Nathan Holley – 31st May 2011

The rise of the Infographic

I’ll start off with a confession – recently, I have become madly infatuated with Infographics.

I like to think of infographics quite generally as a means of telling a story using graphic aid; they ultimately need to make some form of data seem less boring and more visually stimulating for the user. Forms of information graphics surround us in day to day life – in the media, (newspapers – symbols to show the weather) pedestrian & road sign’s to name a few examples. Although very different they all share the same role – a need to act as a visual shorthand for concepts to explain a message. The best Infographic should help the audience digest the most convoluted information by making it look simple – ideally be something you would happily put on the wall of your office without having your desk neighbour ridicule you.

The spark which prompted me to delve deep into the world of Infographics was a fascinating talk at the school lead by mentor Dave Birss. From the beginning untill the very last word, he captivated me in the early hours of a sleepy Wednesday morning and i’m sure I can speak for the majority of people who attended – left feeling truly inspired. In the presentation Dave tackled (amongst other topic’s) the captivating world of Infographics and showed some amazing examples out right now including some pieces of work by data and digital technology artist Aaron Koblin who creates stunning visualisations using modern technology of flight paths across the USA.  Dave went on to describe how Infographics can be useful in an overcrowded marketplace.

“With the enormous amount of news and information readily available in the form of articles, written documents etc it is increasingly important to organise, edit and display content so that the reader’s experience is enriched. Infographics can help achieve these goals”.

Information can be recorded in two way’s; verbally (word, numbers, names etc) or visually (pictures, faces, scenes). In his book ‘Your Memory’, Kenneth Higbee declares that ‘picture memory exceeds word memory when measured by recall as well as by recognition’. He goes on to reference a study of more than 2500 people in 2001, comparing verbal against visual memory retention where results indicated ‘pictures were remembered with surprising accuracy as long as three months after seeing them just once’ – this demonstrates that Infographics have the potential to be incredibly useful in communication, especially for those who would consider themselves ‘Right brain’ thinkers.

The market opportunity is clearly there, Dave briefly touched upon during his masterclass one forward thinking site that has seen the potential and are soon to launch a ‘visualisation and Infographic community’ visual.ly with a video documenting the explosion of and position that Infographics occupy in communications.
The concept of Infographics is relatively new – according to Google insights, searches for the word have grown steadily since January 2010 and seen a sharp peak recently as of March 2011. In the corporate world infographic’s are even newer, infact the term is not recognised as a word yet in the Oxford dictionary. We are witnessing an exciting new way of communicating to an audience, let’s hope it is here to stay and businesses will soon discover the retention benefits of producing their information in this unique format.

My top 3 infographics…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some useful websites if for discovering what’s being pushed out at the moment
http://dailyinfographic.com/
http://infographiclabs.com/
http://www.fastcompany.com/tag/infographic-day