Life in Five Seconds Depicts History Through Design

Why use 770,000 words (the Bible’s approximate length) when you can tell the story with none at all? In 2011, designers at Milan-based studio H-57 put a new spin on reductionism with their sequence of pictogram flowcharts depicting history’s most influential figures.

The images, laden with cheeky irony and black humour, reinterpret the lives of some of our best-loved and most-hated movers and shakers: the Beatles, Bruce Lee, Michael Jackson, Jesus, Napoleon, Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler are among them.

Now, with the publication of a book, Life in Five Seconds, H-57 has taken the concept to even more irreverent heights. Not only people, but also places, animals, icons, events and inventions have received the minimalist treatment, with two hundred flowcharts portraying the likes of Lady Gaga, Pulp Fiction, the Berlin Wall, the Last Supper, Ikea and the moon landings. It’s ‘instant knowledge’ created for a ‘jet-fuelled, caffeine-induced, celebrity-a-minute world’. Those with a web-connected mobile or tablet can download an app (the Quercus Eye) which animates five of the book’s pages.

H-57 is a design and advertising agency specialising in  contemporary design, illustration and typography. Its founders, Gianmarco Mileso and Matteo Civaschi, spent fifteen years working on leading international advertising campaigns before setting up their own studio. The pictogram flowchart concept is the product of collaboration with First Floor Under (a website dedicated to the digital publication of innovative photography and visuals).

[Via PSFK]