Using a visual theme may ground your piece in a metaphor that makes abstract concepts easy to understand. Elements of visual interest such as illustrations, photos, and icons are acceptable and even expected in the medium. Infographics are a hybrid medium, however, and there is room for creative license here. His approach removes all decoration - a chart with a perfect data–ink ratio not only omits illustrations but also removes items such as background images, decorations of chart items, and even gridlines. Tufte advocates for a minimalistic presentation of charts that directs viewers to the information presented rather than to the designer’s artistic additions. Ideally, data visualizations have a high data–ink ratio: all or most of the visual elements in the graphic convey meaningful information about the dataset. The ratio compares the valuable information (the data) to the full graphic (the total “ink”). Edward Tufte created the concept of the data–ink ratio in his 1983 book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information to sum up the data density in a visualization. Design Guidelines for Information GraphicsĮvery item on an infographic - from charts to the imagery that illustrates them - should convey meaningful information. The chart in the lower left, on the other hand, is a data visualization and could have been used as such if it had been shown by itself, without the explanatory context provided by the rest of the screenshot. BBC.com: This illustration on the likelihood of automation for different professions is an infographic according to our definition. Thus, an infographic can stand on its own as a separate piece of content (though it can also be shown in the context of an article with additional text). Infographics often include data or (more rarely) information visualizations, but must also provide context in the form of illustrations, facts, quotes, and captions. In such situations, information graphics can get your point across more clearly.ĭefinition: An infographic is a multimedia graphic aiming to present complex information and data in a way that is easy to understand. However, for certain types of audiences or in certain contexts, a visualization may be insufficient for communicating your message. Information and data visualizations can reveal patterns that might have been difficult to discern from numbers alone. Unlike data visualization, which is generally static, an information visualization allows users to manipulate the visualization in order to get to different aspects of the data. In human–computer interaction, the field of information visualization studies interactive data representation. Charts, graphs and maps are the most commonly used types of data visualization. Infographics often contain data visualizations, but a data visualization on its own is not an infographic.ĭefinition: A data visualization is a graphical representation of a set of data. The distinction between data visualizations and information graphics is subtle, but important. The hope of social-media sharing has made infographics popular on websites that emphasize content marketing. Information graphics (better known as infographics) are a powerful storytelling tool that allows users to comprehend, analyze, and explore data. One of the most exciting challenges designers face in an increasingly quantitative world is how to translate data into a medium that is easily understood by a wide audience. As the ways we collect data and the tools we use to analyze it evolve, our world is becoming incredibly data-rich.
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