Graphesis: Visual Forms of Knowledge Production

by Johanna Drucker

In our current screen-saturated culture, we take in more information through visual means than at any point in history. The computers and smart phones that constantly flood us with images do more than simply convey information. They structure our relationship to information through graphical formats. Learning to interpret how visual forms not only present but produce knowledge, says Johanna Drucker, has become an essential contemporary skill.

Graphesis provides a descriptive critical language for the analysis of graphical knowledge. In an interdisciplinary study fusing digital humanities with media studies and graphic design history, Drucker outlines the principles by which visual formats organize meaningful content. Among the most significant of these formats is the graphical user interface (GUI)--the dominant feature of the screens of nearly all consumer electronic devices. Because so much of our personal and professional lives is mediated through visual interfaces, it is important to start thinking critically about how they shape knowledge, our behavior, and even our identity.

Information graphics bear tell-tale signs of the disciplines in which they statistics, business, and the empirical sciences. Drucker makes the case for studying visuality from a humanistic perspective, exploring how graphic languages can serve fields where qualitative judgments take priority over quantitative statements of fact. Graphesis offers a new epistemology of the ways we process information, embracing the full potential of visual forms and formats of knowledge production.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Art, History, Research, Science

216 pages, Paperback

First published June 2, 2014

About the author

Johanna Drucker, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic, is Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor in the Department of Information Studies at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Jesse · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've had a lot of trouble reviewing this book, because I don't entirely trust my assessment. It's a very thorough and rigorous book, on a subject that I think needs more extensive treatments, from a scholar with serious credibility in the field. I went so far as to look up other reactions, and they tended to be positive (always written by other academics, or grad students who were assigned the book, obviously). So please take all that under advisement when you read my criticism.

Graphesis starts with some bold topic sentences and mission statements. Graphesis (a field of study Drucker is positing?) is the "study of the visual production of knowledge" (cool!) and this book "offers a brief guide to critical languages of graphical knowledge from diverse fields, and describes ways graphical formats embody semantic value in their organization and structures." This all sounds ambitious and useful for students and theorists of this stuff, and I applaud the attempt.

However, even in those passages, you may start to get a sense of the problems that arise in this endeavor. The project is very loose, without a strong thesis or objective in mind. Because of this, it seems to devolve, at times, into a general survey of visual communication, focusing on information graphics, schematics, and user interfaces. For significant sections, it just describes the basic features of graphical forms and templates... like, that tables leverage both vertical and horizontal dimensions to organize information.

And because it's loose, Graphesis also becomes meandering, devoid of strong organization, topic sentences, meaningful chapters, or memorable through-lines. Even accompanied by active, aggressive note-taking, the result is a sort of stream-of-consciousness flow of vaguely-connected observations.

Finally, following from the previous point: the language of Graphesis seems willfully inaccessible. Again, I don't need an easy conversational tone, but if the language is going to be formal and technical, it needs to be rigorous. Drucker's use of modifiers and qualifiers becomes numbing... "formal," "subjective," critical and interpretative and semantic and schematic and graphical... these terms become fluid and meaningless, when they should be well-defined and pinpoint precise, assuming Drucker is really trying to build an effective field of study.

To Drucker's credit, this study is wide-ranging, covering tons of examples, with lots of historical context and ways of framing these topics. Unfortunately, it sabotages itself with obscurity. I love philosophy when it's poetic and insightful, and I don't mind it when it's technical and intensive. However, Graphesis doesn't quite fit into either of those spaces, and the result is disorganized and illegible -- for a work on visual principles of communication, it's frustratingly foggy.

[Lee Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good supplement to your Tufte texts. Should be a larger book--visuals are too small, and there doesn't appear to be a companion website.

[Carol Roh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't bring this book to the beach...unless you plan to get a helluva sun tan. As a small press publisher, I picked it up wanting to be more conversant about all aspects of book production, and that includes graphic design. I got way more than I bargained for, although my brain hurts now. Basically, Drucker argues that we are knee-deep into our screen-based and networked existence, clicking and swiping and linking happily as we go, but we don't think about how spatial conventions and graphic organization produce meaning in their own right. As yet, "almost no critical language exists for discussion of these structuring principles...." One reason is because we think like we are in print culture even when we're using the screen, and it never occurs to us that digital interface shapes our perceptions. Drucker gives an overview of the history of visual knowledge development and draws interesting links to the present. (For example, the fluidity of onscreen texts is likened to Homeric verse, and multiple authorship is nothing new--just look at the Bible.) In all, the author's aim is to help us start thinking about the ways that writers and scholars can do their best work in a digital future. (Hint: it won't mean doing the same thing online that you do in Microsoft Word, no matter how good a writer you may be). It will mean adapting to concepts and forms that combine, resequence and compress, texts in unbounded, polyvocal, rhizomatic ways (like I said, my brain hurts). My creative writing students grew up in these environments, but even they still tend to think mostly in terms of print culture. It's exciting to think about what these changes will bring for creative writing forms. Distributed imagination, anyone?

[Rapidreader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unnecessarily dense academic prose that hampers the digestion of an otherwise thought-provoking thesis about how humans engage with and understand visualizations of information.

Unfortunately, a better writer will like take these ideas, present them more accessibly and then be celebrated for 'original' thinking.

[Silvia Csv · Rating 5 out of 5]

Da grande voglio essere una Johanna

[Jake Lahah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drucker is wild for this one, and while I think there is a lot of merit for this there is a lot wrong with the structure, syntax, and accessibility of this text.

I give kudos to the first half of the book, for this more broken down understandings of visual communication with case studies and examples. Learning how to read charts, graphs, and forms of data with more nuance was extremely foundational, and did set the framework for where Drucker was positioned. I found it helpful to read, as a college educator in art foundations teaching 2D and graphic arts.

However, Drucker’s research becomes insanely dense with the introduction of interfaces. I agree with other reviewers that point out the lack of specificity of critical language and terms: semantics, schematics, humanistic, etc. I was hoping for some examples in a conversationalist tone that could help me understand where this language was coming from.

I will probably revisit sections of this in the future, as I further explore ways that graphic design and digital interfaces are still designed in the way print culture is.

[Margaryta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll be sure to come back to this one in the near future. "Graphesis" is the perfect introduction into a topic I didn't realize I have such a strong interest in. Although for some it might be a bit too sparse and meandering, there were still some great unifying and thoughtful observations that held the book together, encouraging the reader to think beyond Drucker's immediately apparent topic in order to draw bigger questions about graphics/illustrations that connect the past with the present.

[Dominikus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the very thorough and thoughtful historical overview and categorization (5 stars!). And wasn’t too keen on the vague, unstructured and very hard to understand second half (2 stars!). All in all: great book and then not.

[harriet · Rating 2 out of 5]

someone stop graphic designers from writing 200 page books because they are DRY and BORING

[Omar Nema · Rating 1 out of 5]

so dry and pedantic

[Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Graphesis, at it’s most valuable, offers a deep dive into the history of visualization across disciplines, shining a light onto historic methods of visual explanation that hold up centuries later and have the potential to influence contemporary designers.

Drucker also presents the concept of the "Knowledge Generator”: a valuable phrase that encapsulates an aspirational goal for information graphics. It would be easy to write an essay about this concept alone, so I won't say much about this, except that I'm happy to add it to my design lexicon and thinking. It stands as one of Graphesis’ best moments.

Where Graphesis falls short is Drucker's analysis on the state of interaction design. Drucker describes it as an engineer-driven process, which, having worked in the industry, is not accurate. She makes some important points about 'humanistic' design (in quotes because this is a phrase that lives only in academia) that are difficult to disagree with, but at best, about 10 years late and sorely needing updates to address the multitudes of issues present in achieving human-centered design, and the complexities of the processes employed to those ends.

Those criticisms aside, Graphesis is still worth the time and effort to get through, and a book I'll revisit for its depth and references.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though the arguments wax rather philosophical and the language becomes (perhaps unnecessarily) academically dense in the lattermost third of the book or so, some very interesting ideas are presented by the author. The structure of the book itself is very well done, and while some of the ideas regarding graphical interfaces that Drucker presents may not have direct application in the face of present real-world constraints, simply understanding and considering them may help one rethink information presentation formats. An intriguing read.

[Elizabeth Schlatter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good intro for theoretical grounding in history of data visualization. Rest of the book is highly detailed historical account and then interface analysis. It was too granular for what I was seeking, but it seems very thorough and has tons of useful illustrations.