Visual complexity is a paradox. On the one hand, complexity is a compelling feature known to capture a viewer’s attention and stimulate interest… On the other hand, complexity only arouses curiosity up to a point. When a visual is extremely complex, viewers may tend to avoid it altogether.

There are a lot of reasons why I really like Connie Malamed’s 2009 book, “Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand.” Here are three:

1. Balance | The book balances examples of great design, explanations of core visual principles and informative bits on cognitive research about how the brain processes graphics. Some pieces you might be familiar with: Nicholas Felton‘s Annual Reports, the HistoryShots series, and Nigel Holmes‘ and Alberto Cairo‘s work all appear here. But a great strength of the book is in the mix of graphics projects you’ve almost certainly not seen before.

2. Context | But it’s not just about infographics. It’s not just about charts. It’s not just about data visualization. It’s not just about posters or maps or illustrations. The book clearly places each of those outputs into context by using specific projects as examples of a key design principle rather than sorting them by deliverable, or style, or date, or provenance or designer. Seeing each piece according to its best qualities is almost better than having an overall project case study. It helps make successes clear and repeatable.

3. Imperfection | The examples shown are not all perfect. In fact, a few are rather bad overall. Some of the more than 250 graphic projects are very specific in their successes and Malamed carefully highlights the thing you should look for. One project might use symbolic icons especially well and another might be a great example of using magnification to highlight important details, while still giving the viewer a holistic view. So just because the font used on a CD cover is, well, questionable, that doesn’t mean we don’t get a look at how nicely the designer combined photography and vector linework to express the motion involved in playing a stringed instrument.

“Visual Language for Designers” is a smart and beautiful synthesis of cognitive science and visual design. It’s scientific but not dull and artistic but not fluffy. I frequently refer to it for inspiration and information.

• Title: Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand
• Author: Connie Malamed
• Publisher: Rockport

Disclosure: Two examples of XPLANE’s work appear in the book – one piece in the introduction and another in the “Make the abstract concrete” chapter.

The David Rumsey Map Collection has now been online for ten years. [This] selection of carto-curios is from the latest batch of material uploaded to the site.

Rumsey is an internet hero of the first order. Following the success of his business he was able to afford to indulge his latent interest for all things cartographic and he assembled a massive collection of more than 150,000 items.

That might have been the end of the story: rich dude spends money on secret passion in obscurity. But Rumsey wanted to share his collection with the world and mere donation of his maps and atlases to a document repository didn’t seem like it would fully satisfy his magnanimous urges. From a five year old interview on SFGate: “I realized that whichever institution I gave it to would lock it away, put it on a shelf,” he says, with mild indignation. “But just then the technology came along that would enable me to put it all up online, and it was obvious that this was the best way I could give it away to the public.”

Works of art in and of themselves, these ancient maps reveal a great deal more than the geographical knowledge of our ancestors. They tell stories of war and triumph, reveal myths and biases, and document modes of thought that have long been obsolete.

With its 45- and 90-degree angles and one color per subway line, the 1972 subway map by Massimo Vignelli was divorced from the cityscape, devoid of street or neighborhood names. It was criticized because its water was not blue and its parks were not green. Paul Goldberger called it “a stunningly handsome abstraction” that “bears little relation to the city itself.”

Now Men’s Vogue has asked Mr. Vignelli to update his subway map for the May design issue.” (Thanks Information Design Watch!)

Atlas, Schmatlas is a 128 page hardback book chock-a-block with essential information (fact and fiction), maps, and illustrations about every country in the world.” (Thanks Chris Glass!)