Blondie, Their Influencers, and Inheritors by Adam Korengold

In the constant tradeoff between aesthetics and insight, it’s often a challenge to develop data visualizations that show insightful information clearly and concisely, and those that are artistically beautiful. As visualizers have more powerful tools at their disposal, the possible visualizations become increasingly complex, and while they may be objectively beautiful, they can be challenging to read and interpret.

This visualization is meant to show the incomparable career of Blondie, who formed in 1974 and are still touring in 2023 with their original lead singer, the ageless Debbie Harry, guitarist Chris Stein, and drummer Clem Burke. Their formation coincided with the end of the Ronette’s career (1957-1974), whose influence can be heard in “(I’m Touched By Your) Presence Dear”. They were also influenced by Lou Reed’s The Velvet Underground (1964-1996). Later bands who cite them as an inspiration include Garbage, led by style icon Shirley Manson, who formed in 1993 and are touring with Liam Gallagher of Oasis in 2023; and INXS (1977-2012).

To create this visualization, I plotted each band’s career on a Google Sheets spreadsheet and assigned each the corresponding number of degrees on a 360-degree circle. I drew them with a pencil and compass on a gessoed birch board surface, which I then painted in acrylics in the style of Russian icons, with vibrant colors and a gold background. The portrait of Debbie Harry is based on a photograph of her by Guy Furrow for The Guardian (4 March 2022).

I chose colors that were appropriate to highlight each group and which would be accessible to wide audiences, including those with low vision; sky blue for the Ronettes, purple for The Velvet Underground, red for Blondie, pink for Garbage, and orange for INXS. A happy outcome of the process is that the pencil markings are still faintly visible in the final product, which gives the viewer a sense of how the visualization came to be.

In this age when many audiences are intimidated by the volume of information that they encounter, and overwhelmed by the pace of technology, there is still an important space for hand-drawn visualizations which are simple and clear to uncover interesting points. In this case, that means the incredible breadth of Blondie’s career, bridging sounds from the golden age of Motown to the most contemporary artists more than six decades later.