What is infographics ?

Computer graphics refers to the creation of computer-aided digital images. Unsurprisingly, it took off in the 1940s, with the development of the computer, thanks to which it gradually became possible to draw lines, add colors, create gradients, etc. are then created, at first rudimentary and then increasingly complex. From the 1990s, thanks to the simplification of digital tools, computer graphics artists, first engineers and designers of graphic tools on computers, were supplanted by a new type of graphic designer: digital artists, graphic designers now able to use computers for visual creations or image processing.

Being graduated in 1914

In 1914, aged 26, Fritz graduated: doctor of medicine, he began his career as a gynecologist and surgeon in a private clinic in Berlin. The First World War broke out, and Fritz enlisted as a military doctor, which did not prevent him from having a little free time to continue writing. During these years, he published two books: Die Milchstrasse (La Voie Lactée) and Die Zelle (La Cellule). After the war and a stay in Algeria, Fritz returned to work in Berlin, still as a doctor and writer. As an increasingly violent anti-Semitism grows, Fritz publishes a provocative work entitled Die Juden Als Rasse Und Kulturvolk (The Jews as a Race and Cultivated People). We had to dare! His various works are already widely published and translated all over the world.

Talented scientist capable of transforming the most complex concepts into images

His literary success exploded with the publication of his five-volume work Das Leben Des Menschen (The Life of Man). His works are carefully illustrated with designs so particular that they become his trademark, recognizable at first glance. Many of his writings are popular science books, accessible to the general public. Fritz has a real talent for popularization: he manages to visually express complex scientific concepts, thus desecrating entire areas of biology and medicine. Many of these concepts are explained by analogy with machines or mechanisms.

Opposite, an example of a comparison between a muscle (top) and a car engine (bottom). The letter (a) designates a muscle fiber that is significantly enlarged compared to the other, allowing to detail the similarities with the piston engine.

Fritz then became a specialist in visual communication highly coveted by the press and industry.

Claiming your Jewish origins in the days of the Nazis

Fritz’s activities diversified, and he made no secret of his support for his own community: he became editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica (Encyclopedia of Judaism), published the Sammelblätter Jüdischen Wissens (Collective files of Jewish knowledge), worked within ‘a charitable organization as well as in a hostel welcoming Jews (we are then in 1922-1931 in a Germany where the Nazi Party already exists), gives lectures and publishes scientific articles. One can note the audacity of Fritz to continue to evolve on the front of the scene in the very particular context of Nazi Germany which is then set up.

At the same time, Fritz is working on a book that is dear to him, as a convinced Zionist, and which concerns the natural history of Palestine (a book he will never publish, moreover) and organizes to make an expedition to the Sahara in 1932.

Censored and hunted across the world

A year later, Hitler came to power and Fritz was expelled from his country. He then emigrated to Palestine with his wife Irma Glogau and their two children. He opened Hayad, a graphics and design studio in Jerusalem with his friend Eliyahu Korén, typographer and graphic artist, a German Jew who also emigrated to Jerusalem. They then work on his exhibition Hygiene of the schoolboy. At the same time, in Germany, shortly after Kristallnacht, Fritz’s books were banned, burned and placed on the list of “harmful and undesirable” writings. In addition, the Kosmos publishing house (which still exists today and was at the time known as Franckh’sche Verlagshandlung) for which Fritz worked decides to end their collaboration. But Fritz managed to get around this ban by continuing his collaboration with the Swiss subsidiary of the group, the Montana edition, then again with Kosmos (then renamed Albert Müller Verlag) in 1936, who published his best-selling book in the world: Unser Geschlechtsleben (Our sex life).

Computer graphics tend more and more towards a data visualization process. Our century has seen an explosion in the amount of digital data created: it has multiplied by 20 in ten years, and at this rate we are literally going to collapse under hard disks (except for the development of new, more compact technologies). These data come, for example, from the field of medical imaging (images produced by MRIs, scanners, etc.) or even from astrophysics (space missions, use of telescopes capable of generating 15 Tera bytes of data in one night, etc. ). This massive production of data is what is known under the soft name of Big Data (which also designates the development of technologies capable of processing this data).

But what is the point of creating data if not to analyze it? This is the main role of computer graphics: translate, synthesize and enhance raw data in order to allow analysis and communication. Nothing new compared to the work that Fritz was already doing, you tell me. But let’s just say that our entry into the era of Big Data is contributing very largely to the generalization of the use of computer graphics.