infograpics - a short history

| Infographics | April 2012

Infographics a short history


Definition

Infographics = information graphics

“graphic visual representations of information, data* or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly”- Wikipedia

*aka data visualisation

Bar charts and maps, line graphs, pie charts, system diagrams, tables…


Purpose

Shifts the balance between perception and cognition to take fuller advantage of the brain's abilities


Principles

Proximity Objects that are close together are perceived as a group

Similarity Objects that share similarattributes (e.g. color or shape)are perceived as a group

Connection Objects that are connected(e.g. by a line) are perceived as a group


PrinciplesEnclosure Objects that appear to have a

boundary around them (e.g. formed by a line or area of common colour) are perceived as a group

Closure Open structures are perceived as closed, complete, and regular whenever there is a way that they can reasonably be interpreted as such

Continuity Objects that are aligned together or appear to be a continuation of one another are perceived as a group

Connection Objects that are connected (e.g. by a line) are perceived as a group


Origins

Cave paintings!

Maps pre-date writing by several millennia

An early infographic that made a difference…

In 1857, English nurse Florence Nightingale used information graphics persuading Queen Victoria to improve conditions in military hospitals, principally the Coxcomb chart, a combination of stacked bar and pie charts, depicting the number and causes of deaths during each month of the Crimean War.


Origins


Modern infographics


Research centricLauren Manning, a New York based designer, explores various methods to visualise one single data set for her thesis. Food Consumed:

“It’s like comparing apples to oranges.” This phrase is the best way to describe the current state of data visualizations. …Instead of seeing many excellent visualizations of all different data sets, what if you could see tons of visualizations of the same data set? What new comparisons, knowledge and structure might be developed from this?


Research centric


Customisable


Public data

research centric and attributed to multiple sources


Attributed to multiple sources

Blog data comes from a variety of online sources, including LiveJournal, MSN Spaces, MySpace, Blogger, Flickr, Technorati, Feedster, Ice Rocket, and Google.


RSPCA Freedom Food sales data visualisation

We produced assets to reach out to bloggers and online influencers, providing visuals to support a statistics based PR story.

Very successful campaign results for RSPCA.


Channel 4 ‘Ask the Chancellors’ debate


Datacopter Twitter visualisation app for Channel 4


Datacopter Twitter visualisation app V2.0


Barclaycard: influencer mapping


notaninfographic.tumblr.com


Thank you!@bethgranterhttp://delicious.com/bethgranter/infographics

infograpics - a short history

Technology

single data set

different data sets

multiple sourcesblog

excellent visualizations

tons of visualizations

new york

new comparisons

groupconnection objects