Since my project is forming into something different than I had originally planned I need to explore a lot more. Edward Tufte is a resource that is becoming very useful to me. What interests me about Tufte is that he considers design strategies which can be presented in a way of arranging images as a narrative. I know that I will be using images and words as I have been collecting a lot of my own research. What I don’t know yet is how I will be presenting this information. His work has a very rich quality to it which makes his work so beautiful. He answers questions dealing with information design.
I really enjoyed reading about the “Cyclogram” narrative of the Salyut 6 space flight. The flight orbited the Earth for 96 days which was the longest space mission of its time from December 10, 1977 to March 16, 1978. This was a meter-long chart that was laid out before it’s departure which would give them an idea of the entire program. The two cosmonauts decided to rearrange it to fit to their needs. After coming up with a redesign they were still not happy with it as it showed the entire journey and made more difficult for them. What they ended up doing was folding this chart like an accordion so that they could not see past 15 days in the future. This method made it more comfortable with the amount of time they would be spending in orbit. These cosmonauts were the first to change an information design while they were in space. From their tracking they experienced 1500 sunrises and 1500 sunsets.
When I first looked at if without reading about it first it looked so interesting and organized. The colors were so beautiful, at first I thought it had something to do with water, but later read what it was about. I find it amazing that this information was arranged the way it was to help people see the journey that these cosmonauts went through. They told their story and they told it well. It is very impressive this system that they came up with that kept track of their activity for the day, days of rest, spacewalks, and much more.
