Review: Body – A Graphic Guide to Us

Meticulously researched, and lovingly illustrated, ‘Body: A Graphic Guide to Us’ is the ultimate visual guide to the human body, written by award-winning science author Steve Parker, and illustrated by Andrew Baker.

Broken down into thematic sections of the physical, chemical, genetic, sensitive, coordinated, thinking, growth and the medicine and means associated with healing it, the book features 100 stunning graphics and illustrations.

Infographics are information and knowledge communicated in graphic form. Shapes and colour predominate over words and literacy. Infographics are instinctive to comprehend and fast to assimilate, they transcend language and easily spring back to memory.

The books intentional use and reliance upon communicating often complex information through infographics makes every page not only captivating, but immediately compelling; one page is equally as enticing as the next, resulting in the entire book quickly becoming an obsession.

With mind-blowing facts such as on average a person breathes 280,000,000 litres of air over a lifetime, and answers to why someone inherits their dimples, and how much energy is used during different activities, Andrew Baker’s visual approach – though often minimal in style – is uniquely suited to making complex information both accessible, and elegantly fascinating.

For the basic material they feed on, we are indebted to those who measure, collate and analyze such vast amount of raw data, bare facts and naked information.

Bursting with an incredible diversity of information this a book that will be appreciated by anyone of any age, read as enthusiastically by an adult as it would be by a child learning about the body’s anatomy for the first time. Steve Parker states that ‘no body book can hope to be comprehensive’; and yet what the resulting collaboration has achieved feels somewhat definitive, perhaps even seminal in relation to the depth of information it holds and communicates. Exceptional in its visual format it is hard to imagine another infographic anatomy book eclipsing this!

 

Body: A Graphic Guide to Us by Steve Parker, illustrations by Andrew Baker, is published by Aurum Press RRP £25.

quarto.com/body

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Posted on Nov 16th, 16 by | Twitter: @lisahassell

Founder & director of Inkygoodness, Lisa is a published writer and arts journalist, focusing on creative business, graphic art and illustration and design education. Her words regularly appear in Computer Arts, Creative Bloq, Digital Arts and IdN.

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