Graphics.com has a good excerpt from O’Reilly Media’s “Beautiful Visualization“, providing some guidance on how to take default boring data and make it not only beautiful but informative.

Standard formats and conventions do have their benefits: they are easy to create, familiar to most readers, and usually don’t need to be explained. Most of the time, these conventions should be respected and leveraged. However, the necessary spark of novelty is difficult to achieve when using utilitarian formats in typical ways; defaults are useful, but they are also limiting. Defaults should be set aside for a better, more powerful solution only with informed intent, rather than merely to provide variety for the sake of variety.

Via VizWorld & Graphics.com: The shared resource for creative design.

FORM+CODE is a new book about computational aesthetics to be published fall 2010. It is written by Casey Reas, Chandler McWilliams and LUST and the list of featured artists reads like the who-is-who of the generative design community.

With works ranging from Maeda to Sagmeister the publication seems to span from data driven visualizations to generative approaches in design, art and architecture. The publication will definitely be more source of inspiration than visualization best practices but I am looking forward to have such a wide rang of designers distilled in this book.

Via Datavisualization.ch