The Image Quilt

At a recent one-day course taught by Edward Tufte, he introduced me to the notion of an “image quilt” – a mosaic of images that you can create using an extension available for Google’s Chrome browser.

Here’s an example of just such an image quilt – based on a Google image search using the phrase “ny times infographic”

When creating an image quilt, you can make a number of adjustments including size, spacing, ordering, etc. as well as removing certain images from the quilt before saving it as a PNG image file.

Tufte also suggested that when searching for things on Google he often chooses to view image search results – not the regular web search results. He notes that the regular web search results have typically been extensively “gamed” using techniques like search engine optimization to influence placement of the results on the page. He suggests that isn’t the case with the image results. I’ve been trying it more frequently – it is a useful alternative for certain kinds of searches.