The Visual Miscellaneum: Errata

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

My beautiful book is out. Unfortunately a freak printing error has affected the text on 12 out of the 256 pages. I’m really sorry this has happened.

The Visual Miscellaneum

I’m pretty upset about it. I slaved for a year over every single page. So it’s a particular kind of pain to see mistakes creep in.

So I’ve put together an errata PDF of the affected pages. I’ve chucked in some new images in there as well.

Please email me if you want a copy of it.

UPDATE: Another mistake! Asking people to email me for a copy of the PDF. Doh. I’ve been deluged. Can I suggest this alternative method? Download this Visual Miscellaneum Errata PDF. It’s passworded. The password is the last word in the bottom right hand corner of page 159 of The Visual Miscellaneum or Information Is Beautiful. CASE SENSITIVE. Thank you. D

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  • Jeff G

    Darn! I haven’t gotten a copy yet, will there be a new printing?

  • Len Assante

    Love the book. Noticed the text issues. Unfortunate, and I will email you for a copy of the errata. I teach communication at a community college and I love to talk about the various ways we have of presenting information and the power of visual information, so your book (and website) make a great “visual aid.” Looking forward to Volume II.

  • Sergii

    Where is it? I can’t see it.

  • Jeremiah Britt

    How is the text affected? Just printed in too light a color? Is there a second printing in the works?

  • http://www.katherinemay.co.uk Katherine May

    That’s gutting for you – I’m full of sympathy. Comfort yourself with knowing that your readers will never notice the mistakes in the way that you do – becuase authors feel their errors like they’re scars. The book looks amazing and it on my Christmas list. I hope it does brilliantly.

  • Jeremy Seip

    Beautiful book. I’ve really enjoyed reading through it. I noticed several pages where there just didn’t seem to be enough information and had resolved to go through this sites archives to see if I could find the charts/related images.

    Thank you so much for having the resolve to put this issue out so fast and offer a correction.
    -Jeremy

    (Were you born here, and if so are you at least 35? — I know a job that could use your qualifications :-)

  • http://minimaldesign.net/ Yann

    I actually got the book waaaay early via Amazon (US), like 2 weeks before its official date… Love it. Gorgeous and really interesting. Didn’t even notice the errors… Don’t worry about it too much. Perfection is just something to strive for, it does not actually exist :)

  • http://Www.Iwearglasses.net Swain0

    My review copy just turned up at my UK office. Have noticed the error you mentioned but it doesn’t subtract from the content! I can’t turn past ‘Behind Every Great Man…’. It’s just brilliant -I love this book!

  • http://www.mottramdo.com Má»™t Trăm Độ – Kết nối Cá»™ng đồng blog Việt

    I’m already hope for more illustrations to come. Something like, disaster map/distribution/density/scale over recent time (this is of particular reference to 2012, though I believe it won’t be an end, let us see if trend of disasters is accelerating).

  • Bastian Fromherz

    now theyre limited edition!

  • http://www.joe.to joe

    why is the PDF passworded? letting people see 12 pages of your book for free is often called a “demo” and is the best way to sell more books.

    unless those 12 pages are the only reason to buy the book, or unless the book is so terrible that letting people see those 12 pages will convince them not to buy it?

  • Rajan Hira

    Mate, the book is fantastic!! You should be stoked with the result :)

  • Leo

    Was going to wait for the reprint, but sice only 12 pages are effected, will be ordering a copy asap :)

  • Tom Hinteregger

    got the book 3 days ago (europe, austria).
    let me assure you: as painful it is for the creator to find errors in his own work after “no way back”, me as a reader did not notice the errors.

  • Sarah

    I am being blonde? … or is the password “colours / Colours” not working?

  • Shahed

    This book is pretty awesome. I was a bit confused by the missing text, but I’ll definitely check out the PDF tonight.

  • Mike D

    haha, being blonde is posting the password publicly.

    Will the errors be resolved in the February 4th release of the UK edition?

  • http://love-you-big.blogspot.com Kate

    Just wanted to say I received my copy today. I am completely blown away: this is such an incredible book and a testament to your incredible creativity and passion. (And the research! Oh my goodness). So let’s just say I have gone and ordered another two copies for friends for Christmas. It’s just so inspiring.

    On a personal note, I’m trying to finish my PhD at the moment, and the beautiful ‘making of a book’ sequence really hit home! Thanks for all the love and care in such a beautiful volume.

  • http://www.mollietaylor.com/ Mollie

    Thanks, I was waiting for this :)

    Could you perhaps mark on each PDF page which book page it corresponds to?

  • Douchey France

    I slaved for a year over every single page.

    Wow! You’re at least 256 years old.

  • Bergur

    Thank you, I got this book as a Christmas gift and I absolutely Love it. I found it strange that some of the images had no text to it and therfore I took a look at the website.

    The book brings together all things I have passion for, Design, Statistic and Taxonomy… Yeah I Know I’m a bit strange.

    Thank you again for the corrections :)

  • http://www.bitsfortheboat.com ropes

    The book is looking really awesome. Is this Book available in Amazon???

  • http://unchartedfutures.net Jasrie

    Hi,
    I really loved your book. Im from singapore and managed to get a copy from my local bookstore. Very unfortunate that there were errors in your book. As i was flipping through, i did encounter pretty jarring mistakes due to printing. mistakes were mainly due to incomplete worded descriptions of the chart/diagram.

    But it was a good effort nonetheless.

  • Laura OBrien

    Got the book for Christmas and it was the Hit Gift of the year, everyone in the house was fighting over who got to peruse the contents! :) Thanks for a beautiful set of information (and we are enjoying the hunt for the numerous spelling/grammatical errors).

  • http://www.wiseweb.fr Nicolas

    Thank you very much for the book I was supposed to get it for chritmas but that just arrived yesterday in my mailbox in France! I Love that book. Amazing work.
    I like it so much that I want to spread it around to my friend. I found the gift for the coming birthdays… DO you know if there will be a new release without the missprint and when?

    Thank you again for your great work.

  • Nate

    This explains a lot. I just wasn’t getting some of these infographics at Christmas. Was I missing a key? Was it artsy in its info missing?

    Any chance the publisher would offer a new book to those who want it?

    Either way, very kind of you to offer up the PDF. Might be the best and most immediate compromise.

  • molly

    no matter how many times i try to download the PDF – it will not load – it this at my end?

  • Alex

    is there a printing error on the salad dressing visual as well? if so, could there be a .pdf for that visual? thank you, and other than the small printing errors, an extremely interesting and appealling book. keep up the good work

  • Patricia Munoz

    Loved this book. It’s “the picture says a thousand words” amplified. I remember seeing data on world mortality rates or literacy rates in a presentation given in one of those conferences where the western nations’ most brilliant people get together to develop solutions for world problems. Was that also your presentation?

    Anyway….

    I found a few consequential and inconsequential typos that were not listed on the errata PDF:

    - 30 Years Makes a Difference on page 044/045 has the name of the country Colombia misspelled.

    -Simple Part II Who has the most influence on your weight? Page 197, next to Shooting Stars The bubbles are there, but I didn’t see the corresponding labels.

  • Adrian Jones

    I just received my copy of Information is Beautiful this morning. Now I’m trying to put off reading it, so I can get some work done!

    I’ve also downloaded the errata PDF. Thank-you for going to the trouble of making this available.

    I have spotted another mistake though. On page 84-85, the Sinclair QL is displayed as having a 6502 processor, whereas it had a Motorola 68008. (Cut down version of the 68000 iirc).

  • http://tobi.oetiker.ch Tobi Oetiker

    Hi David,

    I just got my copy of the UK edition, and unfortunately it also contains a number of diagrams with missing fonts … great book, but I wonder if anyone actually bothered at looking at the pages after they were rendered … fonts not printing is a classic when moving from one device to another, I would expect the people at Harper Collins to know about this …

  • Wolter

    My wife bought this great book today and I allready love it! Thank goodness it’s for sale in Holland. Just downloaded the pdf. Thanks for sharing. The website is also very nice!

    Maybe an odd question: Are the images in ‘The Visual Miscellaneum’ different from ‘Information is Beautiful’?

  • jack chien

    why is the pdf protected by password?
    what will it change to give it for free?
    given the fact that 12 out of 256 pages (it’s more than 4%), shouldn’t you give your readers a way to get their money back instead of asking them for a password to view the correct version (which is the one they wanted to pay for in the first place)?

    (you can re-use my comment for free)

  • tea

    to joe –
    if you’re looking for a “demo” of the works in the book, there are plenty of samples on this website already, wouldn’t you say?
    to jack –
    i’m not sure what you think david owes you or his readers, but the password is such that the pdf is freely available to people who have bought the book; they have unrestricted access to pages they have already paid for. he’s not asking anyone for money, there is no extra currency involved…

  • tnt

    I have the ‘information is beautiful’ and I assume pages doesn’t match with the other book, since password doesn’t work. How can I open the pdf?

  • tnt

    sorry sorry sorry, I got it!! Wasn’t very concentrated obviously:)

  • Hamshanks

    Anyone know if I can send my first edition back to the publisher and get the latest error free version for free?

    • david

      Yes you can!

  • Hans

    Hi David,

    you made a gorgeous book.

    A question though. In which edition do the errors occur? I seem to have the 4th print if “Information is Beautiful” and found no differences (except for the colors in “Clear Cut” being swapped).

    Best regards,
    Hans