According to the Oxford Dictionary, an information graphic is “a visual representation of information or data”.
Information graphics vary in complexity and detail as well as in their intended use. On a surface level they create a platform for the development of engaging and informative art pieces, but on a more pragmatic level allow for an efficient and accurate method of communicating.
Information graphics are not limited to a specific format, and can be used in print, digital and even environmental contexts, ranging from a diagram pull-out in a newspaper to transit maps, to signage systems of a modern airport or shopping centre.
The ability to communicate through the visualisation of data is not a recent technique. In 1626, as part of the publication of Rosa Ursina sive Sol, Christoph Schiener incorporated informative visualisation of the sun’s rotation pattern.
In Data Design (2015), a review of creating informative design, Professor Per Mollerup presents the key qualities of data visualisation as: “accuracy”, “simplicity”, and “clarity”.
Using the “LATCH” principle devised by Richard Saul Wurman in Information Anxiety (1989) an information graphic can sort and compare five types of data: Location, Alphabetisation, Time, Category and Hierarchy.
Stronger and more effective information graphics will overlay two or more data types creating opportunity for the viewer to easily see comparisons and contrasts, resulting in a stronger piece of communication.
Matt Woolman, Assistant Professor of Communication Design at Virginia Commonwealth University, puts it perfectly when he says, “Functional visualisations must make sense to the user and require a visual language system that uses colour, shape, line, hierarchy and composition to communicate clearly…”
If we take the fundamental properties of an information graphic and then consider the wider function of design and the role of the designer, we can see that modern visual communication is effectively the creation of information graphics on a mass scale. In the same way that the aim of an information graphic is to simplify complex information to create a more effective piece of communicate, so too does design. The role of design and the designer is that of a translator, making the complex simple with a focus on information clarity.
References:
Mollerup, P., 2015. Data Design: Visualising Quantities, Locations, Connections, Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Wurman, R., 1989. Information Anxiety, Doubleday
Woolman, M., 2002. Digital Information Graphics, Thames and Hudson
DSGN6027 Design Contexts 