7 ms·

Something about that image in Wikipedia makes it very easy to understand. Why are vintage graphics so good? Is it the nostalgia or the limited amount of color u

Something about that image in Wikipedia makes it very easy to understand. Why are vintage graphics so good? Is it the nostalgia or the limited amount of color usage? Or is it the use of arrows and and telling the user exactly what they need to know from the image? I can’t quite put my finger on it.

garmaine 8y ago
It was actually drawn by hand, a process that took a lot longer than digital work and required an artist to contemplate every part of it during its creation. That’s a lot of time to make tweaks and adjust things to communicate better.
- Gravityloss 8y ago
  Also these were made by professional specialists. Even just regular consulting companies had people doing graphs for their reports and presentations. Excel and Powerpoint came and analysts started doing them themselves with drastic loss in quality and legibility.
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    >Excel and Powerpoint came and analysts started doing them themselves with drastic loss in quality and legibility. Can you recommend any online resources with good examples of professionally handdrawn graphs?
    - garmaine 8y ago
      Google "drafting engineer."
codeulike 8y ago
If they released it now there would be a glossy video animation and a press kit, and then fifty different websites would add clickbait titles like 'You won't believe what NASA's new Robot Tug can do with its arms' and then make you wade through paragraphs of blurb before letting you get to the bit that actually explains whats going on. And you'd also have to click no to a pop-up subscribe window and turn off the sound of an unrelated autoplay video, by which time you would have forgotten why you even came to look at that page. Thats why a simple diagram is better.
- duxup 8y ago
  And somehow I still wouldn't understand it...
Raphmedia 8y ago
Videos were very instructive back then too. At some point, we started to prioritize form over function. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI [Around The Corner - How Differential Steering Works (1937)]
JKCalhoun 8y ago
Don't mean to start a flame thread, but I hate CG "space renderings". The concept art from the 70's was amazing. When NASA and the industry in general went to CG the illustrations really fell off a cliff. To be sure, the rendering is top-notch today, less so when they first made the switch, but I dislike even the modern realistic CG renderings. I want palette-knife clouds on the Earth in the background, hues of cerulean blue and rust orange on the aluminum surfaces of the space craft.... You know, art!
- greedo 8y ago
  Interesting sidenote; Ralph McQuarrie drew for NASA, and then created the iconic images for Star Wars (along with many other artists).
willyt 8y ago
The final artwork was a bigger time commitment so you would stop and think about the message for much longer before you committed to the final rendering. I think now we go straight to modelling and graphics programs which speed up the process and are much more flexible about allowing you to go back and edit. This gives people a feeling they can change the final output much more easily and so there is not so much pressure to get the information design concept right for how you convey the information before you start creating the final image.
dokem 8y ago
I've been watching a lot of those black and white technical videos produced by the US Army/Air Force/Navy/MIT/etc from the 50s-70s. The videos and diagrams are incredibly descriptive and information dense yet easy to digest. The narrator is authoritative and straight to the point. I really haven't find much modern content of the same caliber. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyDbq5HRs0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyDbq5HRs0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFp6pH9XCtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFp6pH9XCtY

garmaine 8y ago

It was actually drawn by hand, a process that took a lot longer than digital work and required an artist to contemplate every part of it during its creation. That’s a lot of time to make tweaks and adjust things to communicate better.

Gravityloss 8y ago
Also these were made by professional specialists. Even just regular consulting companies had people doing graphs for their reports and presentations. Excel and Powerpoint came and analysts started doing them themselves with drastic loss in quality and legibility.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  >Excel and Powerpoint came and analysts started doing them themselves with drastic loss in quality and legibility. Can you recommend any online resources with good examples of professionally handdrawn graphs?
  - garmaine 8y ago
    Google "drafting engineer."

codeulike 8y ago

If they released it now there would be a glossy video animation and a press kit, and then fifty different websites would add clickbait titles like 'You won't believe what NASA's new Robot Tug can do with its arms' and then make you wade through paragraphs of blurb before letting you get to the bit that actually explains whats going on. And you'd also have to click no to a pop-up subscribe window and turn off the sound of an unrelated autoplay video, by which time you would have forgotten why you even came to look at that page. Thats why a simple diagram is better.

duxup 8y ago
And somehow I still wouldn't understand it...

Raphmedia 8y ago

Videos were very instructive back then too. At some point, we started to prioritize form over function. E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI [Around The Corner - How Differential Steering Works (1937)]

JKCalhoun 8y ago

Don't mean to start a flame thread, but I hate CG "space renderings". The concept art from the 70's was amazing. When NASA and the industry in general went to CG the illustrations really fell off a cliff. To be sure, the rendering is top-notch today, less so when they first made the switch, but I dislike even the modern realistic CG renderings. I want palette-knife clouds on the Earth in the background, hues of cerulean blue and rust orange on the aluminum surfaces of the space craft.... You know, art!

greedo 8y ago
Interesting sidenote; Ralph McQuarrie drew for NASA, and then created the iconic images for Star Wars (along with many other artists).

willyt 8y ago

The final artwork was a bigger time commitment so you would stop and think about the message for much longer before you committed to the final rendering. I think now we go straight to modelling and graphics programs which speed up the process and are much more flexible about allowing you to go back and edit. This gives people a feeling they can change the final output much more easily and so there is not so much pressure to get the information design concept right for how you convey the information before you start creating the final image.

dokem 8y ago

I've been watching a lot of those black and white technical videos produced by the US Army/Air Force/Navy/MIT/etc from the 50s-70s. The videos and diagrams are incredibly descriptive and information dense yet easy to digest. The narrator is authoritative and straight to the point. I really haven't find much modern content of the same caliber. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyDbq5HRs0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyDbq5HRs0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFp6pH9XCtY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFp6pH9XCtY