May 2, 2017 7:00 AM

Gallery: Why Are Data-Viz Designers So Obsessed With Circles?

David Stephenson
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In his new book, The Book of Circles, Manuel Lima investigates how the shape has been employed throughout the ages. Here, you see the dome of the Basilica of Superga in Turin, Italy.
CERN
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Which looks remarkably similar to the Compact Muon Solenoid, a partical detector at the Large Hadron Collider in Cessy, France.

Houghton Library, Harvard University
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And not so different than this infographic from Oronce Finé, who drew it in 1549 as a way to illustrate the universe.
Nicholas Felton
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Lima's book breaks circular infographics into different taxonomies as a way to better understand how the shape is used. Here data designer Nicholas Felton used a spiral to show the number of articles written on Wikipedia from 2001 to 2010.

Anonymous
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This 13th century infographic is called the Wheel of Moral Struggle. Its anonymous designer used a wheel to illustrate different moral principles.
David Rumsey Map Collection
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This infographic, which shows the causes of death in 1903, is a radar chart, which is used to polot a series of values on three or more axis.

Thomas Clever
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This chart compares weather data from the Dutch Meteorological Institute with posts on social media to see if there's any overlap between the two. As Lima writes: "The visualization shows a ring of 365 days, on top of which are superimposed graphs of weather elements such as sunshine or rain. The size of gray bubbles indicates the quantity of social media messages about the weather, and their placement on the line of the day indicates the average sentiment on a scale of one to ten."
Boston Public Library
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This infographic from the Boston and Maine Railroad shows the view from the summit of Mt. Washington.

Houghton Library, Harvard University
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Another illustration from Oronce Finé, which shows a detailed compass.
Cristian Ilies Vasile
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Finé's compass illustration uses the same motif as Cristian Ilies Vasile's computer-drawn visualization of Pi's digits.

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