractive alternative to traditional verbal communication for me. After all, well-designed infographics add the superhuman power of seeing through. They allow us to go through large amounts of data like a superhero. Well-prepared infographics make us smarter and therefore better people.

I assume that the Faculty of Graphic Arts Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw deserves a serious graphic story about its history. Its history, which was already evident during the query, is much more interesting and complicated than it is commonly believed. It made me want to break some of common beliefs. In some periods Graphic was pushed down, but all the time it was in a conscious emancipatory spirit. This struggle for equality with other art disciplines was the most interesting in describing the whole issue. My work will serve to emphasize the equality of the discipline and strengthen the ties of the academic community by getting teachers and students out of the historical emptiness of the lack of an accessible narrative.

Many times in the lab of prof. Lech Majewski (supervisor of my doctoral thesis), I heard that a graphic designer solves other people's problems. What is the problem in this particular case? Lack of a concise and cognitively attractive monograph on the Academy. But even if such a concise monograph was created, a properly constructed infographic will be a better tool for quick learning about the history of the Academy.

What I do as an infographic artist is therefore an attempt to save the interested people’s time and efforts. It’s my mission.

Its effect is a systematized, transparent and persuasive infographic. History of Faculty of Graphic Arts (in relation to other faculties and local and global history) presented in a visually attractive form. The challenge in this particular case was to present complex historical changes in a possibly simple but comprehensive way. Only when all the information and data are put together on the timeline, correlated and given the appropriate weight, the issue becomes easily understandable.

Here you can see one of the inspirations for creating an infographic about the history of the Academy. It was created in 1979 by Roman Duszek (professor at the Faculty of Industrial Design) "Image of the development of the program and structure of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw". This graphic has the form of a tree, the roots of which are the beginnings of the Academy. It is not a complete and well-thought-out work. However, the artist’s intuition in depicting the problem is noteworthy. The fact that such a work was created means that there was already a need for a work similar to mine. However, it could not be created due to the gigantic amount of data that had to be correlated, and which could be done most effectively using digital tools. In this case, there was very little numerical data (although they are the skeleton of the work - the thickness of the lines in my diagram reflects the change in the number of students of individual faculties over time).

The matter that I mainly dealt with were historical facts given in the form of descriptions. I compiled these facts into sequences so as to understand the processes to which the Academy was subjected to.

Before starting work on the history of the Faculty of Graphic Arts, I was preparing a very similar project - the Historical Panorama of Kutno (link). It was mainly an educational project. It was created in two forms. The first (basic) is a giant infographic (27 m x 3.5 m) which is located on the central square in Kutno (a small town in central Poland), in a special exhibition building. The second form is an infographic (dimensions 2 m x 0.8 m), which was distributed in schools in Kutno (for historical rooms). Panorama has become a showcase of the city and means for the development of local awareness of residents, especially children and youth.

It was as complex task as my PhD thesis: discussions, screenplay, character selection, first drafts, editorial work, historical work, compositional work, technological problems, keeping proportions (gender, age, political views), final graphic execution, printing and placing graphics both on the walls and windows (windows have become an additional carrier of information - there are descriptions and charts on them showing the development and change of the national structure of the city over the centuries). This infographic is kind of reconstruction. I do the same with the history of the Faculty of Graphic Arts.I reconstruct, but not people or buildings, but processes. Such an infographic placed in a central, walking place of the city becomes a kind of Biblia Pauperum for residents and a meeting with Kutno's past. Breaking out of historical non-existence was the task of this realization. The aim of the panorama and the doctoral dissertation is basically the same: increasing the historical awareness of the community by describing historical reality through visual means.

My doctoral thesis has two forms. The first, basic one, is a huge infographic (dimensions 6.4 m x 2.3 m). Only after its completion was I able to convert it into a second form - a 22 pages booklet (dimensions 25.5 cm x 43 cm).

When creating my PhD infographic (hi-res preview), I was not limited by the format as in my daily publishing work. The complicated, extensive problem of the history of the Academy of Fine Arts required a huge space for narration. Capturing the whole issue on such a large printout allows us to capture the changes in one moment. The recipient, moving at his own pace along the infographic, going back and zooming in, learns about the history of the Academy. In a few minutes, he is able to understand problems that would take many hours of traditional reading. My infographic shows a lot not only at first contact, but also has a lot to offer during longer studies.

In the brochure formula, I divide the entire infographic into fragments and try to lose as little as possible compared to a huge, one-piece printout. The best tool for this seems to be page folding.

Here you can follow the process of creating an infographic:

Here, you can watch a video illustrating the process of infographic creation:

Information design is a communication area, and graphic design is a mean to achieve a communication goal. Their harmonious combination is a success for an infographic artist. Having communication and design competences, I can manage the presentation of information. As a result, my work has a chance to become proof of the possibility of breaking the hermetic nature of historical issues through graphic means.

Creating infographics is work at the intersection of image, word and number with art.

The basic tools, apart from dataset management and analysis, are: text, typography, line, plane, geometric figures, layout and color. Each category and issue in my infographic has a corresponding color or (and) a geometric figure assigned to it. The Faculty of Graphic Arts is coded using the color blue. The Faculty of Painting using orange. The other faculties are in shades of brown.

The problem of interaction with State authorities is treated with red and the figure of a wedge. I use black for information about the Academy as a whole. The base of the infographic is a flow diagram, and I link the individual facts with arrows that compile entire processes into easy-to-grasp sequences. The basic version of the infographic is divided in the middle by a timeline. In the brochure version, the timeline is at the bottom of the page. Until 1900, the timeline is condensed due to its disproportionately large span in time relative to the relevant historical events. In the basic version, faculties other than Painting and Graphic are below the timeline. In the brochure version, they are shown only in auxiliary graphs.

On the blue cover of the brochure, in the logo of the Academy, I integrated photos of the most important figures for the whole issue. It is worth noting that portraits in an infographic are not just simple illustrative material. It is an indication of the importance. Their mutual proportions to each other indicate the significance of particular people for the issue.

In my work, I try to limit means to the most necessary. This applies to both the text side of the infographic and the visual side.

That’s why I tried to compose the infographic so that I didn’t have to use the legend to explain it. Thanks to this, the recipient intuitively moves in the issue. He doesn’t need to learn to read my work. He can start exploring the infographic from anywhere. Zooming in and out, he smoothly moves from general to more specific issues.

In the basic version of the infographic, in its upper part, there are art directions. Their distribution in time is described by lines. Purely graphic styles are represented by the color assigned to the Faculty of Graphic Arts. At the very bottom there are historical events and processes depicted in a similar way. Artistic trends are moving upwards, which symbolizes the development of art. Historical events run downwards, which can bring to mind the decline of history. The whole is therefore locked between history and art. The described emancipatory change of the Faculty of Graphic Arts takes place between development and decline. And above all, in opposition to the Faculty of Painting (actually to the usurpation of the Kapists with their opinion that graphics is only an offshoot of their discipline).

I used Mateusz Machalski’s Gaultier font to assemble the whole thing. This font works great here thanks to the fact that it is a sans-serif antique, but with extensions associated with serif typefaces. It is both modern and traditional. In a realization of this sort (a history told through modern means) it seemed to me the best choice.

I should now make some terminological remarks. We hear the terms: infographics, visualization, chart, diagram. We use them intuitively and often correctly, but it is worth saying that they are not synonyms. Thus: a graph is a graphical form of presenting a phenomenon based on data. A diagram is a simplified graphical representation of data or phenomena. Visualization is any kind of information imaging designed to enable communication or discovery. Data visualization creates graphically understandable representation of data. It is both the process of transforming data into an image and the result of such a process. An infographic, on the other hand, is a multi-part representation of information, the purpose of which is to convey a message. Infographics is a more complex form than data visualization. It gives one or more mutually complementary messages to the recipient. Uses single or multiple data visualizations. It may contain text, diagrams, charts, icons, maps, illustrations, photographs, and so on.

Let’s stay with the diagrams for a moment. As I mentioned earlier, the core of my work was based on the so-called flow diagram (more precisely: Sankey diagram). It is a diagram that represents the dynamic relationships in the system (in this case, the academic teaching of art in Warsaw). Such a diagram visually shows related information, events, stages, processes, functions, etc. In the Sankey diagram, the width of the arrows is proportional to the flow value of the presented object (here, this value is the number of students). This type of diagram is one of the most compelling visualizations. It is functional because it allows you to see changes over time. It is beautiful in the sense of being an attractive, aesthetic figure for the recipient. He is insightful because he reveals to us truths that otherwise would be difficult for us to see. It is enriching cognition, because if we capture the evidence presented in it, it will expand our horizons of thinking.

In my visualization, I also use a Gantt diagram (illustration of the duration in time using a rectangle stretched on a timeline). I also use the Venn diagram (illustration of relationships between sets by overlapping geometric figures, lines and planes).

Infographic design is an explanation design.

So how are infographics created? We start with unstructured information (facts). We turn these into data. We structure data into information. From information comes knowledge. This turns into wisdom in the recipient’s brain. Thus, information is data contained in the message, and interpreted by the recipient, so it becomes part of his knowledge. And what exactly is data? Data is an abstraction of reality, and visualizing them is abstracting from abstraction. Abstraction means creating general concepts and simplifying the problem. It consists in rejecting undesirable features of objects (usually those that do not have a major impact on the whole issue) in order to emphasize the desired features.

Creating infographics requires not only graphic skills, but also research and analytical skills. I got to know the history of the Faculty of Graphics by working with historical literature and sources in accordance with the rules of the historian’s workshop. Thanks to my historical education and many years of work as an infographic designer (since 2003), I have the ability to navigate in the matter of the issue. This realization is therefore a combination of the workshop of a historian and visual journalist with the workshop of an artist. The most interesting works are always born at the meeting point of various disciplines. Interdisciplinarity in this case was an absolute requirement for the creation of an educational, constructive, positive work.

My multi-competences (combining scientific concepts and procedures with artistic and design activities) speak for placing the work in art & science practice.

The principle that guided me during my work can be summarized in a Latin sentence, currently associated mainly with art & science: In scientia veritas, in arte honestas (Truth in science, honesty in art).

The human image interpretation mechanism has evolved over millions of years. It is one of the means to the survival of the species. The human brain can interpret reality instantly. We have minds that are difficult to control (fast also means chaotic), but which have great potential to be explored. The purpose of data visualization is to enlighten through graphic images, using the evolutionary capacity of the human visual system. A good graphical representation of information allows messages sent to the brain through vision to increase understanding. Information (supplementing the lack of knowledge in the process of communication) is not information if it does not stimulate the mind. A properly made infographic correctly presents information in the chaotic mind of the recipient. The beauty lies in those infographics that present unknown issues to the recipient in a way that allows them to easily assimilate the truth. Humans are beings who have a particular tendency to organize matter, ideas and phenomena into objects and patterns. We like to control reality. We are looking for ways to enclose it in models. In the case of creating infographics, it is unrealistic to pretend that we can create a perfect model. But we can certainly try to create a good enough one.

Each model is a simplification. There is a delicate line between untruth and truth distorted for the purposes of a legible model.

An infographic artist must constantly control the desire to reject or reduce the truth for the sake of the model’s readability. Moreover, simplicity is not just about reducing the obvious or unnecessary and leaving what is significant. It also introduces those elements that are necessary to make the models easier to perceive. All kinds of superfluous embellishments are deadly for infographics. The beauty of infographics is hidden in presenting information in a way that allows you to discover the truth, not in aestheticizing.

My work reflects mainly what is found in monographs. Mistakes made by the authors of scientific papers of course, may affect the substantive quality of the work. I have managed to revise or clarify many facts, but a work like this, once made public, becomes a project that is open to discussion. After confrontation with people directly involved in the presented events and processes, I anticipate a correction of the model. Such an important matter as the history of the Faculty of Graphic Arts requires extensive consultation with the community of the Academy. I would like this work to be a source of knowledge that is as reliable as possible.

Implementing an exhaustive narrative with images and confronting it with the audience directly involved in the history of the Faculty of Graphic Arts is very valuable for me. As a creator of publishing infographics, I almost never have contact with the target audience of my information, only with an alienated editorial team. After publication, I will be directly observing the reception of my story. The more lively the ferment after the publication of the work, the more satisfaction I will achieve as a creator.

This infographic is addressed to people who are genuinely interested in the history of the Academy and sometimes directly involved in the presented events. I hope that the public reception of the work will unite the community of the Academy. In this case, I would like information design to be an accelerator for tightening bonds between those for whom Art and the Academy are the common denominator. Nothing unites as much as a sense of common (not necessarily national or biological, but also ideological) origin.