Glyph-based Visualization
Glyph-based visualization is a common form of visual designs where a data set is depicted by a collection of visual objects referred to as glyphs. In a broad interpretation, a glyph is a small visual object that can be used independently or constructively to depict attributes of a data record or the composition of a set of data records. Each glyph can be placed independently from others, while in some cases glyphs can also be spatially connected to convey the topological relationships between data records or geometric continuity of the underlying data space. As glyphs are miniature visualizations, they are particularly suitable for studying many theoretical concepts in visualization. In particular, a glyph representation scheme is a coding scheme, which can be studied under the framework of information theory.
Although any glyph-based visualization method will incur the cost and inconvenience of learning and memorization, there have been sufficient evidence to confirm the learnability of carefully-designed glyphs in practice. For example, traffic signs, which typically feature 3 visual channels (e.g., shape, color and a word, number or pictogram), have been learned by billions of people. Glyphs are also the lexical building blocks of many diagrammatic schemes, which feature grammatical rules for topological and hierarchical connections. Hence if there were a common visual language for visualization one day in the future, glyphs would no doubt be its vocabulary. Surely this is one of the ultimate goal of visualization research, regardless how such a language may be shaped.
The image on the left was created by Eamonn Maguire, see DOI for further details.
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