INFO-GRAPHICS AND BEING INFORMED… OR NOT
This brief story is about trust in information. Trust in what we know and what we think we know. Trust that we are prepared. And, trust that what we learn is correct, sound and adequate.
I have always been fascinated and somewhat entertained by instructional drawings – the more dire the situation depicted, the more interested I tend to be. Despite the potentially lifesaving information they provide, safety guides, like airplane seat cards and “conspicuously posted” Heimlich maneuver posters, primarily catch my attention for a single reason – they’re morbidly humorous.
In an effort to boil intricate details or complex choreography down to a series of easily comprehensible steps, instructional illustrators often unintentionally over-simplify their drawings. The results are either dreamy or cartoonish, and fail to convey the severity of the situation or task at hand.
From my perspective, this seems especially true of vintage or foreign instructional illustrations for which new wisdom or methodology has replaced outdated techniques – or, where printed instructions in other languages add to, rather than alleviate, any lingering confusion.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
A number of years ago, I happened to be at an outdoor antiques market picking through a pile of mostly terrible drawings and watercolors, when I came across a small stack of black and white gouache paintings with markings that suggest they were intended for print. I was immediately captivated by what seemed to be a very contemporary series of stylized and minimalist depictions of hand-to-hand battle. Each drawing was titled in pencil with a name like “Stop a Body Kick” or “Disarm Opponent With Gun.”
“Block Attack (Dagger or Club)” stood out in particular for its subject’s surreal lack of emotion and zombie-like movement. In it, an unenthusiastic Theodore Roosevelt lookalike with dagger in hand, shuffles toward an unarmed man. Obviously, the quick-thinking would-be-victim has been trained in self-defense as evidenced by his ability to halt the attacker with a single outstretched arm. We can only imagine the accompanying text, which likely assured trainees that this was a perfectly sound approach to dealing with lumbering knife wielders.
There’s no way to know what manual or guidebook the series was intended for, so I’ll assume it was military training, based on the identical tailored uniforms the two men are wearing. There’s also no way to know if the men who learned from these illustrations ever had to fend off attackers or if they were adequately prepared when it happened.
Perhaps just feeling confident in their preparedness was preparation enough.
This painting is my inspiration for the seventh in a series of curious anonymous stories.
© Markus Horak, 2011
>> IN MOTION – Archive of older posts
Filed under: Advertising, Art, Creativity, Design, Graphic, Inspiration, Motion Tagged: curious anonymous stories, gouache painting, illustration, instructional illustration, instructions, safety guides Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
