Project Images
Description
The “Typographic Wikipedia Tree” is a mixture of information visualization and artistic work. The user enters any Wikipedia article via a search field (either in German or English), which then grows a tree out of more articles that all share a connection to each other—either through a common category or a link that points from one article to the other. The connections are chosen randomly, meaning that two trees generated from the same “starting point” may look completely different.
The length of the tree branches is determined by the length of the texts displayed, because the entire tree is a purely typographical construct: The trees visual appearance comes from the letters that make up the names of the articles and their relations. The color of a text piece is decided either randomly or—if available—by the thumbnail image of an article, from which the predominant color is extracted.
A variety of settings allow users to tweak the appearance of the generated tree. Users may choose between three different tree types:
Organic: Results in an “organic”, irregular appearance.
Graph: The branches of the tree grow evenly upwards.
Snowflake: The branches spread out from the center in all directions, visually resembling a snowflake.
The “Typographic Wikipedia Tree” relies heavily on Wikipedia’s API, which is why this project helped me gain a lot experience in working with APIs—and generally expand my JavaScript skills. The result is a fascinating visualization of Wikipedia and its interwoven network of information.
The project was shown at the Rundgang 2022 exhibition of Flensburg University of Applied Sciences.
