nonist comments

It is usually my practice to limit my image posting here to those things which I find pleasing and which I assume you might find pleasing as well. This is only natural. We all like pretty pictures. Today, however, it is my intention to post some decidedly ugly images, images which are so ugly, in fact, that they might correctly be called “the ugliest” images in existence. Don’t fret, they are not close-up proctological photos used for diagnostic purposes. Images of that nature are not meant to be pretty, but rather functional, and in the satisfying of that function do have a certain merit; No, the images I am about to show you were created by human hands to fulfill a purpose (like said proctological images) but to simultaneously be aesthetically pleasing as well. The ultimate statement on their awfulness is that they fail miserably on both counts, which is to say their ugliness is so great that it actually hinders their intended functionality. That is the definition of failure in design I’d say. Brace yourself…

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I’m sorry you had to absorb that all in one massive dose but as a person interested in design, and more importantly as a proud owner of both a cornea and an optic nerve, I felt it was my duty to drive home this point: Television weather-infographics are pitifully, horribly, inexcusably bad. These are pieces of design which we seek out every single day for their intended functionality, often first thing in the morning, when we are half asleep and most vulnerable, but which hammer at our eyeballs like Schuster conundrums made of broken neon tubes and melted crayon shavings. I ask this, here and now, of all the television weather-infograpic makers– Why?! Why must it be this way?

Television infographics in general are pretty much out of control so far as I can see. Their scrolling, swirling, swooping gloss has at this point far overpowered the meager amounts of information they are meant to shuttle efficiently into our brains. They do not, if I had to put a totally fabricated number on it, contribute in any way to that purpose 75% of the time. They are the gaudy prefabricated ornament on the facade of pure televised information. Howard Roark would dynamite your satellites! Well, were he a real person… who was able to fly… into space… carrying one of those old-timey plunger boxes… Anyway what I’m saying is from sports broadcasts to news broadcasts the infographics are poorly thought out, overused, detrimental to effective transference of data, and did I mention spectacularly ugly?

As for weather graphics in particular I just can’t help but wonder, where did networks get the idea all that crap was necessary? It seems like presenting the weather forecast ought to be quite a simple operation. Temperature and precipitation projections for 5 days. Why all the confused hubbub? Best as I can surmise there are only two possibilities– meteorological hubris or graphical incompetency. Perhaps a combination of both.

If there are any young people out there reading this who are enamored by the glitzy and glamourous life of a television weather graphics professional and are planning on making a career of it, let me offer these few tips:

1) Nothing needs to move. Not raindrops, not snowflakes, not wind marks, not sun-rays. We already know how rain and that other stuff works.

2) Remember there are other colors besides ultramarine blue, pure red, and neon yellow. Use them, but please not all at once.

3) Don’t try to get to clever and “nuanced” with your atmospheric icons. All we need to know is whether it’s sunny and dry or cloudy and wet, the numbers fill in the rest. Having one icon with a single cloud, another with two slightly more wispy clouds, and a third with a darker more rounded cloud does not help us at all. If you want to interpret weather conditions in sensitive and unique ways paint landscapes.

4) Go to design school, take a few courses at the local community college, or at very least have lunch with your highschool art teacher a couple of times. Please?

5) One word: Standardization!

This last would go a long way in cutting down on the eye contusions. If we could just agree on a few simple symbols which would hereafter represent important weather conditions things would be a lot easier. If weather icons were standardized a symbol and two numbers would deftly tell us all we needed to know. No need for interpretation.

Well, hope you feel gratified, my having finally voiced this displeasure which I know was secretely eating away at all of you. Sometimes there is such a thing as too polite you know? That’s how you get ulcers.

Next time: Shampoo bottles!

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“Best as I can surmise there are only two possibilities– meteorological hubris or graphical incompetency. Perhaps a combination of both.”

Aye. I think this is mostly it. Oh, and the spectacular - and inexcusable - tolerance most people seem to have for this sort of thing. It is just as easy to make an informative, attracive graphic; easier perhaps.

I am particularly impressed with how The Weather Channel goes that extra mile in what I can only assume is a deliberate – and hostile – choice to play relentlessly horrible music.

Thank you. Sweet Jesus, I hope somebody listens.

For more terrible examples of unreadable graphics, try watching ‘Squawk Box’ any morning on MSNBC. Talk about an exercise in unnecessary elements. I have a fantasy where E. Tufte walks on-set and and performs an intellectual piledriver on the entire cast and crew.

Oh, and I don’t know if you alluded to this specifcially, but I particularly loathe the “fly-through” weather graphics. -Where you start out in, say, South Carolina, cruising at about 5000 ft through craptastic cloud and rain graphics until you finally reach New York, hovering in what I suspect must be a rather turbulent and disarming way.
I won’t speak for the rest of the world—but I typically experience weather from the ground.

And what’s with the completely RIDICULOUS names for the radar systems?

VIPER!

Live (LIVE!) DOPPLER 9000!

STORM FORCE!

It is like desperately, tragically bad science fiction. If I were a weather forecaster, I would have to call my system the Illudium Pew-36 Explosive Space Weather Modulator VIPER STORM FORCE 9000!!!!

(Yes, all of the exclamation marks would be necessary and trademarked.)

Clearly, the only thing between us and Vengeful Mother Nature is this elite meteorological force. Thank god they’re here for us.

Also thank god they don’t play any of this up by using headlines like “Mother Nature’s Wrath” and “Katrina’s Fury” because that would be over the top and undercut the serious work they’re trying to do.

Do they, I wonder, collpse in giggles during commercials?

There’s a great system of weather infographics done by, of all things, the local newspaper in my old college town. From what I gather, the system is all database-driven, and the meteorologists need only fill in the data. Check it out:
http://www.6newslawrence.com/weather/

@matt & simon: I guess I neglected to mention in the main body of the screed that Television weather graphics professionals would do well to take a page from some of the web based weather services. In my estimation they do a far superior job, as you both point out.

Oh come now. Hypercolourized vibrating spasms of televisuometeorology are the only laboratory tested mechanisms by which the weather can be burnt successfully onto your remaining frontal lobe cells (the others are saved for our sponsors). The weather alone is facile and boring but with new improved technodribble you get the megasensualized feel of modern holisticaweather 2.0 to jackstart you into your day.

(Very well written piece nonetheless JM)

That red/white one second from the top seems to be raining fish. That’s what we need: a Fortean Weather Channel. Or a Surrealist Weather Channel. Who doesn’t want to be warned when the chance of mimes is 70%?

By the way, the music is pretty much all Mellow Jazz. Imagine the kind of graphics you’d get on a hardcore punk weather channel? We’re talking flashing opposite colors, high-speed scrolling text, headlines pasted together from magazine cutouts, and and and and and scary, vampiric ragamuffin weather people in front of big maps of AmeriKKKa angrily forecasting a clampdown by the Man.

I’d watch the hell out of that.

As Simon says, the good old BBC has got it right, but this was only after an outcry from the great British public when it dared to change its graphics.
What puzzled me was, on a recent trip to Florida, the ‘Doppler 9000 with live Viper’ shown on some local weather channel (the name escapes me), showed… nothing, zilch, zero… except for a whirling line. The accompanying muzak was worse than the graphic.