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Published by MacroVU Press in support of the Visual Language Project at Stanford University, which is directed by Robert E. Horn.
The UPDATE summarizes the research and applications of visual language and information design.
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In this issue
1. Position Paper -- Great Clip Art Battle
2. Two Conferences Coming Up In December
3. This Summer--"Infodesign 2000" Exhibits Our Murals
4. Book Review -- Information Visualization: Perception For Design.
5. Book Review -- The Humane Interface
6. New Review -- Visual Language
7. Course--"Visual Thinking And Visual Communication" Now Available In Mexico
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1. POSITION PAPER -- GREAT CLIP ART BATTLE
The Great Clip Art Battle is upon us. We've had clip art for several decades now, even before the arrival of the graphic computer. But not until we began to recognize that there was a new language emerging that tightly integrates words and graphics did clip art begin to appear to be worth paying attention to. Good clip art is essential to visual language's growth and development. To use visual language fluently, assumes the user has to be able to have clip art available quickly, conveniently, and inexpensively. We are not all the way to this point yet, but we are closer than ever.

So what is the battle about? The availability of a million pieces of clip art scares artists. Many of them trash the entire endeavor rather than recognizing that the graphic computer has produced an entirely new world for all communicators. Actually artist's business will grow, but it will also change.

Our project's book, "Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century" has fueled this battle because it uses almost 3,000 pieces of clip art, with an average of 10 graphic clip art elements per double page spread.

Project Director Robert E. Horn has produced a draft position paper called the "Great Clip Art Battle". (html)

2. TWO CONFERENCES COMING UP IN DECEMBER
An innovative co-siting of conferences that will be of interest to many readers of this newsletter will be held in early December, 2000 in Orlando, Florida. This will be a chance for people to meet our project director, Robert E. Horn, who will be speaking at both conferences.
Information on the conferences:
2.A. THE INFO PRODUCER CONFERENCE & EXPO
December 4-6, 2000 in Orlando, FL
The Info Producer Conference & Expo, is for professionals who develop, design and manage documents, databases, and other informational content (text, audio, graphics, and video) for delivery or publication online. The program emphasizes knowledge acquisition, content management, and document management systems.
CONTACT: <http://www.influent.com/infoproducer>

2.B. INFORMATION MAPPING'S "MAKING KNOWLEDGE WORK" CONFERENCE
December 3-6, 2000 in Orlando, FL
The conference program focuses on providing a community for idea exchange and techniques on how to make knowledge work. Specifically, the program includes topics ranging from client-presented case studies to sessions on Knowledge Management, Mapping and the Web, XML, and new product introductions.
CONTACT: <http://www.informationmapping.com>

3. THIS SUMMER-- "INFODESIGN 2000" EXHIBITS OUR MURALS
Information design principles applied to mural-making was highlighted this summer at Coventry University's School of Art and Design (U.K.) The information-mural created by our project about the debate as to whether computers will ever be able to think was exhibited in conjunction with the InfoDesign 2000 Conference. The exhibit, entitled InfoArcadia, was at the Stroom Center for the Visual Arts in The Hague for three months earlier this year. Our project director's speech, "The Representation of Meaning--Information Design as a Practical Art and a Fine Art", at the InfoArcadia exhibit is now available on our web site.
CONTACT:
Horn's speech: (html)
More on the exhibits: Visual Language Update #2000.2 (html)

4. BOOK REVIEW - INFORMATION VISUALIZATION: PERCEPTION FOR DESIGN by Colin Ware (University Of New Hampshire), Morgan Kaufmann, 2000. This book is the best new survey of research on visual perception organized for the visual information designer that we know of. In many ways, it surveys the same data as William Horton's excellent "Illustrating Computer Documentation" (Wiley, 1991) with the last decade's research included. Horton's book is more of a quick reference. Ware's book is more of a text book. They both supplement our project's book, Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century, (MacroVU Press, 1998) which focuses on syntax and semantics of putting words and images together.
CONTACT:
Information Visualization <http://www.mkp.com>
Illustrating Computer Documentation <http://www.wiley.com>
Visual Language <http://www.macrovu.com>

5. BOOK REVIEW--THE HUMANE INTERFACE by Jeff Raskin
Jeff Raskin's "The Humane Interface -- New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems"(Addison Wesley, 2000) has one of the best no-nonsense treatments of the cognitive design of human-computer interfaces. Raskin was fundamental in the creation of the Apple Macintosh interface, now the standard computer interface world-wide. His chapter on zoomable interfaces is the one of the few treatments of that next-generation idea and by far the best. We will need zoomable interfaces on the web to handle complex visual displays, especially information landscapes.
CONTACT: www.jefraskin.com

6. NEW REVIEW -- VISUAL LANGUAGE
Technical Communication Quarterly, the journal of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, recently had a four-page review by James M. Dubinsky of Virginia Tech of our project's book "Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century." Here are some quotes from that review.
"In 1989, Karen Schriver, writing as a guest editor for Technical Communication, laid out a few critical challenges that technical communicators would face in the decade that lay ahead. Her primary focus was the area of document design; she explained that "text" meant "oral and written, and both visual and verbal" and that technical communicators needed a research agenda that focused in part on "creating and integrating visual and verbal text to meet the readers' various and frequently changing needs". Since then, primarily due to the information explosion related to the advent of the World Wide Web and the proliferation of computers and multimedia software, we've seen progress toward the integration Schriver described. However, despite that progress, no one has integrated the visual and verbal completely. While several scholars and practitioners have spoken of a visual language (i.e., Kostelnick and Roberts; Tufte), no one had presented a visual language in such a way that readers could actually envision what it would look like. Until now. In his recent book, which some are calling a landmark text, Robert E. Horn does more than talk about integrating the verbal and the visual, he accomplishes the integration fully and uses the visual language he describes as the language of choice in the text."

CONTACT:
Visual Language book description & contents: (html)

7. COURSE--"VISUAL THINKING AND VISUAL COMMUNICATION" NOW AVAILABLE IN MEXICO
The bootcamp course -- designed by our project -- "Visual Thinking and Visual Communication" is now available in Mexico through a licensing arrangement with Information Mapping Mexico. The course is for "word people" who realize they need to learn how to put words and graphics together into visual language. It covers topics such as diagram development, icons creation, quantitative graphs, resemblances, and the new communication units that tightly integrate words and graphics.
CONTACT:
Mexico: tbiro@informationmapping.com.mx
USA: <http://www.macrovu.com/VTVCCourse Details.html>
or <http://www.macrovu.com/VTVCpleasecontactme.html>
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The VISUAL LANGUAGE UPDATE is free.
Feature articles in international journals, such as "New Scientist", have focused attention on our visual language project. As a result, we've been asked a lot of questions about this new field, so we've launched this newsletter. Our goal is to keep you up-to-date on developments in the field of visual language and visual information design. We will summarize the projects we're working on, both research and applications. We'll review important books and articles in the field and present brief critiques of important issues in the field. We thank our publisher, MacroVU Press for its support of this newsletter.
---Bob Horn, Project Director

To subscribe/unsubscribe, contact <info@macrovu.com>
Apologies for any multiple recipients of this issue.

Editor: Robert E. Horn, visiting scholar, Stanford University
Email: <hornbob@earthlink.net>

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Entire contents copyright 2000 R. E. Horn