Infographic

An Information graphic or infographic is a visual representation of information, data or knowledge. This form of graphic is frequently used in journalism, educational materials, product manuals, and reports. Commonly it comes in the form of a chart, graph, map, or diagram.

Elements of information graphics

The basic material of an information graphic is the data, information, or knowledge that the graphic presents. In the case of data, the creator may make use of automated tools such as graphing software to represent the data in the form of lines, boxes, arrows, and various symbols and pictograms. The information graphic might also features a key which defines the visual elements in plain English. A scale and labels are also common.

Notable information graphics and creators

Almost certainly the first information graphics were maps. Map-making predates written language by several millenia. A map at the Çatalhöyük archaeological site dates to prehistory.

William Playfair created the first known graphs in The Commercial and Political Atlas in 1786. These statistical graphs represented economic data for 18th-century England in the form of bar charts and histograms. Forty-four graphics were included in this work, and his Statistical Breviary (1801) is considered to have the first area charts.

James Joseph Sylvester created a chemical-algebraic diagram in 1878. This was the first visual representation of chemical bonds.

Charles Minard's information graphic of Napoleon's March

Certainly the most widely recognized information graphic is the graphic description of Napoleon's disastrous march on Moscow in 1812-1813 created by Charles Joseph Minard in 1861. In a single image, the graphic combines a map of the march, the size of the expedition showing the loss of lives, and the temperatures endured by the troops.

Otto Neurath (1882-1945) was an Austrian sociologist, a political economist and a anti-philosopher. On a later age he started as a designer of visual information. Later on he cooperated with the graphic artist Gerd Arntz to continue developing the Isotype system. According to those two, the visual language was way more objective than the written language. The Isotype system (International System of Typographic Picture Education) is the first real information design / graphic system, which became a sort of standard and is still used by some designers or institutes.

Modern practitioners of information graphics / design

A statistician and sculptor, Edward Tufte has written a series of highly regarded books on the subject of information graphics. Tufte also delivers lectures and workshops on a regular basis. He describes the process of incorporating many dimensions of information into a two-dimensional image as 'escaping flatland.'

Nigel Holmes is an established commercial creator of what he calls "explanation graphics". His works deal not only with the visual display of information but also of knowledge - how to do things. He created graphics for Time magazine for 16 years, and is the author of several books on the subject.

Close and strongly related to the field of information graphics, is information design. Actually, making infographics is a certain discipline within the information design world. Modern day American information designers, like Nigel Holmes, Edward Tufte, Peter Sullivan and Sam Ward, Donald Norman; are accompanied by a very active Dutch information designer: Paul Mijksenaar. His Amsterdam and New York based design studio is specialized in the development of visual oriented information systems. They create so called wayfinding and waysigning systems for all kinds of large public transport systems and infrastructures. Examples of their work are, the signing systems for airports in the Netherlands (Schiphol, Amsterdam), but also for airports in Italy and the United States like: JFK Airport and Dallas Forth Worth.

Another good example of modern day practitioners of information graphics is the French bureau d'études. A bureau which visualizes a lot of complex matters like the governmental structures of power in the United States. Or the way the media in the States are linked and related together in an data driven war. They create maps about autonomous knowledges and powers, art and economies, governing by networks, world governance by private bankers, or maps about the contemporary bio-control systems. The bureau visualizes these complex organization structures by mapping them, which should be a very effective way of making complex information more easily accessible. But what they want to show, is mainly how complex certain (media) structures are and what the actual relations are, without simplifying them. And without making it easy to overview and to understand. So basically the main objective within information design is not pursued and what you get as a 'reader' is an information overload. But it serves another goal and the public is very select.

List of information graphic types

Interpreting information graphics

Many information graphics are specialised forms of depiction that represent their content in sophisticated and often abstract ways. In order to interpret the meaning of these graphics appropriately, the viewer requires a suitable level of graphicacy. In many cases, the required graphicacy involves comprehension skills that are learned rather than innate. At a fundamental level, the skills of decoding individual graphic signs and symbols must be acquired before sense can be made of an information graphic as a whole. Howevever, knowledge of the conventions for distributing and arranging these individual components is also necessary for the building of understanding.

References

"Blood, Dirt, and Nomograms: A Particular History of Graphs", Thomas L. Hankins, Isis, University of Chicago Press (1999, 90: 50-80). [[1]]
"Designing Infographics" (1998), Eric K. Meyer

External links