The banner images on this site are selections of historical mappings and data visualizations that responded to the following prompt:

While revisiting visual historical antecedents in Kostelnick and Hasset’s Shaping Information and the more aesthetically- focused concerns of Tufte, locate a visualization of information or visual argument produced before the 20th century. Write about the visualization much like Tufte (122-139) does about Minard’s graphic, which he calls analytical design, careful to articulate any aspects of the graphic that strike you as demonstrably rhetorical. Are there visual tropes?

I was completely blown away by the archival research completed and the ways each example had been tied back to each author’s individual research program. These shortened analyses act as an extended historical visual bibliography, and add to Kostelnick and Hasset’s historical visualization, adding an important element of time (as chronos) to what is often reduced only to kairos, or opportunity.

There’s nothing wrong with kairos, following this and other examples. However, strengthening, enriching, and building visual historiography is an important component of building a robust visual rhetoric.