Data viz isn’t just a modern-day craze. Designer Manuel Lima, author of The Book of Trees, discusses the origins of the tree diagram.

There are 200 examples of tree diagrams in The Book of Trees, the small forest of diversity a good argument for their proliferation in visualizing data.

Here, the typographic tree is one branch of a tree diagram, reaching from medieval drawings to Shneiderman’s treemaps. Lima has skilfully organised his book to reveal these developments.