Jacques Bertin - Graphic Quotes

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The plane is the mainstay of all graphic representation. It is so familiar that its properties seem self-evident, but the most familiar things are often the most poorly understood. The plane is homogeneous and has two dimensions. The visual consequences of these properties must be fully explored.

Jacques Bertin
Graphic representation constitutes one of the basic sign-systems conceived by the human mind for the purposes of storing, understanding, and communicating essential information. As a "language" for the eye, graphics benefits from the ubiquitous properties of visual perception. As a monosemic system, it forms the rational part of the world of images.

Jacques Bertin
Graphics owes its special significance to its double function as a storage mechanism and a research instrument.

Jacques Bertin
The use of computers shouldn't ignore the objectives of graphics, that are:
1) Treating data to get information.
2) Communicating, when necessary, the information obtained.

Jacques Bertin
The aim of the graphic is to make the relationship among previously defined sets appear.

Jacques Bertin
Data is transformed into graphics to understand. A map, a diagram are documents to be interrogated. But understanding means integrating all of the data. In order to do this it's necessary to reduce it to a small number of elementary data. This is the objective of the data treatment be it graphic or mathematic.

Jacques Bertin
To analyse graphic representation precisely, it is helpful to distinguish it from musical, verbal and mathematical notations, all of which are perceived in a linear or temporal sequence. The graphic image also differs from figurative representation essentially polysemic, and from the animated image, governed by the laws of cinematographic time. Within the boundaries of graphics fall the fields of networks, diagrams and maps. The domain of graphic imagery ranges from the depiction of atomic structures to the representation of galaxies and extends into the spheres of topography and cartography.

Jacques Bertin
As with any graphic, networks are used in order to discover pertinent troups of to inform others of the groups and structures discovered. It is a good means of displaying structures, However, it ceases to be a means of discovery when the elements are numerous. The figure rapidly becomes complex, illegible and untransformable.

Jacques Bertin
And now, at the end of the twentieth century, with the pressure of modern information and the advances of data processing, graphics is passing through a new and fundamental stage. The great difference between the graphic representation of yesterday, which was poorly dissociated from the figurative image, and the graphics of tomorrow, is the disappearance of the congential fixity of the image.

Jacques Bertin
A graphic is a diagram when correspondences on the plane can be established among all elements of another component.

Jacques Bertin
A graphic is never an end in itself; it is a moment in the process of decision making.

Jacques Bertin