Since infographics are such a staple of information design (and in fact, for some folks infographics==info design), I can't pass this one up. See the dangers of infographics over on iaslash.

I don't know that I understand the author's contention that:

Infographics are somewhat expensive and time-consuming to produce, and are therefore in their nature providing context to whatever is going on on the ground. It is, however, _not_ in their nature to provide afterthought and analysis.

This seems to me to be in the class of "all generalizations are false" kind of statements. Are we just talking the kind of infographics that one has time to do when trying to beat one's colleagues to the press in war-time? Or in general? Maybe I'm just overthinking this, but aren't some infographics a visual illustration of someone's afterthought and analysis? A way to call attention to some attribute of the data in a visual way?

06:32 PM | linkme | home