4 ms·

Infographics are broken. We can do better.

18 points by lleims 14y ago

wdewind 14y ago
I agree, it's hugely frustrating. But the things we refer to colloquially as infographics are not infographics. Unfortunately, real infographics do not fill the role they do. Real infographics do not have the same mass appeal that these do, which is why they are only, in the loosest sense of the word, infographics. It is also why they survive despite being a worse product, when compared to real infographics. Rarely are the claimed infographics ever actually trying to convey information efficiently. No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the internet.
gte910h 14y ago
Infographics are fine. Just some people put too much photoshop and too little Tufte in their infographics. Filling the page with chartjunk and slathering on effects that lie with art instead of clarify with art.
kmfrk 14y ago
Infographics aren't broken. It's just that people think that they are explaining something by putting it into a graphic. It's like the 10s equivalent of the PowerPoint craze - bullet point all the sentences! There is information, and there is explanation. One rarely follows from the other.
pyoung 14y ago
The whole concept/category of infographics struck me us unnecessary. What started out as a few fairly novel, unique, and interesting approaches to display data spiraled out of control into these absurd comic-ish designs with a few stats buried in them. I will take a nice clean table or chart over an infographic any day. Mixing 'art' and data seems to obfuscate the purpose of the two.
Cyranix 14y ago
Some of my favorite data presentations recently have come from NYTimes online. Why? Simple: they're interactive, allowing me to explore the data and the relationships embedded therein. They're often very elegant designs, too, partly as a by-product of having to consider usability more than the average static infographic.
s_henry_paulson 14y ago
Infographics are as good as the people that build them and the amount of time spent on them. If this guy seriously thinks that building some gigantic inforgraphic mainframe is going to keep ignorant people from making bad content, he's got another thing coming. If anything, it will enable people with even less expertise to put content together. I imagine it will be like a rage comic generator, only with numbers and "facts".
blt 14y ago
The problem isn't bad design like this author thinks. The problem is that designers use infographics to display information that doesn't have enough data points or dimensions to require plotting. Most of the time, infographics only express a few sentences' worth of information.
streptomycin 14y ago
The problem with infographics is that most of them are made by people who are not experts and are not passionate about the topic. They're just made for spam: http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-infographics http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-infographic... Until that problem is solved, nothing will fix infographics. Well, nicer software might make it easier for spammers to make sensationalist and misleading (if not simply wrong outright) infographics, I suppose.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

18 points by lleims 14y ago

I agree, it's hugely frustrating. But the things we refer to colloquially as infographics are not infographics. Unfortunately, real infographics do not fill the role they do. Real infographics do not have the same mass appeal that these do, which is why they are only, in the loosest sense of the word, infographics. It is also why they survive despite being a worse product, when compared to real infographics. Rarely are the claimed infographics ever actually trying to convey information efficiently. No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the internet.

gte910h 14y ago

Infographics are fine. Just some people put too much photoshop and too little Tufte in their infographics. Filling the page with chartjunk and slathering on effects that lie with art instead of clarify with art.

kmfrk 14y ago

Infographics aren't broken. It's just that people think that they are explaining something by putting it into a graphic. It's like the 10s equivalent of the PowerPoint craze - bullet point all the sentences! There is information, and there is explanation. One rarely follows from the other.

pyoung 14y ago

The whole concept/category of infographics struck me us unnecessary. What started out as a few fairly novel, unique, and interesting approaches to display data spiraled out of control into these absurd comic-ish designs with a few stats buried in them. I will take a nice clean table or chart over an infographic any day. Mixing 'art' and data seems to obfuscate the purpose of the two.

Cyranix 14y ago

Some of my favorite data presentations recently have come from NYTimes online. Why? Simple: they're interactive, allowing me to explore the data and the relationships embedded therein. They're often very elegant designs, too, partly as a by-product of having to consider usability more than the average static infographic.

s_henry_paulson 14y ago

Infographics are as good as the people that build them and the amount of time spent on them. If this guy seriously thinks that building some gigantic inforgraphic mainframe is going to keep ignorant people from making bad content, he's got another thing coming. If anything, it will enable people with even less expertise to put content together. I imagine it will be like a rage comic generator, only with numbers and "facts".

blt 14y ago

The problem isn't bad design like this author thinks. The problem is that designers use infographics to display information that doesn't have enough data points or dimensions to require plotting. Most of the time, infographics only express a few sentences' worth of information.

streptomycin 14y ago

The problem with infographics is that most of them are made by people who are not experts and are not passionate about the topic. They're just made for spam: http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-infographics http://www.buzzfeed.com/awesomer/the-truth-about-infographic... Until that problem is solved, nothing will fix infographics. Well, nicer software might make it easier for spammers to make sensationalist and misleading (if not simply wrong outright) infographics, I suppose.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]