Image data quilts: our new website

Our new website imagequilts.com shows the new work of ET and Adam Schwartz on quilts (a variety of small multiples) that show 100 to 500 images on a single screen.

Adam built a free Chrome app that composes, sorts, and edits the results from Google images.

For now, the idea is to search a topic on Google Images, and then recompose, sort, and edit those images into a quilt of images dealing with your topic. Our Chrome app does the composing, sorting, and editing.

The obvious extension is to be able to go into any large database, pull out the relevant images, and organize into a quilt. (Since the editing sequence is done locally in the Browser, and the images are drawn from a unique confection of Google images, there may be cryptographic possibilities here as well.)

The resulting quilt is scanned by the viewer, who often learns more about than topic than from conventional search results. For many quilts (topics include subatomic particles, Feynman diagrams, Muybridge, Cezanne, Klee, sorting algorithms, Picasso, and, for a quilt of quilts, the Quilts of Gee’s Bend), see http://imagequilts.com

I first posted some simple quilts during a frantic weekend flurry several months ago at, of all places,
my twitter account https://twitter.com/EdwardTufte

The Verge recently did a nice piece on imagequilts, with many quilts:

Master statistician weaves Google images into visual quilts

A visionary statistician shares a free tool for data visualization

Edward Tufte is a master of his field. The celebrated statistician is an information design and data-visualization expert, known for his many writings on the subject including Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations, which pioneered the idea that visuals were of the upmost importance when communicating ideas and information.

A vocal opponent against broadly used visualization tools like PowerPoint, Tufte discourages the use of decorative visuals when displaying data, arguing that they can distort and editorialize the facts. His writings have informed and inspired a generation of statisticians and designers alike, and now he’s collaborated with software engineer Adam Schwartz to share a free web-app with the rest of us.

ImageQuilts is a Chrome extension that acts as a plug-in for Google Images. After installing the app, you’ll see a new button appear above your image-search results, prompting you to make an ImageQuilt. Clicking on the button jumps you into an intuitive interface that lets you build a collage based on the results of your search. There are lots of customization options: you can change the image size, and order; zoom into images; remove images; and also choose between grayscale, inverted, or full-color displays. After tinkering around with the settings and removing irrelevant images, you’re left with a coherent (and hopefully attractive) collage that represents your chosen subject.

There are some great examples of how powerful ImageQuilts can be over at the plug-in’s website, but we’ve put a few of their examples together with a few of our own below. As you’ll notice, some are more successful than others; but when choosing an architect, designer, or artist, ImageQuilts does a superb job of capturing their essence.

ImageQuilts is a great tool for summarizing and organizing visual data. A viewer scanning over, for example, an artist’s ImageQuilt will quickly understand what they’re about. Tufte suggests that viewers will often learn more about a topic from ImageQuilts than conventional search results.

“Frank Gehry”

“Pablo Picasso”

“Dieter Rams”

“Feynman diagrams”

“Vladimir Putin”

“Scrap metal”

“Candy”

“Subatomic particle collision”