We present the volume in the series Antologia di cultura grafica dedicated to data visualisation, published by Lazy Dog, together with Silvia Sfligiotti, one of the series' curators, and the teacher and art director Roberto Maria Clemente.
The volume explores the long history of data visualisation, from the first graphic representations of physical qualities in the Middle Ages to the digital tools of the third millennium. The anthology gathers texts by authors who helped define the visual language of statistics and information: from Nicole d'Oresme, who in the fourteenth century anticipated the idea of Cartesian space, to William Playfair, inventor of the bar chart, from John Snow, who revolutionised epidemiology with a map, to Otto Neurath, theorist of Isotype, and Jacques Bertin, whose Sémiologie graphique laid the theoretical foundations of modern data visualisation.