Animation Pioneer Max Fleischer Illustrates 1944-1945 News Wires

From the most expensive kiss on record to university classes on how to choose and keep a husband.

We’ve previously seen artists visually capture the news, from Félix Fénéon’s illustrated three-line “novels” circa 1906 to Sophie Blackall’s brilliant illustrated Craigslist missed connections. In 1944-1945, iconic animation pioneer Max Fleischer, while heading the animation department at the Handy (Jam) Organization (remember them?), created a series of humorous “news sketches” based on human interest stories from the Associated Press wires.

If the stop-motion timelapse editing and Fleicher’s illustration style look familiar, they should be — they presage the excellent and ever-popular RSA animations by over half a century and no doubt inspired everyone’s favorite intellectual sketchnote-storytelling.

The film is now in the public domain and available as a free, legal, remixable download courtesy of the Internet Archive.

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My Visual Diary: A Month-in-the-Life in Stop-Motion

What people-watching and the love of cereal have to do with fostering visual literacy.

Short and sweet, from Brooklyn-based designer and filmmaker Joe Hollier and in line with today’s medium/message theme, My Visual Diary — a lovely stop-motion film that captures a month in Joe’s life. The beautiful visual narrative is both intimately personal and sprinkled with simple yet profound human truth.

The film was made for an assignment in Richard Wilde’s Visual Literacy SVA class.

See more of Joe’s wonderful work on his site.

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The Interface is the Message: Aaron Koblin on Visual Storytelling at TED

What 10,000 sheep have to do with Johnny Cash, Marshall McLuhan and the evolution of storytelling.

I was thrilled to see my friend Aaron Koblin, presently of Google Creative Labs, take the TED stage earlier this year. I’m an enormous data viz geek, I’m deeply interested in the evolution of storytelling, and have been a longtime supporter of Aaron’s work. This talk is an excellent primer to both the discipline itself and Aaron’s stellar projects within it, but also an insight-packed treasure chest even for those already immersed in the world of data visualization. Perhaps most interestingly, Aaron revises iconic media theorist Marshall McLuhan‘s revered catchphrase, “The medium is the message,” to a thought-proviking, culture-appropriate modernization: “The interface is the message.”

An interface can be a powerful narrative device, and as we collect more and more personally and socially relevant data, we have an opportunity and maybe even an obligation to maintain the humanity and tell some amazing stories as we explore and collaborate together.” ~ Aaron Koblin

Aaron mentions a number of projects previously featured on Brain Pickings: The Sheep Market, A Bicycle Built for 2,000 and The Johnny Cash Project, if you’d like to take a closer look.

For more on the kind of magic Aaron is making, you won’t go wrong with Data Flow 2: Visualizing Information in Graphic Design — easily the most comprehensive compendium on data visualization candy around.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.