Page 2 Recognizing Infographics

Conveying your information in an efficient, interesting way sometimes involves more than writing. Infographics (data visualizations) take collections of information and simplify them for viewer understanding. They give viewers different and more effective ways to process large amounts of information. Often, infographics distill information to the essentials of statistics and facts presented visually (shapes, colours, specific diagrams, charts, etc.) to enhance understanding.

The use of infographics (visual data) is quite current. The first known data visualizations depicted planet movements in the sky. However, infographics did not become popular until the 18th century when Joseph Priestly plotted a timeline of the biographies of 2,000 historical figures. A picture, he argued, conveyed the information “with more exactness, and in much less time, than it [would take] by reading.” Since then, people have represented information visually in carefully labelled diagrams, bar graphs, pie charts, Venn diagrams, matrices, and tables.

Using this information, John Snow determined that the cholera outbreak in London in 1854 was related to the water pump on Broad Street rather than to bad air.

Florence Nightingale’s Rose diagram detailed how many men died of war wounds during the Crimean war. Infographics helped bring change to military and public health standards.

Informative visuals are necessary in many fields, but the stand-alone infographic is becoming more common. 

• For example, “Kings of Fast Food” is an independently made infographic on the subject of fast food and health. Click here to view it.  
  

This infographic gives a reader a quick and easy snapshot of the issue, as opposed to a long report.

Infographics are produced with two purposes:

• to represent credible information            
  
  
• to engage audiences with high-impact information