RJ's Inspiration #014 🦌

RJ's Inspiration

weekly viz to inspire you too

🦌 VIEW OF NATURE IN ALL CLIMATES
is a stunning 1852 pictorial diagram by James Reynolds. It stretches from the equator to the north pole  to show how the changing angle of the sun's rays impacts flora and fauna. Along the way we can see natural and man-made landmarks. Its eight panels combine to almost six feet wide. Explore them all in detail at David Rumsey (link).

Note how Reynolds plays with juxtaposition and scale across this abstraction. Biomes blend into each other impossibly fast. A tiger prowls at the base of Mexican volcanoes. The foreground shows animals and trees of interest. Perspective shrinks mountains and volcanoes into the background. The addition of city skylines seems like a less-well integrated afterthought.

I love how the gently changing sun's rays are reinforced by the warm-to-cool color transition of the sky. I've already blocked out how one might revisit this concept, perhaps marching from the South Pole and through the Americas to the North Pole. It is fun to think about, but difficult to imagine how to produce something so fine.
 

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