Pie chart frenzy from Brazil

The illustrations of the "Little Atlas of Coffee" from the early 1940s.

If you think pie charts can no longer surprise you because you’ve seen it ALL, maybe you’re wrong. The Small Atlas of Coffee (Pequeno Atlas Estatistico do Café) is a series of seven tiny promotional booklets published between 1940 and 1942. Although they contain not only pie charts but also simple bar, line, area and radar charts, and even pictorial statistics, we will focus only on the pie charts.

On the Archive.org there are seven numbers digitized from the series in relatively good quality. While many other graphic types are also particularly interesting, for some reason it was the pie charts that caught my eye. They really are like a carnival: colourful, fragrant, cheerful and loud - not humble ones. I don’t envy the draughtsmen, I would have given up after the fifth page. At the same time, perhaps these pie charts highlight something else. Namely, that constraints, a given situation (see next week’s post), a specific communicative aim (popularization) force creators to bring out the most, and this also can stimulate creativity. Enjoy!

1940/No.1

1940/No.2

1941/No.3

1941/No.4

1945/No.5

1942/No.6

1942/No.7

Next time we’ll visit the Philippines and see what it’s like when we have only boring column charts.