"As visually arresting as it is informative."-The Boston Globe
"Du Bois's bold colors and geometric shapes were decades ahead of modernist graphic design in America."-Fast Company's Co.Design
W.E.B. Du Bois's Data Portraits is the first complete publication of W.E.B. Du Bois's groundbreaking charts, graphs, and maps presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition.
Famed sociologist, writer, and Black rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois fundamentally changed the representation of Black Americans with his exhibition of data visualizations at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Beautiful in design and powerful in content, these data portraits make visible a wide spectrum of African American culture, from advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery. They convey a literal and figurative representation of what he famously referred to as "the color line," collected here in full color for the first time.
A landmark collection for social history, graphic design, and data science.
? Data display, visualizations, and infographics far ahead of their time
? Colorful graphs and charts are mesmerizing pieces of art in their own right
? A valuable companion to W.E. B. Du Bois's
The Souls of Black Folk
? Includes contributions from Aldon Morris, Silas Munro, and Mabel O. Wilson
W.E.B. Du Bois's Data Portraits is an informative and provocative history, data, and graphic design book that continues to resonate with audiences today.
"The colorful charts, graphs, and maps presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition by famed sociologist and black rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois offered a look behind the veil into the lives of black Americans to convey a literal and figurative representation of what Du Bois famously termed "the color line," and became the talk of the Expo. From advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery, these prophetic infographics--beautiful in design and powerful in content--make visible a wide spectrum of black experience. W.E.B. Du Bois's Data Portraits collects the complete set of graphs in full color for the first time, making their insights and innovations available to a contemporary imagination. These data portraits shaped how Du Bois thought about sociology, informing his ideas with which he set the world ablaze three years later with The Souls of Black Folk"--
