8 LCA (4) 2003     The illustration on the front cover page refers to the first article of a small series on efficient information visualization in LCA (see pp. 183– 189). Advanced information visualization, the process which transforms and maps data to a visual representation, employs rendered glyphs here to cre-ate abstract representations of multi-dimensional data sets. Parameters describing spatial, geometrical and retinal properties of such glyphs can be used to encode more LC information in a comprehensible format, thus allowing multiple values to be encoded and represented in a multi-dimensional information space. In this paper, the motivation for the basic principles of the approach are introduced and discussed. Picture: Courtesy of Harald Otto (see p. 186). Cover design: Edwin Grondinger.

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