Yuri Engelhardt, Ph.D.

communication

data visualization

information graphics

diagrams – charts – information design

About me

I am a tenured assistant professor in data visualization, infographics, digital media and digital culture, and co‑coordinator of the data visualization curriculum at the University of Amsterdam (2003 – Present). 

I am an Associate Fellow of the Communication Research Institute (2011 – Present), Co-Founder and Co-Chair of Show Me The Data (2008 – Present) and a member of various international committees, including the Editorial Board of the Information Design Journal (2001 – Present).  

I hold an MA degree in medicine (1990), and a Ph.D. in computer science (2002).

Having studied and taught information graphics and data visualization for more than 20 years, I have, among other topics, been working on how visualizations use spatial positioning to convey meaning. My work is quoted by Colin Ware, Stuart Card, Jock Mackinlay, Ben Shneiderman and others. My concept of "meaningful space" in visual representations has been adopted by Dave Gray as a key principle of "Gamestorming".

I have had the pleasure of presenting in many countries of the world, sharing the stage with Hans Rosling, Manuel Lima, Alberto Cairo, Lev Manovich, Bob Horn, and many other 'visualizers'. Over the years I have greatly enjoyed my personal discussions with inspiring people such as Jacques Bertin, Jorge Frascara, Nigel Holmes, Richard Saul Wurman, Donald Norman, etc. 

I currently divide my time between the Netherlands and Costa Rica.


 Coming up soon

  • My chapter 'Graphics – Neurath, Rosling, and the universal principles of visual representations' is part of the upcoming book 'On Information Design'. It includes my recent contemplations on 'Graphics with a Cause' and the concept of 'Meaningful Space' as the quintessence of all graphics. Other contributors include Rob Waller and Jorge Frascara.


Master theses recently (or almost) completed under my supervision:

Information Visualization and Participatory Culture - by Jan Bajec (see his related post on the Democratization of Data, from 2010)

Google Earth’s Contribution to the Climate Change Debate - by Xander Stolwijk 

Documentary Film and Data Visualization - by Ekaterina Yudin

The Flowing City – Urban Data Visualizations - to be completed soon by Margarida Fonseca

Data Journalism at the New York Times and the Guardian - to be completed soon by Marije Rooze

Contact me at:  yuri.engelhardt (at) gmail (dot) com

View Yuri Engelhardt's profile on LinkedIn     

 Recent stuff

  • Presenting "Graphics with a Cause" (with Ekaterina Yudin), about "changing the world one diagram at a time" and "saving the world with data visualization" was a great experience! (at the Information Design Conference 2012 in London).
  • I enjoyed co-organizing and co-chairing Show Me The Data 2012, with Alberto Cairo, Jan Willem Tulp, and many others.
  • Hans Rosling and I had a good time discussing our shared passions: health and data visualization.

  • I had the honor of giving the invited opening keynote lecture at the 4th International Conference for Information Design, in Rio de Janeiro.

  • Being a member of the jury for the national Infographic Award (NVJ & BNO) has been an inspiring experience (link, link, link).

  • In January 2012 I taught part of the postgrado en Visualización de Información in Barcelona. Together with Juan Carlos Dürsteler of InfoVis.net.

  • I presented 'Engaging Citizens with Animated Statistics' (pdf) at the OECD in Paris, together with Raul Niño Zambrano.

  • We presented at Mediafonds@Sandberg's Follow the Money.

  • Lev Manovich, Raul and myself, and a couple of other speakers presented at Infodecodata.

  • Dave Gray (of XPLANE and VizThink) writes "Yuri is at the forefront of visual thinking research". Thanks, Dave!

  • We enjoyed Manuel Lima's visit (of VisualComplexity.com), who came to present in the data visualization course that I am coordinating (Manuel has posted one of our student projects).

  • Watch the brief presentation (video) that Raul and I gave at the International Documentary Film festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and the blog posts that I wrote with Raul for IDFA: Genocides jumping off the chart, The crowdsourcing of crisis information, Panorama of news headlines and Squared global inequalities.

  • I gave the opening lecture, 'From educational posters to animated and interactive graphics', in Ljubljana, of a series of presentations on information design. I was followed by other speakers including Rob Waller and Jorge Frascara. 

  • My critical review of Edward Tufte's Beautiful Evidence is still receiving a lot of visitors every day.

My publications

Moritz Stefaner about my Ph.D. work, The Language of Graphics: "I think it is a fantastic piece of work. [...] A great achievement [...] analytically really strong and I believe also quite novel in this form." Thank you, Moritz! Dave Gray calls it "the most thorough exploration and synthesis of visual grammatical forms I've ever seen." The book itself is out of print, but can be browsed and 'full-text-searched' here (a summary and some other information is here).

My contributions to other books:

Graphics – Neurath, Rosling, and the universal principles of visual representations (in print, 2012).

Diagrams for the masses: Raising public awareness - from Neurath to Gapminder and Google Earth (with Raul Niño Zambrano). See here and here (first page also here). In: Diagrammatic representation and inference (2008).

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

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

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

Grundprinzipien grafischer Darstellungen. In: Navigation durch Text, Bild und Raum (2001). The other chapters are by Martin Krampen and other fellow speakers at "Forum Typografie 2000" in Hamburg, Germany.

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

Thanks to Google, see a few books that mention me / my work.

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 online).

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) (with D. Wang and H. Zeevat).

Towards a design theory for visualization (1996).

The visual grammar of information graphics (1996).

My teaching

Programs in which I have been lecturing include Media Studies, Human-Computer Interaction, Journalism, Graphic Design,  Science Communication, and others.

I have developed and taught a large number of courses at Bachelor, Master, and Research Master 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.

I am also a lecturer at the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design (see my page there), where I am teaching:

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

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

Together with Juan Carlos Dürsteler (InfoVis) I have co-developed courses on information visualization for the Istituto Europeo di Design and for the Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona.

Presentations

In addition to lecturing at universities, art academies, museums and other institutions and events in the Netherlands, I’ve enjoyed traveling to give presentations in, for example, Barcelona, Berlin, Cambridge (UK), Coventry, Edinburgh, Hamburg, Hannover, Ljubljana (Slovenia), London, Palo Alto (Stanford University), Paris (e.g. at the OECD, on 'Engaging Citizens with Animated Statistics'), Pittsburgh (Carnegie Mellon University), Rio de Janeiro (invited opening keynote), Recife (Brazil), Stockholm, ...

Other work-related activities

I am founder and was moderator (1995-1999) of InfoDesign and InfoDesign-Cafe, the first international online discussion forums about information design (see here and here).

I am on the Advisory Committee of the Brazilian Journal of Information Design, and on the advisory board of IMAGE - Journal of Interdisciplinary Image Science. 

I was assistant curator of and contributor to the InfoArcadia exhibition (1999-2000).

My earlier memberships of program committees include the 3rd Information Design International Conference and the  Diagrams 2008 conference.

I participated in a (somewhat lengthy) VizThink webcast discussion about visual language and visual grammar (also here).

Together with Christian Behrens of 'Info Design Patterns' I prepared a session on '(De)-constructing Infographics' for VizThink Berlin, see 'Yuri Engelhardt speaking at VizThink' and blog posts here and here.

My background is in health and nutrition, cognitive science, and visual thinking. As a medical student I have worked in health care in various medical centers and hospitals. With my medical degree, I have worked as a medical librarian at my medical school and as an infographics-developer for popular science journals.

Moving around ...

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, and I also speak a bit of French and reasonable Spanish (which is continuously improving). So far my wife and I are raising our two young boys trilingually (Dutch, English, Spanish).

These days we are living in Costa Rica, but we currently on another one of our extended visits back in the Netherlands (till June 2012).

 

Some texts that others have written about my work:

 

Dutch media about my work:

English: