Review: The 2009 Feltron Annual Report

Every new year since 2006 has meant one thing for fans of infography: a new Feltron Report is on its way.

The creation of New York-based designer Nicholas Felton, the reports have become known for their witty, clean, smart design of the immaculately-recorded minutiae of his own life. Recently I edited a book of infographics entered for a design competition; by far the most-quoted inspiration from the designers who entered was The Feltron Report. The information is at first glance mundane, but it soon becomes fascinating for being so beautifully presented.

After four years of his own incredibly detailed note-taking, Mr Felton decided on a different tack for 2009, handing out small letter-pressed cards (samples of which are included with each report) to everyone he encountered, asking them to record their own recollections of their time spent with him, from what he ate and drank to what he talked about.

The results of these surveys – 560 of them, out of a total of 1,761 encounters over the year – make up his best-looking report yet.

If you’ve never heard of The Feltron Report, this all may seem incredibly narcissistic (and I’m not saying it isn’t), but this is every Feltron report’s joy – everyday life recorded and anthologised in a beautifully designed edition, simultaneously the height of the infographic art while also gently satirising the authority of graphs and statistics.

Firstly, though the price is higher than previous years – $30 compared to $10 last year – a lot of that has clearly gone into making a beautiful finished product. It comes in its own translucent sleeve, and is a 16-page letterpressed, signed and numbered edition of 2000, immaculately printed by Swayspace and saddle stitched with red thread.

Each spread is two-colour, varying between magenta, cyan and yellow for the second colour. The letterpressing gives each word, each graph a beautiful old-style texture, held perfectly by the heavy paper stock. Though it’s taken until May for the report to come out, it seems at least some of that time has gone into making it as lovely as he can.

Though last year, Felton opted for some less-straightforward graphing techniques, this time the graphics are kept pretty simple, with maps of Manhattan, line graphs and simple lists. It would have been nice to see maps of other places as well, to show how he moved around in, say, Hong Kong.

However, what we do get is more than enough visual data to satisfy the eye, and a lot of pleasantly mundane detail to bathe in, particularly for New Yorkers who, as Mr Felton clearly does, enjoy sushi.

He even records how many things he refuses to print.

As the report is a compilation of individual surveys, we also get more human voices than in previous years. Felton has chosen well, a witty combination of the revealing and the complaining.

This report goes further than the others in its examination, and its implicit questioning, of personal data. We have to guess at the accuracy of what’s been recorded, as the author adds no comment to any of it – though perhaps that is exactly the point.

This is a report of the ‘public’ Nicholas Felton. Just because only one person recorded him cooking at home, does that mean he didn’t cook again, or simply that other meals went unrecorded? Does he actually drink an average of 0.99 beers a day, or is that a reflection of the social nature of the reporting?

Just as the other reports might have led a reader to mistakenly feel that they knew the man behind them, so here we reflect on somebody entirely through the memories of those who encountered him.

At $30 plus postage for a 16-page document, it’s a little pricey, but the quality of the edition and the depth of the information make it an essential item for any collectors of intelligent, thought-provoking graphic design.

Another winner, Mr Felton. I’m already excited about 2011.