Yuri Engelhardt

graphics and diagrams

visual language theory

information visualization

people - planet - sustainability

About me

My academic career started with studying organic agriculture for developing countries, but I switched to medical school, and later to cognitive science.

I hold an MA degree in medicine, a Ph.D. in computer science, I am Assistant Professor of media and culture, specializing in information visualization, and I am now involved in the development of a new BA program on social and environmental issues and sustainability.

A short biography is here (for a training I gave for the Istituto Europeo di Design).

I work at the University of Amsterdam (see my staff page). Mail me at:  engelhardt (at) uva (dot) nl

New stuff - upcoming or recent

  • Our paper titled Diagrams for the Masses: Raising Public Awareness - from Neurath to Gapminder and Google Earth (Raul Niño Zambrano and Yuri Engelhardt) is now in press (see abstract).

  • Impressions of the results of the MA course on Information visualization that I am teaching are here (English) and here (Dutch).

  • I participated in a (somewhat lengthy) VizThink webcast discussion about questions such as "What qualifies as visual language?", and "Does a visual representation have to be sequential in order to apply the concept of visual grammar?" (can also be watched here).

  • My critical review of Edward Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence is receiving a lot of visitors.

Publications

Note: The Language of Graphics is out of print, but all pages have been scanned and can be downloaded via this download page. The introductory chapter (download pdf, 600 kb) deals with graphic representation, visual language, and the grammar of graphics. (See a brief review.)

Contributions to books:

Diagrams for the Masses: Raising Public Awareness - from Neurath to Gapminder and Google Earth (with Raul Niño Zambrano, in press).

Network nations (with Ben Schouten). See here and here. In: Else/Where: Mapping New cartographies of networks and territories (2006).

Objects and spaces: The visual language of graphics. See here. In: Diagrammatic representation and inference (2006).

A meta-taxonomy for diagram research (with Alan Blackwell). See here (also here). In: Diagrammatic representation and reasoning (2002).

Grundprinzipien grafischer Darstellungen. In: Navigation durch Text, Bild und Raum (2001).

Meaningful space. In: If/Then: Design implications of new media (1999).

Here are some (titles of) papers I have (co-)authored (for references see Google Scholar for some of my writings):

Syntactic Structures in Graphics (pdf, 350 kB) (2007, also here).

My critical review of Edward Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence (2007).

Meaningful space: How graphics use space to convey information (1998).

A taxonomy of diagram taxonomies (1998).

Structure-preserving visualization: Towards... (1997).

Formal specification of a graphic design theory (1997).

Towards a design theory for visualization (1996).

The visual grammar of information graphics (1996).

Images and books

Some images that are related to my work.

Some books in which my work is mentioned.

Teaching

I have developed and taught a large number of courses at BA, MA, and Research MA levels - here is a selection of recent ones:

And here are some BA courses in New Media that I have developed and taught in 2003-2006 (description in Dutch):

New media objects, Interaction design, New media analysis I, Digital culture.

Also, for many years now, I have been teaching Philosophy of science, using collaborative visualization assignments and concept mapping.

At the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design, I am involved (since 2006) in teaching:

Information graphics in the MA program Editorial Design (also see here and here).

Many years ago, I co-taught Automatic visualization (1997) and Formal perspectives on visual representation (1996).

Programs in which I have given guest lectures include Science communication, Journalism, Graphic design, Artificial intelligence, and Human-centered multimedia.

I have (co-)developed online courses on Information visualization for the Istituto Europeo di Design (see here) and for the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona.

Presentations

In addition to lecturing at universities, art academies and other institutions and events in the Netherlands, I’ve enjoyed traveling to give presentations in, for example, Barcelona (on The language of graphics), Berlin, Cambridge, Coventry, Edinburgh, Hamburg, Hannover, London (e.g. on Theories in information design), Paris, Pittsburgh, Recife (Brazil), Schwarzenberg (Austria), Stockholm (one-day course in Information visualization), and Stanford (e.g.: Building blocks of graphics come in syntactic categories).

Other work-related activities

Member of the Editorial Board of the Information Design Journal (and of the Advisory Committee of the Brazilian Journal of Information Design).

Founder and moderator (1995-1999) of InfoDesign, the first international electronic forum on information design (see here and here).

Assistant curator of and contributor to the InfoArcadia exhibition (1999-2000).

Recent/current memberships of program committees:

Some texts that others have written about my work

Dutch media about my work:

My life

My educational path has included elementary school in Australia, high school in Germany, college in California, and university in the Netherlands. I am a (close-to-)native speaker of English, German, and Dutch. I speak French fluently, and I am enthusiastically working on my Spanish.

Early non-academic work experience:

Among other jobs, I’ve been a teaching assistant in a school for physically handicapped children, as a medical student I have worked in health care in various medical centers and hospitals (general practice, psychology, orthopedics, surgery), and I’ve been an infographics-developer for popular science journals.

I have always been active for sustainable development and for international social responsibility (e.g. during the 2006 flooding in Surinam, I happened to be in Paramaribo, so I helped to coordinate international aid). 

I am currently a curriculum-co-developer and teacher for Future Planet Studies: a new BA program that combines natural sciences and social sciences to study possibilities for sustainable development, focusing on people as well as on the planet (short descriptions here and here, plus the detailed program - all in Dutch).

For some nice examples of visualizations that help to raise public awareness about such topics see: