Data Visualisation

A metaphor of love

Data Visualisation

Cool china-blue palettes and ornamental foliage of Islamic art have always been a part of design to my personal liking. The extent of that liking, though, only came to be known when a piece of china from the V&A museum, in London, imprinted on my mind.

In this project, I have tried to combine my love for poetry and knowledge of data visualisation, as a graphic designer.

Stephanie Posavec uses such style of decoding and re-coding texts through illustrations.

The poem is called ‘stay close, my heart’ by the book of love that was Jalaluddin Rumi.

The florals and arabesque quality of the lines on the vessel made and my obsessive need to analyse words made me wonder what a pattern with information hidden in it could look like. The final artworks are visualisations based off metaphors and figures of speech;

This is, an ode to life and the romance of its allusions.

Ideation & Process

Rumi was a poetic romantiziser of ‘divinity’. His poems of love were often two-faced, playing invisible strings of the divine and life beyond.

What initially began as my doodle of visuals admiring the patterns and lines of the ethnic art, led me to connecting dots of semiotics - the symbolic sufism and islamic importance of a circle (infinite, equal, perfect), the ‘structures’ of their place of worship and an overall perspective of the elements of life.

Key / Legend

How to read

The poem starts with a somewhat prejudiced tone of voice, with the poet talking about the untrustworthy world around one’s heart. Then, it gradually falls into a more humbled/toned down voice, ultimately sounding at peace; having achieved acceptance, being receptive to or giving into the supremacy of life.

Every form, line and colour is picked from within the artefact itself, to retain its identity.

Each type of line represents a ‘figure of speech’, e.g. metaphor, similie etc.

The leaves on these lines are the no. of syllables in that line of the poem.

The colour in these leaves are for the tones of voice; prejudiced, humbled and receptive, respectively.

Following this, I expanded on this artwork to capture my perception of ~the divine~

{the sun, the earth and water}