Jacques Bertin: Information

Jacques Bertin was French geographer and cartographer. Explore interesting quotes on information.

Jacques Bertin: 40 quotes1 like

“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.”

Source: Semiology of graphics (1967/83), p. 2

“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.
When one can superimpose, juxtapose, transpose, and permute graphic images in ways that lead to groupings and classings, the graphic image passes from the dead image, the 'illustration,' to the living image, the widely accessible research instrument it is now becoming. The graphic is no longer only the 'representation' of a final simplification, it is a point of departure for the discovery of these simplifications and the means for their justification. The graphic has become, by its manageability, an instrument for information processing.”

Source: Semiology of graphics (1967/83), p. 4

“There are as many types of questions as components in the information.”

Source: Semiology of graphics (1967/83), p. 10

“Information is the reply to a question.”

Source: Semiology of graphics (1967/83), p. 11

“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.”

Source: Graphics and graphic information processing (1981), p. 129: About why draw a network?