Scott McCloud, Linux, and e. coli

Scott's Chris Ware post from last week got me thinking about comics as maps. I was reminded of the work of Scott McCloud, a graphic novelist in his own right, but better known for his critical, academic writings about the medium of comics. The "map" (I suppose technically it is more of a chart, but that's a kind of map, right?) at left moves from abstraction to representation along the vertical axis and from drawings to words along the horizontal. Taken together, it is a pretty awesome representation of the vocabulary, grammar, and meaning available not just to comics artists, but to any visual artist.

The second map compares the Linux OS with e. coli bacteria. I don't fully understand this, but I think it is fascinating.

Both of these maps came from http://blog.visualmotive.com/

Posted by Dave