Jacques Bertin

"There are as many types of questions as components in the information."

"Graphics owes its special significance to its double function as a storage mechanism and a research instrument."

"Graphic representation constitutes one of the basic sign-systems conceived by the human mind for the purposes of storing, understanding, and communicating essential information. As a "language" for the eye, graphics benefits from the ubiquitous properties of visual perception. As a monosemic system, it forms the rational part of the world of images."

"And now, at the end of the twentieth century, with the pressure of modern information and the advances of data processing, graphics is passing through a new and fundamental stage. The great difference between the graphic representation of yesterday, which was poorly dissociated from the figurative image, and the graphics of tomorrow, is the disappearance of the congential fixity of the image."

"To analyse graphic representation precisely, it is helpful to distinguish it from musical, verbal and mathematical notations, all of which are perceived in a linear or temporal sequence. The graphic image also differs from figurative representation essentially polysemic, and from the animated image, governed by the laws of cinematographic time. Within the boundaries of graphics fall the fields of networks, diagrams and maps. The domain of graphic imagery ranges from the depiction of atomic structures to the representation of galaxies and extends into the spheres of topography and cartography."

"[Bertins color refers to] the repertoire of colored sensations which can be produced at equal value."

"Information is the reply to a question."

"When the correspondences on the plane can be established between:"

"[The special properties of visual perception of data]... is the visual means of resolving logical problems."

"Value perception dominates color perception."

"A graphic is not drawn once and for all; it is constructed and reconstructed until it reveals all the relationships constituted by the interplay of the data.... A graphic is never an end in itself; it is a moment in the process of decision-making."

"The aim of the graphic is to make the relationship among previously defined sets appear."