UNSC/R Mapping the United Nations Resolutions Project Report 5
UNSC/R Piero Zagami Unit 3 LCC SGD MAGD 2008 Major Project Report
PROJECT REPORT
UNSC/R Mapping the United Nations Security Council Resolutions
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Table of contents
Preface
0.01 / Purpose 10-11
Introduction
1.01 / Statement of Intent 12-13 1.02 / Target audience 14-15 1.03 / Project overview 16-19
Content
2.01 / Contextual Research 20-21 2.02 / Visual Research 22-23 2.03 / Mapping designs 24-29
Development
3.01 / Data Analysis 30-31 3.02 / Initial experiments 32-33 3.03 / Colour-coding 34-35 3.04 / Static vs. dynamic 36-37 3.05 / Condensing data 38-41 3.06 / Flipbook 42-43
Prototypes
4.01 / The Visual System 44-49 4.02 / Testing the System 50-61
Final results 5.01 The outcomes 62-63
Conclusions
6.01 / Critical reflection 64-65 6.02 / The 2nd phase: an interactive platform 66-67
Appendix
7.01 / Storyboard for the UNSC/R website 68-73 Bibliography 76
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Preface 0.01 / Purpose
“Before starting a new project, designers frequently go off into a corner with a favorite pile of books (usually the same ones as last time) and skim through them looking for ideas. Nothing wrong with this. We all do it. We’re not necessarily setting out to copy ideas; we’re looking for triggers to set off a chain reaction of inspiration; it’s a good idea to look for triggers in unlikely places” (Adrian Shaughnessy 2005, How to be a graphic designer without loosing your soul). At the time I was seraching my own “trigger” to focus my Major Project, I looked back at my previous education in political studies for an inspiration. By looking at it as a graphic designer and not as a student in politics, many different topics tickled my mind. Within this subject area the fields where graphic design can be used to improve communication are never ending. I had just to pick one. Information design always intrigued me because the designer, by visualizing information, can act as a scientist. During my studies in politics I remember how professors wanted us to think as scientists in political matters and try to be neutral in our studies and analysis. When I approached information design for the first time I noticed that maybe graphic design and social sciences (such as politics) can have many things in common with a scientific methodology. This project looks at politics only in its aspects connected to education. The subject area of the United Nations is studied in disciplines such as international politics. As a former student of this field of study, my aim as a graphic designer is to explore information design strategies, and apply them to help other students, by creating tools that can improve students learning process.
Design is art people use. Ellen Lupton (2006, Design It Yourself)
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The United Nations Headquarter in New York, NY, USA. The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achieving world peace. The UN was founded in 1945 after World War II to replace the League of Nations, to stop wars between countries and to provide a platform for dialogue.
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Introduction 1.01 / Statement of Intent
“Maps are man-made things and so are neither arbitrary nor pure. They purport to be natural and objective visual representations arising out of scientific observations, and yet the observations are selective and communicated through some graphic form: the scientist (or surveyor) relies on the cartographer’s art to illustrate his findings” (Roger Fawcett-Tang, Mapping, 2002). The activity of making diagrams and maps of information is one of the most important and purposeful fields of studies of graphic design. Through a careful treatment of data the designer uses his graphical skill to make
tools that are meaningful for his audience. To be able to produce such a piece of information design the designer’s first task is to select, organize and classify a body of data and a series of parameters. But his first duty is to formulate a clear question: Is there a need to map a certain body of information? What improvement will it bring in the life of individuals? The challenge of mapping requires the designer to define a clear objective, a target audience that will benefit from its results, and a clear understanding of the selected content/context.
Right page: An image of one of my mapping sketches. The drawing is just a rough version of a mapping strategies applied to the UN Resolutions, but it contains some key parameters used in the final results (see Prototypes Chapter).
Maps are man-made things and so are neither arbitrary nor pure. They purport to be “natural” and objective visual representations arising out of scientific observations, and yet the observations are selective and communicated through some graphic form: the scientist (or surveyor) relies on the cartographer’s art to illustrate his findings. Roger Fawcett-Tang (2002, Mapping)
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This project aims to map a specific subject area within the realm of international politics. The reason why I have engaged with this context resides in my background studies. Long time before I realized I was going to study graphic design, I took a degree in politics. During this time I often noticed that several areas of social and political studies could have benefited of diagrams or maps to visually support students to access information at a glance while reading their textbooks. I was aware that mapping information in subject areas connected to university disciplines is nothing new. Scientific subjects such as physics, medicine and chemistry are strictly connected with visual maps that help users
to visualize information (a famous example is the table of elements in chemistry, considered an essential tool to learn the subject’s basics). But when it comes to nonscientific disciplines (such as politics) the use of mapping design is not as much common, for obvious reasons: scientific data are more likely to be mapped than non-scientific ones, and it seems that sciences teaching programs are much more based on maps and diagrams than the ones in politics or social sciences. At the end of my degree in politics (2004) I graduated with an essay about the United Nations. During my studies, I noticed that textbooks about the UN were often referring to documents called United Nations Resolutions.
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Introduction 1.02 / Target audience
Those documents are recorded with an issue number (e.g. UNSC R. 678), and it is not uncommon that students have to memorize several of those documents to The UN Resolutions issued by the Security Council are more than 1700; this massive amount of data doesn’t’ come in an organized form because those documents constitute the decisions of the UN executive body (the Security Council), therefore the only parameter of classification is the numerical order and the date displayed on the document. A map that displays UN Resolutions is an idea based on the belief that such a tool will allow users to have a visual representation of this multitude of data, and it will help students, professors and experts that work in the United Nations, to improve their work. In this project, my aim as a graphic designer is to produce a piece of information design that visually conveys data in a simple and elegant way. The main research question that leaded my project since the beginning was based on the design cleavage efficiency/ aesthetics. I wanted my final piece to look as visually appealing as immediately communicative relevant information. Since the beginning of this project (June 2007) many things have changed. My initial Major Project Proposal (Unit 2) was focused on the same subject area (education in politics, and the United Nations), and it was addressed to the same target audience (students and experts in politics), but it considered a range of possible areas of the UN to be mapped, such as the UN country members, bodies and specialized agencies of the UN, and the peacekeeping operations. The choice of picking the UN Resolutions is related to a conversation that I had with some of my former university colleagues, now working in political organizations. One of them had a placement in the UN in 2006, and his feedbacks about my project addressed me to look into the UN Resolutions.
Top: Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the UN. Bottom: LUISS University ( Politics and Social Sciences Studies, Rome, It). Experts in politics whose works is related to the UN, university students and academics (professors) are the main target categories of my project.
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Introduction 1.03 / Project overview
I noticed that by making an orientation tool such as a UN Resolutions map I could have helped not only students in politics, but also experts that work in/for the UN. Ultimately I resolved my project very differently from my initial expectations. During an early stage of my development phase I redefined my design brief and I assigned myself a new goal: to design a visual system that will work dynamically and interactively in order to allow users to navigate through the displayed data, selecting the ones they need by interacting with the map. This ambitious aim required me to realistically evaluate the time given within
the Major Project submission deadlines; therefore I decided to split my project in two phases. The first phase was focused on the graphical aspects of this project; the second one, starting after the project submission will be focused on the development of an interactive platform to introduce elements of interactivity in my mapping design. The first phase of this two-steps project is now completed and is documented in this Project Report; the second phase is treated as a separate self-initiated project, to start after the Major Project’s submission.
Right page: Images of my Project Proposal (Unit 2). Top: the cover of my proposal publication. Mid: spread page of my proposal. The page shows an experiment based on mapping the membership of 192 country members of the UN. Bottom: A1 poster displaying a mapping strategy applied to the UN membership subject area.
Project Development Plan: Unit 2: May-June 2008
Definition of target audience: Students. Field of study: Mapping. Subject area: Politicals studies, UN.
Phase 01 (Unit 3): July-November 2008
Definition of a 2-phases project: Phase 01 deadline: Major Project submission. Phase 01 goal: defining a viable graphical form for my mapping strategy.
Phase 02 (Self-Initiated): January-June 2009 Phase 02 goal: Development of an interactive platform for my mapping strategies. Final goal: UNSC/R website activation.
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Content 2.01 / Contextual Research
Left page: Ugo Villani, Lezioni su l’ONU e la crisi del golfo (Lessons on the UN and the gulf crisis): this is a book about political studies related to the United Nations and the war in Iraq in 1991, I used to study on. The image on the right shows an example of the content in the book. I marked with red circles any reference to the UNSC Resolutions on one of the pages of the book.
After the submission of the Major Project Proposal I looked back at my academic background studies in politics and started reading books about international politics that I used in my previous studies and essays. In my contextual research I noticed that the United Nations most important element of studies is the activity of its highest ranked body: the Security Council. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is the branch of the United Nations charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of international sanctions, and the authorization for military
action. Its powers are exercised through the United Nations Security Council Resolutions. A United Nations Security Council Resolution is a United Nations resolution voted on by the fifteen members of the United Nations Security Council. The UN Charter specifies that a resolution can be adopted if nine or more of the fifteen Council members vote for the resolution, and if it is not vetoed by any of the five permanent members. These members (also called the Great five Powers) the Republic of China, France, the Russian Federation, which replaced the Soviet Union in 1991, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Because of their privileged position to interrupt any decision of the Security Council,
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the Great Powers influenced the activity of the Security Council, often preventing it to be effective and efficient in its action. During the first 40 years of history of the UN, the Security Council became the playground of the cold war, where USA and USSR confronted each other in a continuous arm wrestling. Several textbooks within the international politics area focus on the analysis of the Security Council’s activity from historical, political and juridical points of view. Those books always refer to the original texts of the decisions taken by the Security Council. Those decisions are recorded in the UNSC Resolutions and the textbooks often quote those documents.
Right page: a close-up of the text of a UNSC Resolution. The Resolutions issued from the Security Council between 1946 and 2007 are 1794 (more than 4000 pages).
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Content 2.02 / Visual Research
An image from The Visual display of Quantitative Information (E. R. Tufte,1983). the diagram is based on a multivariate data analysis. Triple functioning data measure shows: 1) the number of divisions in France for each month; 2) what particular divisions were in France each month; 3) the duration of each division’s presence in France (diagram by Leonard P. Ayres, The War with Germany).
“Modern data graphics can do much more than simply substitute for small statistical tables. At their best, graphics are instruments for reasoning about quantitative information. Often the most effective way to describe, explore, and summarize a set of numbers – even a very large set – is to look at pictures of those numbers. Furthermore, of all methods for analyzing and communicating statistical information, well designed data graphics are usually the simplest and at the same time the most powerful” (E. R. Tufte, 1983; The Visual display of Quantitative Information). This quote from Edward Tufte summarizes one of the main principles that guided my set of experiments during the project development
phase. The ability to simplify information is a crucial skill the designer needs to possess in order to develop an efficient piece of information design. The principle of graphical excellence, expressed in his book The Visual display of Quantitative Information, is defined “a matter of substance, of statistics, and of design (...). Graphical excellence is that what which gives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest amount of time with the least ink in the smallest space”. Another principle I applied to my strategies is Tufte’s claim for removing the practice of information design from the distorting grasp of propaganda and graphic design. He argues that a chart or diagram should employ no
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Modern data graphics can do much more than simply substitute for small statistical tables. At their best, graphics are instruments for reasoning about quantitative information. E. R. Tufte (1983, The Visual display of Quantitative Information)
metaphoric distractions, but should stay within the realm of objective observation. This statement becomes particularly meaningful when the selected data spring from the realm of politics, where propaganda and politically oriented views can affect the designer’s objectivity and a scientific treatment of data. Ellen Lupton (2008, Graphic Design: The New Basics) describes diagrams as tools that “allow us to see relationships that would not come forward in a straight list of numbers of a verbal description”. Moving away from a conservative position she considers Tufte’s purist point of view “profound and compelling but it may be overly restrictive (...). The language of diagrams has yielded a rich and evocative repertoire within contemporary design. In editorial contexts, diagrams often function to illuminate and explain complex ideas. They can be clean and reductive or richly expressive” In her most recent book Lupton brings examples of works that “use diagrams to depict personal histories, a process that forces the designer to develop systematic ways to represent subjective experiences”. Furthermore, other inputs came from the analysis of several info-design works,
by Roger-Fawcett Tang in his book Mapping. “Anything can be mapped, and most things are: places, businesses, galaxies, histories, bodies, philosophies, devices and databases. The subject-matter of a map is measured, named and ordered (captured!) by the mapmaker who, armed with carefully verified data and a language of pictorial description, puts everything in its proper place with its proper name as he or she sees it” (R. FawcettTang, Mapping, 2002). Fawcett-Tang’s analysis displays a rich variety of examples of contemporary mapping strategies applied to many different environments and subject areas, through the use of symbols, typography or abstract patterns. The more I was researching within the realm of mapping the more I was realising I was being attracted by extravagant works that, for their complexity, were very distant from the classic examples shown by Tufte. The intricacy and the level of abstraction of most of the works shown in the website www.visualcomplexity.com represent the most advanced and experimental frontier of mapping designs I found in my research. Many of the designers hosted on Visual
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Content 2.03 / Mapping designs
A_B_ peace & terror etc by Peter Cronyak (2008): Peace & terror is a geopolitical survey of the 192 member states of the United Nations with regard to the quantitative degree to which each contributes to peace and terror in the world. The project is a dual-sided poster where the A_ side displays measures of peace, while the B_ side, measures of terror. For each of the A_B_ measures, the graph is divided into 3 rings (3 separate indexes for peace and 3 separate indexes for terror) that are themselves individual quantitative measures obtained from researchers working in the field of geopolitics. The quantitative variation for the peace and terror measures is represented as variation in line thickness: thin line=low value, thick line=high value. The functional nature of the poster becomes poignantly relevant when one makes detailed comparisons across nations for the various measures—many of the results are quite surprising and stand in contrast to prevailing norms of collective national perception. Dual-sided screen print by K2 Screen London. The A_ side is printed verso in metallic graphite ink while the B_ side is printed recto in pearlescent white ink. Source: www.visualcomplexity.com
Complexity focused their strategies around programming software (such as Processing), instead of using graphic design applications. By assigning mathematical values to a whole series of parameters, they let the software do all the calculation and creating complex visual patterns. As a matter of fact digital computation seems to be the new dimension of contemporary mapping design, as the works of Wesley Grubbs and Nick Yahnke (2008 Presidential Candidate Donations), Quentin Delobel (Josef Muller-Brockmann and the International Typographic Style) and
Peter Crnokrak (A_B_ peace and terror etc.) demonstrate. These works definitely inspired my final resolution; the displacement of data is elegant, and although the intricacy of the design doesn’t allow a detailed analysis of the whole body of data, it gives the viewer an overview of those data. By looking at their mapping strategies, the overall emerging image draws a picture of the data, more than listing them all, not far from Tufte’s theory (“the most effective way to describe a set of data is to look at pictures of those data”).
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Josef Muller-Brockmann and the International Typographic Style by Quentin Delobel: Josef Muller-Brockmann was a Swiss graphic designer and teacher, mostly recognised for his simple designs and his clean use of typography, notably Helvetica. His shapes and colours have inspired many graphic designers in the 21st century, and made him one of the main precursors of the International Typographic Style, also known as Swiss Style. This visualization, produced by Quentin Delobel, is the result of a personal web research about Josef Muller-Brockmann and the international typographical style. It contains 3 key elements: (1) the research of information on the web, (2) chronological information on Josef Muller-Brockmann’s life and links to the last part, and finally the last part (3) is composed of a critical article based on data found online. Source: visualcomplexity.com
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DesigningTheNews by DesigningTheNews Design Lab (2007): DesigningTheNews is a series of visual experiments which explore the news in various ways to encourage new ways of understanding information. The source of information for this project will come from the Guardian newspaper. Everyday all over the world millions of people read the news, but often give little regard to the way it’s presented. The aim of the project is to develop structures, patterns, and exciting visual techniques to effectively present information. Besides some early experiments with info graphics, the main focus of the project has been on data visualisation. With each piece created the perspective has shifted between the importance, the popularity, and the structure of the information. Source: www.designingthenews.com
Visualizing The Bible by Chris Harrison, Christoph Romhild (2008): This visualization started as a collaboration between Christoph Romhild and Chris Harrison. As Chris explains: “Christoph, a Lutheran Pastor, first emailed me in October of 2007. He described a data set he was putting together that defined textual cross references found in the Bible. He had already done considerable work visualizing the data before contacting me. Together, we struggled to find an elegant solution to render the data, more than 63,000 cross references in total. As work progressed, it became clear that an interactive visualization would be needed to properly explore the data, where users could zoom in and prune down the information to manageable levels. However, this was less interesting to us, as several Bible-exploration programs existed that offered similar functionality (and much more). Instead we set our sights on the other end of the spectrum - something more beautiful than functional. At the same time, we wanted something that honored and revealed the complexity of the data at every level as one leans in, smaller details should become visible”. Source: www.chrisharrison.net
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2008 Presidential Candidate Donations by Wesley Grubbs, Nick Yahnke (2008): In an effort to better understand the patterns within the 2008 presidential candidate donations, the authors produced this interesting diagram, mapping all donations made between January 2007 and July 2008, to McCain (left in red) and Obama (right in blue). The two inner circles represent the total amount of donations for both candidates, while the outer segments illustrate variations in the amounts donated. The top-most bracket is any donation between $1 and $100, the second: $101 - $500, the third: $501 - $,1000 and the final: all amounts over $1,000. The size of each bracket represents the percentage amount that bracket constitutes in a candidate’s total donations, and the hair-like lines coming out of them are the names of each donor, which produces a useful visual reference to the density of each category. The distinction between candidates is immediately perceived with this visualization. Source: www.visualcomplexity.com
ClusterBall: Visualizing Wikipedia by Chris Harrison (2007). Harrison is a prolific researcher who has done some great data visualization projects. Among them is ClusterBall. This visualization shows the structure of three levels of Wikipedia category pages and their interconnections. Centered in the graph is the parent node, in this case, Medicine (first image). Pages that are linked from this parent node are rendered inside the ball. Finally, pages that are linked to the latter (secondary) nodes are rendered on the outer ring. Links between category pages are illustrated by edges, which are color coded to represent their depth from the parent node. Nodes are clustered such that edge lengths are minimized. This forces highly connected groups of pages to clump together, essentially forming topical groups. The center acts as an anchor while the ring provides a fixed perimeter. This allows the secondary, super-categories to “float� above clusters. Source: www.chrisharrison.net
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Left page: Overnewsed but Uninformed by Stefan Bräutigam (2006) is a beautiful & detailed infographic analysis of our actual global news situation. each 2-page spread focuses on a specific news-related theme, such as the global news distribution, media usage, most used news sources, news conglomerates & business structures, state of news censure, use of online media, plus a visual analysis of different title page layouts, as well as a direct comparison of different news headlines for the same news story.
Right page: Spam Annual Report by Daniel Burger (2008): 2007 was a record year in spam. Worldwide, more than 346 trillion spam emails were sent, which represent about 98% of all e-mail traffic. In an effort to understand who is behind the spam and why it’s so difficult to effectively combat the phenomenon, Daniel Burger, as part of his thesis in FH Dusseldorf, produced a striking book (164 pages) with amazing information design posters depicting different aspects of one year’s spam in 2007.
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Development 3.01 / Data Analysis
The first step of my project development was to collect the data, followed by their analysis and classification. By focusing my mapping strategies on the organization of the body of documents issued by the Security Council, my first task was to get a hold on the amount of documents (Resolutions) produced. The choice of not to limit my research to a small period of time but to extend it to the entire life of the Organization (1946-2007) is due to reasons that go beyond graphic design, and reside to my political studies background. By visualising the entire activity of the Security Council from its birth to nowadays, I wanted to produce a complete diagram of the UN existence, and highlight tendencies and changes reflecting political situations; I strongly believed my mapping strategy would have not been meaningful if only a fragment of the UN timeline is considered. The UNSC Resolutions are files (each of those composed
by one and twenty pages ca.) that summarize the most important decisions taken by the members of the Security Council in regard to situations that can be a threat to the international security and peace, admission of new members, or it can issue topics related to the Organization itself. The collection of the entire body of documents took a few weeks, in which I printed over 4000 pages of resolutions. The reasons why I decided to have them all printed are: 1) having the physical piles of paper within reach helped me to classify them, and I had a clearer idea of the amount of data I was about to classify. 2) The amount of documents was turned into a series of books to be considered as part of my research. At the times I was collecting the documents (August-September), I was intrigued by the idea of making a huge book of the documents collected to inform my mapping strategies. The contrast between
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the book and the diagram would have helped me to communicate the aim of my project (to synthesize that amount of information into one map). On a second thought, while reading the documents I noticed that more than 70% of the pages were referring to the Resolutions produced after 1990 (more than 50% of the whole body of Resolutions). I could have displayed this increment of activity of the UN by making several books divided by periods of time. I produced six of them, each one containing 10 years of Resolutions. The books are very different in volume between each other and that is the proof of the different intensity of the UN activity in the decades considered. This experiment (based on classifying and binding the documents together) helped me to test an unusual mapping exercise, a map based on books and on the visual impact of those books. Their consistency and thickness is the paramter to compare the UN activity.
The images in the left and right page show the process of collecting, printing, classifying and binding together the amount of UNSC Resolutions produced from 1946 to 2007.
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Development 3.02 / Initial experiments
Once I collected the body of raw data, I took some time to refine my list of Resolutions, “cleaning” the data from typographic inconsistencies of the codes used to classify the documents (sometimes “UNSC/ Res. N. xxx”, or “Security Council Resolution N. xxx” and so forth). During the data analysis phase I tried several strategies to decode the information: I also tried non-computer based methods by filling a copybook with my list of Resolutions, one year per page. The goal was to gain confidence with the data in order to be able to control them carefully. In this phase I started to notice interesting differences in the
Left page: My first visual experiment using the UNSC/ Resolution amount of data. The experiment attempts to visualize the quantitative difference/increment of activity of the UN from 1946 to 2007. !990 is considered a turning point of UN’s political role, because it corresponds to the end of the cold war and to an increased influence of USA within the administration of the Organization.
increment of activity of the Organization. At first I simply decided to record the number of Resolutions that were produced each year. The first visual exercise was inspired by the principles of the time-series graphs, a basic scheme to display data based on a time parameter. My diagram was showing columns of black dots, each one representing a Resolution. Therefore the height of each column determined the intensity of activity of the Security Council in one year. The columns were going from 1946 to 2007. While testing different graphic forms to show this increase throughout time, I started realising what kind
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of mapping design I was looking for my final outcome, even though it was an early stage (September). The graphic shapes that I found most appealing were the ones that were recalling circular forms; the circle has a lot of elements in common with the United Nations; circular forms recall concepts as “continuity”, “union”, “democracy”. Nevertheless circular diagrams gave an elegant look to the design without sacrificing the legibility of the information displayed.
2007
19
46
Right page: visual experiments using circular forms to displace data on a time-series parameter basis. The colour-coded classification is in its test phase, and data are not yet integrated with the information visualization. By applying Tufte’s analysis of mapping strategies I noticed that the problem with this kind of classification is that the simple passage of time is not a good explanatory variable: descriptive chronology is not causal explanation
2007
19
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Development 3.03 / Colour-coding
Left page: a sketch for a mapping strategy that considers colour classifications of the Resolutions and time parameters.
Before starting my visual experiments I made an attempt to classify my data collection, by defining categories of Resolutions and assigning them a specific colour, to test how colour coding could affect my mapping strategies. By looking at books about politics and the UN, I defined 6 categories to split the Resolutions, following relevant parameters to be recognized by students and experts in the subject area. The categories are the following: 1) Situations concerning peace and security (the most common kind of resolutions; those documents identify a problematic situation in
a geographical area, e.g. a civil war, a falling dictatorship, or an invasion from another country); 2) Admission of new members to the UN; 3) Administration of the UN; 4) topics of general interest (such as the international use of mass destruction weapons, the abuse of women, Conferences on peace); 5) law and jurisdictional bodies linked to the UN (such as the International Court of Justice, but also tribunals created by UN Commissions); 6) complaints or requests from countries members of the UN.
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Right page: Colour classification process. At this stage the colour choice is purely arbitrary. The examples displayed show on the left side of the list, an attempt to build cross-reference connection lines between the Resolutions. Although I consider it an interesting aspect of the Resolutions analysis I had to abandon this strategy because it required a level of analysis I had not the time for (the process would require an in-depth reading of the whole body of documents impossible to achieve in the few months left).
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Development 3.04 / Static vs. dynamic
Left page: the two images show how a dynamic interface could be applied to a mapping design to highlight information. The left image isolate 3 Resolutions (the 3 grey dots) and the years they belong to. Assuming the selected Resolutions have something n common (they might be talking about the same situation, e.g. the Cyprus situation, or the India-Pakistan war), the user, by selecting any of them, activate the connection links, by clicking on the dots with the mouse. The right image shows how additional information, can work as roll-overs that pop-up when the user click on a specific area of the map.
By integrating my visual experiments with my classification I added a colour element to my mapping strategies and additional layers of information about the UN activity. Unfortunately my first prototypes weren’t leading me yet to visual results I was satisfied with. From my previous research about mapping design, I knew I was looking for a visual form that could communicate a clear idea through an elegant design. I was aware that to combine simplicity, elegance, and efficiency of the design I might have had to build mapping strategies that could have worked on multiple mediums. The re-definition of my design brief brought me towards the idea of a design that could have worked on printed formats (to communicate an overview of data to a broader audience), and on interactive platforms (to convey detailed
information to a more demanding audience). The new definition of my final resolution leaded me to consider my mapping strategy in a new perspective. My diagram would have worked, not only in its printed outcomes, but also be adaptable to a dynamic format, where the user can customise the data displacement, by typing in keywords (such as the name of a Resolution, or a range of time to compare the UN activity by looking at the documents produced in the selected years). Considering the deadline of the Major Project, I knew it wasn’t possible for me to get the website done within November (coding such a big amount of data would have required several months), but my goal was to include in my final solutions a proposal for dynamic applications of my mapping strategies.
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Right page: An example of cross relation visualization between Resolutions that share the same main topic. The Cyprus question is the name of not one, but many Resolutions. The subject related to the independence of the island has been in the agenda of the Security Council for several years. The map displayed, attempts to highlight interconncetions between the Resolutions on this matter.
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Development 3.05 / Condensing data
My list of UN Resolutions was probably the most important data file I created during my data collection phase, because contained all the edited names of the Resolutions, ordered by date and number. After such an amount of time spent working on the refinement of that list, I was curious to test its visualization on a poster, by condensing the information (year, number and name of the Resolution) in one block of text. I started placing text in A2 and A1 posters, using different character styles to visualize data.
The aim of this series of tests, more than trying to produce something useful for the final user, was more a playful test based on the use of typography applied to information. The result was a series of posters that produce an interesting effect when placed next to the final map (described in the next chapters): compared to mapping designs that visualize information in a simple and synthetic way, those posters stress on the contrast and the complexity of information (considering the huge amount of data of the body of UNSC Resolutions).
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Left and right page: the images show an example of “data compression� through a typographic experiment. The whole amount of 1794 Resolutions is listed in a line where the documents names are placed one after another. Years, numbers and names of the Resolutions have different character style, to allow the reader a certain readability throughout the text.
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This series of tests attempts to compromise readability by hiding part or the entirety of the text. A: Text is partially hidden, but visible. The names of the Resolutions are deleted, and only numbers are visible (years and Resolutions numbers).
This series of tests attempts to compromise readability by hiding part or the entirety of the text. B: Years are partially hidden by a cyan stroke. A black stroke hides everything else, leaving only continuous black lines throughout the page.
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C: The entire text is hidden. Dates are covered by a blue stroke, numbers are hidden by a black stroke and the space between the blue and black strokes are measured by the length of the names of the Resolutions (hidden).
D: Names and numbers of Resolutions are hidden by a continuous stroke as in “B�. Years are entirely hidden by a blue stroke.
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Development 3.06 / Flipbook
Aside from the main mapping strategies (that are dedicated to produce mapping designs in poster format and on web), I designed a diagram in the form of a pocket booklet, based on a narrative structure (in the same way as a flipbook works). The main problem of my strategies was to summarize so much content in only one big image (1794 documents spread over 61 years); I planned to make a tool that could support users to analyze the activity of the UN year by year. The structure of the publication is based on
a layout that repeats itself throughout the whole book. Each page is focused to visualize information about one specific year: on the left page I displayed a list of the documents produced in one year; on the right page a graphic representation of the activity of the UN reflects the Resolutions list on the other page (the list and the diagrams are connected together by a colour coding system, to give the user the possibility to visually locate the Resolutions on the diagram).
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Left and right page: an example of a flipbook spread page. The left page of the spread illustrates the Resolutions issued in the year considered in the spread (in this case 2004), and the right page of the spread shows a visualization of those data in a circular form. Compared to its first version (the two pictures in the right page) the visualization has changed. By showing the whole circle in the center of the page the colour-coded information was so small that the human eye could almost not perceive it. Due to format restrictions (I wanted the book to be produced in A6 size), I only kept a quarter of the circle, on the top-right corner of the page, so that I could show the image in a bigger size.
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Development 4.01 / The Visual System
Left page: A sketch for the prototype of my main mapping strategy. The idea is based on “year-rings“, something like portions of a circular grid. Each one refers to a year comprised the 1946-2007 range of years. By splitting those portions in smaller segments I can place as many boxes (or blocks) as the Resolutions produced every year.
Towards the end of September I reviewed the results of my experiments, to observe where the development of my visual system was leading me leading me: I had tested several mapping strategies (on posters and booklet formats), which were giving a general overview of the body of information, showing quantitative increases. But the crucial problem was the accessibility of information and the level of detail connected to it: the diagrams were not user-friendly, not to demanding users that may need to make deep analysis of data. At this stage I redefined the goals of my project. The new objective was to produce a series of printed versions of a mapping system that will be transformed (in a second, post-
submission phase) into an interactive platform ready to be used by students. This platform will give a real contribution to the final user in its dynamic interactive format and will be informed with in-depth content related to each data (downloadable PDF documents of each Resolutions, possibility to isolate parts of the diagrams and select the requested sets of information). Once I redefined my goals, my first priority was to design the graphic form of my mapping strategy, by taking in consideration it would have worked both as a printed outcome (a simple, elegant poster, displaying basic information about the Resolutions), and as a
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Right page: The grid for my visual system. the grid is composed by 61 year-rings and each ring is divided in 100 blocks. This grid is designed to be expandable, therefore this design is likely to be updatable and new data can be put every year to keep the Resolutions map always up to date. The following pages display prototypes and experiments based on this grid system.
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Left page; Experiment 01: this basic experiment is focused to place the Resolutions on the grid I created, on a time parameter, with no further classifications. An increment of activity of the UN is visible starting from the year 1990. The rings after this dates, have a larger extension (the longest year-ring,1993, is composed by 93 Resolutions, therefore almost complete the circle). This experiment is the starting point of further tests.
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dynamic system to be integrated in the next step of the interactive platform (post-project submission). The final result is a visual system composed by 62 concentric rings. Each ring represents one of the 61 years of life of the Organization. The rings are crossed by several segments, which divide the whole circle in 100 slices (the highest number of resolutions in one year is 93). The system design is meant to be updatable in time (just by adding one more ring to the system each year, and placing in the grid all the new Resolutions). By adding new years (new rings) to the map the oldest areas will be compressed (but still visible and available to users) and the whole circular design will progressively be expanded. The system works as a data container, and information can be displayed in different ways, depending on what aspects of the
Resolutions are more relevant to the user. Each Resolution is placed in each one of the small sections created by the intersection between the lines and the circles, by applying a series of simple parameters: one resolution per block - starting from the centre of the circle and going counter-clockwise. The smallest ring corresponds to the year 1946 (the starting point of the UN activity) and the widest is 2007; the amount of Resolutions issued in 1946 corresponds to the amount of blocks that are filled with grey. By moving to the next bigger ring when the previous one is completed, each ring will have an amount of grey coloured bocks comprised between 0 and 100. The first step of the system development was reached when I completed my grid and displayed the data without any further classification.
Right page; Experiment 01: close-up. Every Resolution is placed in each one of the small sections created by the intersection between the lines and the circles. The system is based on a series of simple parameters: one resolution per block - starting from the centre of the circle and going counter-clockwise.
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Colour tests for my Experiment 02. The experiment is based on 6 classes of data classification. The choice of a correct colour palette is crucial to give the visual map an appropriate appearance, sober but effective. Experiment 02 is explained in detail in the next pages.
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Prototypes 4.02 / Testing the System
The second step of my Prototypes phase was based on testing the system by classifying data with different criteria in each experiment. The more parameters I was able to assign to my system the more flexible, adaptable, thus useful the system would have been. For instance, just by applying the 6 classes division I defined previously, the visual look of the system changes radically. The resulting abstract shape appears different from the initial one, increasing the complexity of the whole map.
Political crisis such as armed invasions, civil wars, or ethnic conflicts. This typology of Resolutions represents the majority of the documents issued by the Security Council. Within this category are comprised peacekeeping operations matters. The Charter of the United Nations gives the UN Security Council the power and responsibility to take collective action to maintain international peace and security. For this reason, the international community usually looks to the Security Council to authorize peacekeeping operations, as all UN Peacekeeping missions must be authorized by the Security Council. Admission of New Members to the UN. Nowadays the country members of the UN are 192 but at the times the Organization was created, the country members were only 48. The year that records the highest amount of Resolutions of this kind is 1960. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations. Administration of the UN. This category includes procedural matters, such as the languages spoken in the General Assembly, and non-procedural matters such as the recommendation of the appointment of the Secretary General or peacekeeping operations guidelines (distinguished from the Resolutions treating peacekeeping operations in practice, considered in the first category). Complaints, requests and letters from country members to the Secretary General or the President of the Security Council. This typology of documents records all the unilateral actions taken from country members within the Security Council or the General Assembly. Topics of general interest. This category includes matters such as the protection of civilian or children in armed conflicts, conferences on peace and security, or on international terrorist acts. Judicial United Nations bodies activity. The most frequent kind of Resolutions are the ones entitled International Court of Justice, but in the ‘90s several Tribunals have been created. an example is the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, established to prosecute serious crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and to try their alleged perpetrators. The tribunal is an ad-hoc court.
Although its intricacy makes it uneasy to interpret, I am confident this version of the map will work on an interactive platform. In the next phase (post project submission) I will test the usability of the system starting from this visual experiment (the 6 classes division). I believe that by making it interactive users would be able to click on the map’s portions of interest and information will be immediately displayed in an efficient way.
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Experiment 02: This experiment is based on the definition of 6 classes of Resolutions, the map is divided in. Light colours are used to display the classes that appears most frequently, so that the overall look of the map doesn’t overwhelm the reader.
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United Nations Security Council Resolution. The whole amount of Resolutions issued between 1946 and 2007. This parameter reports the results obtained in the Experiment 01 Resolutions regarding peacekeeping operations. Every Resolution coloured with cyan, is considered a document related to interventions of the UN personnel as mere Observers or as agents of control. Those situations usually identify countries with falling dictatorships, civil or ethnic wars, and the UN Security Council can decides to send a “force� to prevent the degeneration of the situation or the conflict. High tension situations involving UN peacekeepers. Many situations concerning the peacekeeping operations configure violent scenarios where the peacekeepers have to deal with non-predicted escalations of tension between civilians, rebels or invading armies. In some specific cases, the UN forces have been authorized to fight back, or to organize military operations (some examples are the war in Korea in 1950, the war in Iraq in 1991, the Somalia intervention in 1993).
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In one of my experiments I made an attempt to communicate an overview of the information displayed to a broader audience than only students (I was in search of an inspiration to test new ways to classify my data). I started looking at aspects of the UN that are known to everyone, not only to experts and students. Then I decided to look back at my data analysis stage and classify the Resolutions on a different basis. I was interested in analyzing the peacekeeping operations and the military interventions of the UN (my interest in this
topic is due to the fact that I graduated with an essay on the UN peacekeepers in 2004). I placed my data in a similar way to the Experiment 01, but this time I divided them in three categories: The total amount of Resolutions (in grey), the ones that were regarding interventions and peacekeeping operations (in cyan), and the ones that were regarding the most delicate aspects (in red) of those operations (bloodshed between civilians and UN troops, kidnapping of UN personnel and so forth).
Experiment 03: This test is aimed to be read by a broader target audience, and its level of complexity is reduced (compared to Experiment 02). In addition, the type of information is more general, (the peace-keeping operations) and the displacement of the Resolutions on a “intensity“ basis of the peace-keeping operations makes it much more accessible at a glance. The intensity is due to the fact that the red spots are highlighting moments of tension/violence in the UN peacekeeping activity.
1950: The War in Korea. Although the first official peace-keeping operation was authorized only in 1956, there have been many UN interventions (some of them armed, such as the one in Korea) that have to be considered such as peacekeeping action. 1956: First United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF I)
Second United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF II)
The 90’s are considered the time of most intense activity of the Security Council. The most famous cases of interventions are the ones in Iraq (1991), Somalia (1993), former Yugoslavia (1993), Rwanda (1995) and Haiti (1995).
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Another experiment highlights a single group of Resolutions (the Cyprus Situation), in order to allow users to isolate one specific topic of interest and visualize only the Resolutions related to it. The Cyprus Situation works as an example to illustrate how any group of Resolutions that belongs to the same topic, can be shown within the map’s criteria. The last experiment (Experiment 04) of this series was focused to stress the accent on the increment of “activity” of the Security Council per year. By looking at the increment displayed in the Experiment 01, this fact comes out clearly: before 1990 the Security Council used to issue between 2 and 20 Resolutions per year; after the end of the old war and the fall of Communism in the Soviet countries the number of Resolutions increased from 40 to
even 90 per year. To highlight this increment in different ways, I decided to assign to each ring the same colour (black) and a transparency layer equal to the amount of Resolutions produced every year. Not entirely satisfied with the visual result obtained by Experiment 04, I turned my series of blocks of Resolutions into ring’s segments and assigned them a colour value between magenta (for low activity) and cyan (for high activity). By colour coding the ring-portion, the overlap of this test with the previous one produced a more interesting visual result, highlighting the change of phase of the 1990s (see next page for images of Experiment 04 and 05).
Experiment 04: by using the example of the series of Resolutions related to the topic “The Cyprus Situation“, this example of mapping strategy aims to isolate groups of Resolutions that relate to one single topic, throughout time. Cyprus case is the perfect example because is one of the biggest groups of Resolutions, and the Security Council had the Cyprus situation in its agenda for over 40 years
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Experiment 05: This experiment focuses on the increment of “activity� of the Security Council per year. By looking at the increment displayed in the Experiment 01, this fact comes out clearly: before 1990 the Security Council used to issue between 2 and 20 Resolutions per year; after the end of the old war and the fall of Communism in the Soviet countries the number of Resolutions increased from 40 to even 90 per year. To highlight this increment in different ways, I decided to assign to each ring the same colour (black) and a transparency layer equal to the amount of resolutions produced each year.
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Experiment 06: The attempt of this test is to highlight the UN activity’s increment by using a colour palette that goes from magenta to cyan. I turned my series of blocks of Resolutions into ring’s segments and assigned them a colour value between magenta (for low activity) and cyan (for high activity). By colour coding the ring-portion, the overlap of this test with the previous one a more interesting visual result, highlighting efficiently, the change of phase of the 1990s.
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As a combination of the previous experiments I pushed forward the visualization of the UN activity increment, by using colour range parameters. To differentiate the most intense years from the less intense, I defined a set of colour palettes to integrate in my design. A different colour is assigned to each Resolution and the variation between two adjacent blocks is by 10 points. The last Resolution of each year is always black (c=0, m=0, y=0, k=100); starting from the last one, the next Resolution looses 10 points (k=90). This idea is based on a colour “degradation” principle.
The colour degradation sequence goes from black to white, from white to yellow, from yellow to red, from red to purple, from purple to blue and so forth. Years-rings that contain a similar amount of Resolutions (blocks) will appear similarly in terms of colours, while the years with the highest number of Resolutions will cover a much richer variation of colour. This experiment required the treatment of each box individually. The choice to use solid colour palettes instead of gradients, involved a much longer process, but allowed me to control much better the colour variation, and the level of detail of the final result.
Experiment 07: This experiment is based on a gradient effect (but no gradients have been used). To obtain this effect I assigned a different colour to each Resolution. The last Resolution of each year is always black, starting from the last one the next Resolution looses 10 points. This idea is based on a colour “degradation” principle. Years-rings that contain a similar amount of Resolutions (blocks) will appear similarly in terms of colours, while the years with the highest number of Resolutions will cover a much richer variation of colour. The overall look of the design shows more and less coherent portions of the design. The yellow-orange majority of the design, especially towards the center can be translated in a majority of relatively low UN activity years, in the first decades of the UN lifetime. The ‘90s are defined by a high activity, as seen in the previous experiments. Here this increment is displayed by the colorful portions of the design towards the exterior part of the circle (the most recent years).
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Final results 5.01 / The outcomes
The end of the first phase of this project corresponds to the Project hand-in for the MA Graphic Design (LCC, 2008). The production of outcomes to present the findings of my research and experiments has given me the opportunity to develop a series of objects I can use to communicate the potential of this project to my target audience (universities, education bodies related to the UN, design networks), in order to receive feedbacks about my mapping strategies. The outcomes differentiate in format and purpose of the communication strategy. The following list doesn’t include the present publication (Project Report), but it has to be considered as the main outcome, containing a clear description of the entire project. Picture: a particle of one of the colour tests for Experiment 02. For this kind of mapping strategies the size of the outcome print can make a difference when shown around. During my print tests I realized the best format for a poster of this map is the A0, so that minuscule information can be viewed clearly, and the overall image is of the right size.
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Outcome 01:
Outcome 02:
UNSC/R Visual Statistics Promotional A3 publication
UNSC/R User’s Guide Promotional A6 publication
Target: universities and organizartions related to education such as UNESCO
Target: students in politics and experts of the United Nations
This outcome is addressed to target audiences such as universities, United Nations specialized agencies promoting culture and education (such as UNESCO). The aim of this publication is to promote the project and its aim towards a clear and elegant visualization of the mapping strategies applied to the content of the UN Resolution. Its format (A3) allows images to communicate with impact and efficiency, thus only descriptive captions accompay the book. In order to promote its final resolution (the interactive map), the publication should be acocmpanied by the Project Report for a detailed in-depth Project description.
The publication highlights one of the experiments previously shown and displays the Resolutions year by year. The book includes a section that explains the functioning of the interactive map to postgraduate students in politics, in order to inform them of the potential support they can get in their studies by using this tool. The aim of the book is to promote the project to students, and it includes details of the news about the final development of the project (e.g. the students can subscribe to a mailing list and be informed about the website’s activation by the time it’s ready). The pocket A6 format allows the book to be carried around (in a student’s bags).
Outcome 03:
Outcome 04:
UNSC/R poster Promotional A0 poster
UNSC/R Compendium Six A4 Research books
Target: Graphic Design environments; shows and exhibitions
Target: Graphic Design researcher, academics, UN researchers
A0 poster highlighting the peacekeeping operations Resolutions. This poster highlights one of the experiment’s results and shows the mapping strategy applied in the experiment 03. The mapping design is placed above the full list of Resolutions, bringing the viewer to read the map in connection with the condensed body of information below. The A0 size let the image speak for itself, with no additional explanatory content. The poster’s aim is to promote the project in design exhibitions and graphic design shows. A0 size, printed on satin paper, 280 gsm.
The Compendium is a collection of printed documents I gathered during the times of my research about the Resolutions. Each one of the six books contains six decades of Resolutions. The amount of pages of each book varies, depending on the amount of Resolutions issued by the Security Council every ten years. The Compendium is to be considered part of my Major Project Visual Research, and the outcome reflects the data analysis process, in order to show the physical amount of information I informed my mapping strategies with. A4 size, overcast binding systerm.
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Conclusions 6.01 / Critical Reflection
The series of experiments I produced in the development phase were aimed to find the best form of data visualization in order to complete the graphical experimentations within the Major Project submission. The continuous feedbacks received by tutors and peers helped me to analyze critical aspects of my strategies. The visual system developed is the starting point of the next upcoming phase, which will be focused on the interactive platform development. The production of a series of printed outcomes was finalized to promote the project to various categories of subjects within the selected target audience
(students, universities, organizations related to the UN, information and mapping design networks and communities). Although the final version of my visual system received positive feedbacks during the final pin-up sessions, I wish I could have tested the system to contain more parameters than the actual ones. At the moment the mapping strategies applied to my design allow the user to compare the UN activity year by year, to isolate specific series of Resolutions, or categories of them. A much more ambitious goal, (that could be included in the next phase) would be to visually link
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cross-relations between Resolutions (as the example at page 33). By analyzing the content of the Resolutions I noticed that each document recalls one or more previous Resolutions. Most of the documents are connected with each other. This connection could be translated in an additional level of information visualized by adding hundreds of invisible connective lines that could relate one Resolution to another. This path may lead my design to look overly complicated; therefore I’m not sure yet if this additional strategy will be applied to the interactive outcome.
Left and right page: Experiment 06 parameters have been applied to some of the tests done in the “condensing data“ series of typographic tests. The colour-code has been applied to all the information included in the typographic test; the result is a text block that has a different mixture of cyan and magenta depending on the year-ring it corresponds. The combination of different sets of experiments was possible because I applied a similar methodology to all my experiments series
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Conclusions 6.02 / The second phase: an interactive platform
Left and right page: The image on the left shows an animation test. This image is the final frame of the sequence, and it displays one year-ring (1960), and put the rest in a low opacity. Everything but the 1960 year-ring have rotated around the center, in order to leave the selected year-ring in a position of isolation. The series of images in the right page shows the sequence process from top-left to bottom-right.
The next phase of the project will be focused on the development of an interactive platform that will turn my mapping design into a dynamic outcome, allowing users to research information about Resolutions, by selecting, classifying, comparing and isolating any of them. This phase will be divided into a first research period in which I will look into several informatics languages (html, php, java) and existing examples of similar platforms. The second part of this phase will be focused on the practical development of the application, and I will require the support of web-developers in the process of coding information. The duration of this phase may vary from 6 to 10 months, starting with the Major Project submission (November 2008).
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Appendix 7.01 / Storyboard for the UNSC/R website
This section of the Report is dedicated to illustrate the first steps towards the next phase of this project: the development of an interactive platform. Although this is merely a storyboard, some design and content choices have been taken. The website’s main characteristic are: usability, precision, simple design, interactivity and dynamism. Therefore the website key aspects to be developed are: a user-friendly interface and a clear layout where users can easily learn the navigation routes. The most important element of the website is the usability of the platform. To interact with
the map users can click on the portions of the image or edit parameters in the entry fields placed on the left side of the window. The dynamic aspects of the website, such as animations and roll-overs will be some of the core research elements of the next phase of the project, as much as designing an interactive version of the UNSC/R Resolutions map. At this stage my priority was to design an efficient layout to display information for the final user. The next pages show possible web-based configurations of the prototypes shown previously, adapted in order to work in an interactive environment.
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UNSC/R Dynamic database of the United Nations Security Council Resolutions Argument/ Resolution name/ Resolution number/ Date/ 1947 1948 1949 1950 1051 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1959 1960 1961 1962
Right page: A close-up of the website, that zooms on the entry fields the user can interact with. The entry field entitled ARGUMENT allows the user to choose between topics that are analyzed in the database of the website. The image in the example shows the option “peace-keeping operations“, and if the user select that entry, the general look of the map will switch into the one of Experiment 02 (peacekeeping operations). The second entry field is RESOLUTION NAME, such as “Cyprus question“. By clicking on that option the user will see parts of
the map changing colour depending on which name he selects. The third entry field is RESOLUTION NUMBER, and the user can select the document he needs by choosing the R. no. he needs to look at. The fourth entry field is called DATE and it involves the selection of a specific year (between 1946 and 2007). By clicking on that option the map will rotate (as seen in the previous pages) isolating the selected year from the rest of the map. Left page: an overview of the USNC/R Dynamic Database (UNSC/RDD).
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Left and right page: The website will provide users with a number of “modes� to run the application. When users select the UNSC/R Classification mode they will see the map switching colours and turning into the design shown in Experiment 02. This design divides the Resolutions in 6 classes. At this stage the user, by clicking on the entry field DATE will be able to select the year of interest. By selecting any of the comprised year the
map will rotate (counter-clockwise). As seen in the example in the right page, if the user select the year 1960, the whole map will slightly disappear while rotating, and the only clearly visible portion will correspond to the selected year. The captions in the text column on the bottom left side of the website will be replaced by the list of Resolutions for 1960. A link on each of the Resolutions listed in the column will allow users to download a PDF document of the Resolution of interest.
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UNSC/R Dynamic database of the United Nations Security Council Resolutions Argument/ Resolution name/ Cyprus situation Resolution number/ Date/
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Left page: The “standard mode� (a mode with no further classifications, where all the Resolutions are visually represented with grey blocks) allows users to insert in the entry field called RESOLUTION NAME the name of the Resolution or group of Resolutions they wnat to see on the map. This mode helps users to visualize particularly complicated matters such as the Cyprus Situation, a topic that has been the target of many different Resolutions for over 40 years. Once the Resolution name is selected the text column below will display a blurb with key information about the topic, followed by a list of the related Reoslutions (downloadable as PDF documents).
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UNSC/R Dynamic database of the United Nations Security Council Resolutions Argument/ peace-keeping operations Resolution name/ Resolution number/ Date/
Peace-keeping operations United Nations Security Council Resolution. The whole amount of Resolutions issued between 1946 and 2007. This parameter reports the results obtained in the Experiment 01 Resolutions regarding peacekeeping operations. Every Resolution coloured with cyan, is considered a document related to interventions of the UN personnel as mere Observers or as agents of control. Those situations usually identify countries with falling dictatorships, civil or ethnic wars, and the UN Security Council can decides to send a “force” to prevent the degeneration of the situation or the conflict. High tension situations involving UN peacekeepers. Many situations concerning the peacekeeping operations configure violent scenarios where the peacekeepers have to deal with non-predicted escalations of tension between civilians, rebels or invading armies. In some specific cases, the UN forces have been authorized to fight back, or to organize military operations (some examples are the war in Korea in 1950, the war in Iraq in 1991, the Somalia intervention in 1993).
Right page: Another example of the available “modes” in the website is the peace-keeping operations mode, displaying the prototype shown in Experiment 03.
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UNSC/R Mapping the United Nations Resolutions Project Report 75
UNSC/R Mapping the United Nations Resolutions Project Report 76
Bibliography GRAPHIC DESIGN BOOKS Janet Abrams (2006), Else/Where, Univ Minnesota Design Institute. Jonathan Barnbrook (2004),The Barnbrook Bible, Rizzoli. Michael Evamy (2003), World Without Words, Laurence King Publishing. Roger Fawcett-Tang (2005), Mapping: An Illustrated Guide to Graphic Navigational Systems, RotoVision. Katharine Harmon (2003), You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, Princeton Architectural Press. Arthur Lookwood (1969), Diagrams, Watson-Guptill Publications. Ellen Lupton (2008), Graphic Design: The New Basics, Princeton Architectural Press. Ellen Lupton (1999), Design Writing Research, Phaidon Press. Ellen Lupton (2006), Design It Yourself, Princeton Architectural Press. Ian Noble, Russel Betsley (2004), Visual Research, AVA Publishing. Adrian Shaughnessy (2005), How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul, Princeton Architectural Press. Edward R. Tufte (2001), The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press. Edward R. Tufte (1990), Envisioning Information, Graphics Press. Edward R. Tufte (2006), Beautiful Evidence, Graphics Press. Edward R. Tufte (1997), Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative, Graphics Press. Richard Saul Wurman (1999), Understanding USA, Ted Conferences.
POLITICS BOOKS Daniele Archibugi (1995), Il futuro delle Nazioni Unite, Ed. Lavoro. Benedetto Conforti Le Nazioni Unite, Cedam. Angelo Del Boca (1994), La trappola somala: dall’operazione Restore Hope al fallimento delle Nazioni Unite, ed. Laterza. Ugo Draetta (1997), Principi di diritto delle organizzazioni internazionali, Giuffè Editore. Centro d’informazione dell’ONU per l’Italia e Malta (1989), Una vocazione delle NU: la causa dei diritti dell’uomo, ed. Fratelli Palombi. P. Picone (1995), Interventi delle Nazioni Unite, ed. Cedam. V. Tornetta (1991), Le Nazioni Unite del 2000: verso un nuovo ordine internazionale, Ed.F.lli Laterza. Ugo Villani (2001), Lezioni su l’ONU e la crisi del golfo, Cacucci Editore. M. Vismara (1989), L’azione politica delle Nazioni Unite (1946-1976) ed. Cedam.
WEBSITES www.un.org United Nations official website, 2005. www.visualcomplexity.com Visual Complexity, May 2008. www.guardian.co.uk Information design applied to newspapers, 2006. www.designpolitics.org Politcs and design projects, May 2008. www.politicsbydesign.net Design studio specialized in politics, May 2008. www.overnewsed-but-uninformed.de Overnewsed but uninformed project, June 2008. www.designsupremo.com A_B Peace and Terror project, June 2008 www.processing.org Processing: a programming application, popular between information designers, August 2008. www.computationaldrawings.com Portfolio of mapping experiments based on Processing, August 2008. www.theintegrationengineer.com/data-mapping Integration Engineer: a engineeristic data-mapping approach, September 2008. www.palgrave-journals.com/ivs Information visualization: articles on mapping design, September 2008. www.understandingusa.com Understanding USA, September 2008. www.looksgoodworkswell.blogspot.com/2005/05/mind-mapping-design-patterns a blog about mapping design, September 2008.