diagram – Page 17 – Coffee Spoons

The Evolution of Art

I work in the field of graphic design—or visual communications design for those of you younger whippersnappers. Regardless of what you call it, the field itself generally did not become a discipline until the early parts of the 20th century. Obviously, painters and illustrators were performing many of the tasks in the 19th century and before then. But design comes from art, from painting and drawing. How old are those?

Well recent discoveries have just pointed to some really old paintings in Indonesia that rival the ages of what we already know in the cave paintings in France. The significance is that this means art likely did not spread from Europe to Asia as once thought. It either developed independently or stems from an earlier African ancestry. For the purposes of this blog, the writeup I found included an illustration of how these dates were determined.

Credit for the piece goes to the original authors of the Nature report.

Losing Ground

If you want a better understanding of the difficulties facing Louisiana in the coming years and decades, you should start with Losing Ground. It’s a very nice experience that integrates data and narrative along with maps and written word and spoken word to show how badly the wetlands have degraded.

Credit for the piece goes to Bob Marshall, Al Shaw, Brian Jacobs, Della Hasselle, Ellis Lucia. Edmund Fountain.

Autonomous Cars

Some days I do not enjoy the thought of driving to the office. For those days, I take mass transit. However, in the future, I may be able to sit back and allow my car to drive me. This illustration from the Washington Post examines just how one example of such vehicles functions.

Credit for the piece goes to Alberto Cuadra.

Super Moon

Monday witnessed Super Moon. It’s not a bird, nor a plane. It’s the Moon. But bigger. Thankfully the Guardian put together a nice graphic that explains what was going on and puts the Super Moon into context of regular, average guy Moon.

Credit for the piece goes to Paul Scruton.

This Weekend’s Menu?

Everybody likes to eat out on the weekend. So from Co.Design comes an interactive diagram breaking down the constituent components of some of the best and worst food creations. Personally, I would have to go with the pretzel croissant.

Credit for the piece goes to Lily Tidhar.

Comet Siding Spring

Today we head off to the stars. Well, more appropriately the comets. The New York Times had a piece a little while back that looked at the orbits of several comets that pass near the Sun. Siding Spring in particular is highlighted because of its near approach later this autumn.

Credit for the piece goes to Jonathan Corum.

Borehole Graphics

Long articles often mean lots of vertical space. But it is only every so often when an item can complement itself with a narrow, vertical graphic. The Los Angeles Times has just that in today’s piece, looking at the layers of sedimentation from a borehole.

What's in the borehole? — What’s in the borehole?

Credit for the piece goes to Thomas Curwen, Lorena Elebee, and Javier Zarracina.

The Air Defence Systems of Eastern Ukraine

Last week, separatists in eastern Ukraine shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 with what appears to have been an SA-11 Gadfly missile. Separatists had previously claimed to have had this system in operation and days earlier shot down a high-altitude Ukrainian military aircraft—though not necessarily with the SA-11. How much more powerful is the SA-11 than the other two known surface-to-air missile systems the separatists have used to shoot down Ukrainian military helicopter and aircraft? Well, I decided to create a small graphic to show you that the SA-11 is a significant advancement over the shorter range systems in use up to now.

Cannon Along the Walls of Québec

In what I think is the last set of diagrams and illustrations describing the fortifications of Ville de Québec, we have the reason why the overall design and construction were so difficult as well as why there are so many star-like bastions pointing out of the walls.

The difficulty comes from the topography. Québec was, as I mentioned earlier, described by Charles Dickens as the Gibraltar of North America. It features a high, defensible cliff and then a city on the lowlands below it. But building a wall that defends it from the cliffs to the river is not easy. Especially because the angles and slopes of the walls have to account for the fact that enemy cannon near Cap Diamant could otherwise see very well into the city below. And therefore target the city. But how drastic was the descent?

A 73 metre or 240 foot drop from Cap Diamant to the Saint Charles River

And then to point the second, why so many stars? Well, the problem with straight walls is that if you manage to get beneath the firing range of the cannon along the wall, the defenders really cannot fire at you. And that gives you all the time to plant explosives and blow a massive hole in the fortifications. So the stars actually give the defenders nearly a complete field of fire along the entirety of the city walls.

Credit for the pieces go to the graphics department of Parks Canada.

Palisades and Ramparts de Québec

Today I have a little bit more about the fortifications near Artillery Park. The original fortifications were not massive stone works, because those take time. Instead, a lot of the original defences of the town were wooden palisades and earthworks. The following illustration shows the wooden defences of 1690.

The woodworks were more than just timber inserted into the ground. It involved some earthworks to support the wooden posts, but also to give the defenders a better view of the approaches. And a better firing position.

The palisades were divided into sections by redoubts. These were the strongpoints along the town walls.

But due to the ever-present fear of an amphibious invasion, the palisades were eventually replaced with an earthwork fortification. Trees were planted along the walls and they served as spikes to deter forces from scaling the walls.

Credit for the piece goes to the Parks Canada graphics department.