I agree completely but unfortunately I doubt people will do them right until they stop attracting eyeballs. To the well informed, bad info graphics are a plague on the web. To my sister's teenage friends and my mother's circle of friends they're "oh cool, I don't have to read!". Self respecting graphic designers won't create these awful "info graphics" but anyone who's looking to attract some eyeballs in the hopes of getting an ad or two clicked or a new rss subscriber will keep polluting the web with them until we stop looking.
Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.
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Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.
#12For actual depth and substance regarding information visualization, you should just read Tufte, since much of this article is obviously informed by it: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi
Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.
#13As a designer I'd like to thank you for this post. This recent fad of "infographics" (some text in rectangles + pie chart) is quite sad. These things are information graphics about as much as fake lens flares were graphic design in the 90s. Side note: are you serious about people paying for this?
Well said.
I contribute to a site that does a lot of interactive visualizations and works with artists that do more static infographics.
Because we display them time to time we get massive amounts of email from companies that paid to have an infographic made (usual on a subject not related to their biz) and slap ads on the bottom. I've never posted one and can't for the life of me figure out why any legit business (maybe that's my answer) would do that.
The data part seems to be the biggest thing people fail to understand. If you don't have compelling data or the graphic doesn't lend itself to understanding the data... then what's it for?
Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.
#14I really wish he (Ian Lurie) spend more time giving examples of great information (/data) graphics and what strategies to take when designing such graphics. To me, this comes off as a mere complain.
Lurie links to Mark (Mapstone?) who, also, complains about infographics. I'd like to take a shot at how they could make better infographics. Especially a graphic by Mashable Infographics about the 1.8 zettabytes of data produced every year.
The "1.8 zettabyte"-graphic from Mashable shows a lot of (meaningless) comparison, but absolutely no causality. Imagine if they instead talked about all the different sources of information, adding up to the enormous quantity of 1.8 zettabytes. Like the amount of video uploaded to YouTube everyday, the number of Tweets and there size in gigabytes per day, the increasing number of cameras being bought, growth on Wikipedia and probably many more.
Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.
#15Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.
#16For actual depth and substance regarding information visualization, you should just read Tufte, since much of this article is obviously informed by it: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi
+1 million. That book changed my life, at least as far as information presentation is concerned. It's that good. If you ever make a chart or a graph, you owe it to yourself and your viewers to read that book.
Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.
#17Why does the URL say "10 reasons..." but the article title says "11 reasons..."? Honestly, that bothers me enough to not even read the rest.
People rename articles, but URLs are not supposed to change, and should never break.
Also, the 11th reason is "you're probably making the other 10 mistakes."
Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.
#18Why does the URL say "10 reasons..." but the article title says "11 reasons..."? Honestly, that bothers me enough to not even read the rest.
People rename articles, but URLs are not supposed to change, and should never break.
So the article was published before it was done? Clearly it was 10 when it got published... then it was increased to 11. I just think that if a person is going to publish something like this and expect people to listen, they should show that a certain amount of thought was put into it before releasing it into the wild. But I guess mine is an unpopular view.
Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.
#19Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.
#20Why does the URL say "10 reasons..." but the article title says "11 reasons..."? Honestly, that bothers me enough to not even read the rest.
Shouldn't you be bothered more about your emphasis on trivialities over the substance (or OCD)?