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What is Graph Drawing

Graph Drawing is the art to produce a picture of a graph. A graph is a mathematical model of entities and relationships, or objects and connections, or vertices and links, or nodes and edges. Graphs and its graph theory have a wide range of applications, many of which require visual representation of graphs.

Graph drawing is the mathematical theory how to produce a diagram, that is, how to calculate coordinates fully or semi-automatic from the topology of a graph. The derived diagram should be aesthetically pleasing (balanced, symmetric, avoiding overlaps and crossings) and should follow the layout conventions of the corresponding application domain (telecom networks, flow charts, UML diagrams, and so on).

There is an annual conference, the Symposium on Graph Drawing, together with an annual Graph Drawing Contest. The purpose of the contest is to monitor and challenge the current state of the graph-drawing technology and to stimulate new research directions for graph layout algorithm. Information about past and current contests can be found on this site, while information about past and current conferences can be found on http://www.graphdrawing.org.