Google Maps allows people to do some very interesting things with its data. One of the most effective (in terms of how it effects the viewer directly) and most modest in the means it uses to display complex abstract information is Carlos Labs Ground Zero 2.

Enter in your post code or the post code of your local nuclear target (I was torn between Rolls Royce Engines at Derby or R.A.F. Cottesmore), the megatonnage of your bomb  and Ground Zero 2 calculates the thermal and barometric blast radii and the fallout pattern. Never has mega death been so easy to understand.

Definitely not graphic jazz. 

This is a rather interesting piece of code-art/visualisation. Since it serves no obvious social function, yet is aesthetically intriguing, it might well seem to be graphic jazz.

But I’d like to make a counter case, Conductor (as it is known), is at heart a data visualisation; a way of taking the abstract and obscure and making it meaningful. As such making music with the New York subway is whimsical, but is amusingly ironic.

I’m willing to declare it not graphic jazz.

This idea teeters on the edge of being graphics jazz, but is probably effective that it couldn’t be.

Before Christmas I partially fulfilled my paternal duties by taking my two oldest kids to see Tron - Legacy. I’ve been mulling over, in a carbohydrate and liquor fueled haze, how I feel about the thing.

To cut through the suspense I’ll tell you now that I declare T-L (I can’t bring myself to waste any more of my life writing out the name again) Graphic Jazz. More than this I declare it both CGI Graphic Jazz, CGI Masturbation, and call down and anathema on it and all its spawn. Spurn them all.

CGI Graphics Jazz is a special class of Graphics Jazz that finds the technically informed viewer watching the screen and not thinking, ‘Wow! What an amazing piece of story telling.’ or even ‘That was great!’, but rather thinking ‘Fuck me! The processing power it must have taken to render those particle systems.’

This film is the absolute death of good story telling and the sign of blighted and impoverished communication (this blog entry could equally be about the BT Infinity ads, the ones that ripped of the Marvel New Universal ‘White Event’, looking fantastic but saying nothing about anything.). The message here is never mind the narrative, look at the flickering lights.

T-L must have been deeply satisfying to make (CGI Masturbation), and it looks beautiful, in a way that even the simplest console game does. But in narrative terms Super Mario Bros. Galaxy 2 kicks its arse.

CGI is wonderful, literally. It is full of wonder. A film like De Toro’s Hellboy 2 is a prime example of how a fairly shallow story can be given both power and depth by intelligent use of CGI visuals.

I don’t like this graphic intervention very much; but I figure that, my personal prejudices against pink furred hug monsters to one side, it isn’t graphic jazz. Let me explain why.

Why is it ‘good’?

It combines an awareness of location, Time Square NYC, with an awareness of the complex feelings that locations can arouse. Times Square has always been flashy. Times Square has often been seedy. Times Square looks like OZ most of the time, except when the running rolling news headlines on the square’s display inform you of genocide and terrorism (which can seem a tad incongruous), when it’s more like 1984. Playing games against this embedded knowledge is smart.

The form chosen, an interactive animated cheer-Muppet (by NorthKingdom), and the medium (a huge video display) are well suited as a way of playing against the history and geography of the square.

The medium is smart both as a choice and literally smart as in it’s technologies: it uses various digital feeds (RSS, SMS, etc.) to generate a cheerful, smiling response in real time. Good news is added, it causes a heart warming response. I do wonder if you type naughty words if it blocks it or causes the smile-gibbon to do something inappropriate. It will need to or the late night drunks pouring out of the bars around the square will have some adult fun with the pink thing.

Why is it ‘bad’?

I can’t think of any coldly logical reasons to dislike the graphic; beyond a general urge to use large caliber weapons to take out the pink thing (‘Gil’). The authors (NorthKindgom) say, ‘This (Gil) creates a unique interaction between people on the street and our character – when he smiles, you can’t help but smile back!’ Not the urge it creates in me, but then I’m a curmudgeon.

But, despicable as Gil is, it makes sense as a piece of design. Even the form of Gil deliberately sets up Sesame Street resonances; and since the Street is the smiling warm face of the city it kind of had to be done. The excessive material and code that makes it work is fit for the task. It’s not graphic jazz.

I swear I tried as hard as I could to find the origin of this graphic, it is so visually appealing and shows such excellent craft qualities, but in such a pointless way I just had to know. It comes from Good + Timko and Klick (http://www.good.is/post/transparency-where-are-all-the-fish/), and really is rather lovely.

Why it’s ‘good’!

1. It’s full of lovely stuff interestingly arranged
2. It’s full of colour and skilful rendering
3. It’s stylistically coherent

Why it’s ‘jazz’!

1. The style does nothing to inform the narrative of the piece. In 1975 I didn’t like fish and my mum used to tell me off for not eating it. In 2005 I liked fish, and ate anything with gills. Was I good in 1975 and bad in 2005? The candy colours and fish graphics tell me nothing about the problem or what I should do in response – that is left to the text. So why bother with the graphic?
2. The type is run across underlying imagery in a way which impedes the reading experience. In a slick graphic this is a bit clumsy. In this graphic it leaves me with the impression that it’s there as a kind of back-stop for anyone who doesn’t understand the graphic.
3. Going back to the narrative of the piece. ‘Patagonian Tooth Fish’ has a low population in 1952 and an equally low population in 2007. What does this tell the reader? The population seems to dip in time with the Atlantic Cod population crash in the 1990s. Is this significant?
4. Speaking graphically, what does the infographic do that an Excel (shudder!) chart couldn’t do in communication terms?

There could be a rationale in using a beautiful image to make us look at an ugly truth, but if this is the case the truth isn’t ugly enough. Graphic Jazz.

When I was a small child my father would play my brother and I jazz, and ask us to appreciate the beauty of some fine piece of playing: Charlie Parker for example. I’d listen and hear the tootles and trills never knowing what I was supposed to be listening to. I was the wrong audience, I didn’t know the rules, I didn’t know the game being played between musician and listener. I was lost.

There is a lot of graphic design done that does wonderful work in making the world easier to understand, making mute concrete and glass expressive and conceptually accessible to the viewer. There is also work done that makes no reference to user need being exclusively aimed at the approval of other designers; work of beauty, style and wit, that can only be understood by people with an intimate knowledge of the graphic game: this is the work I will christen graphic jazz.