Interactive Infographics II
Posted on May 23, 02008
Filed Under Inspiration, Journal
Visualisation vs infographics
Information vs Visualisation
I've been thinking a lot about the evolution of infographics recently and I've come to the conclusion that somewhere along the line we've been seduced by visualsation at the expense of information. Some recent examples of data visuaIisation (especially those of the "extreme knitwear" variety) have more in common with generative art. The results are undeniably beautiful but somewhat less than informative.
Prior art
The 'old masters' of visual communication are newspaper infographic artists. They have been communicating complex ideas and articulating the meaning of data for decades - and all without the aid of animation or interactivity. An Infographic is worth 1,000 Words and those of us in the interactive world have a lot to learn from these pioneers.
The infographics work of John Grimwade, Conde Naste Traveller
Take the work of John Grimwade for example. His diagrams and maps are clean and clear. He uses contrast and colour (particularly red) to lead your eye to the important details. These and many other techniques are highlighted in this excellent Infographics News article: Ten tips to become an infographics artist.
I've found it hard to find examples of this quality in the interactive space. Two newspapers spring to mind. The New York Times have turned out some excellent pieces as has Spain's El Mundo newspaper. Probably the most complete example of interactive infographics I've come across is for the Peruvian Wharf development in London. That project started out as a CDROM and was later transferred to the web. This crossover seems tailor made for Flash: It is an animation package by heritage, it supports video and has a powerful scripting language. So where are all the sites?
Related Journal Entries
- Interactive infographics
- Interactive infographics III
- Edward Tufte at the Royal Geographical Society
- Temporal Analytics
- Cynergy MultiTouch Calendar for AIR 2.0
- We Are Astronomers
- 125 Years of the Greenwich Prime Meridian
- 100 years of Chinese history
- A day at the Royal Greenwich Observatory
- 2012: Apocalypse Then
- Google TimeMap
- The Equation of Time podcast II
- Arboreal longevity
- South Cornwall megaliths
- TED Global 2010, Hyper Island Creativity Lab and Flash On The Beach
Comments
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
I couldn’t agree more. At some point, people started to place more value on the sexiness of a graphic instead of its content. The assumption on the part of the “designer” probably being that “I find this data boring, let me try to make it more interesting”. The reality is, to the people that matter, the information is very interesting and shouldn’t be hidden behind some overly fancy piece of art. People interested in learning how to present information effectively should check out Edward Tufte (www.edwardtufte.com) and Stephen Few’s (www.perceptualedge.com) websites.
Hi Rob, yes it seems that more freedom breeds less focus. If you want to produce art that’s fine but the data source is largely irrelevant. If your aim is visualisation and the end result offers no insight then that just seems lazy to me.
Hi,
I agree with you. Flash tech sites are great for explaining facts and visualize ideas. I’ve been doing infographics for 10 years, from print to web. It is true sometimes complex visualization says nothing, but wee need to experiment first. there is a long way to walk. Congratulations for the examples: they reveal a good panorama of the infographics today.