Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

http://www.portent.com/blog/design-dev/10-reasons-your-infographic-isn.htm

by portentint • 14 years ago

175 76 14 years ago

dfxm12• 14 years ago

My biggest beef with infographics is that they are almost always a static image. This is 2012. Why not make something interactive? It could help address several of the author's points as well.

oacgnol• 14 years ago

My prediction is that interactive graphics will be the trend in coming years - the things you can do with d3.js, Protovis, and related JS libraries is way deeper than a simple static image. The New York Times already has some great interactive pieces, e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/05/13/business/stude...

jaems33• 14 years ago

I don't disagree but there's certainly more complexity with interactive. Takes longer to execute (sketch, design, develop, test). And then many designers don't know how to do interactive front-end code.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 14 years ago

With HTML5, you could probably make an accessible infographic (that works correctly for screen-reader and text-browser users)

bwh2• 14 years ago

Static images are easier to share.

thwarted2• 14 years ago

Links are difficult to share?

laconian• 14 years ago

I don't think they care so much about communicating facts as much as they care about ROI from their SEO investment. If static images work at getting page views from gullible people, then why change?

jack-r-abbit6• 14 years ago

Why does the URL say "10 reasons..." but the article title says "11 reasons..."? Honestly, that bothers me enough to not even read the rest.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 14 years ago

People rename articles, but URLs are not supposed to change, and should never break.

dllthomas• 14 years ago

Also, the 11th reason is "you're probably making the other 10 mistakes."

jack-r-abbit6• 14 years ago

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.

batista3• 14 years ago

Shouldn't you be bothered more about your emphasis on trivialities over the substance (or OCD)?

jack-r-abbit6• 14 years ago

What you call trivialities I call attention to detail. And your remark about OCD is offensive.

melchior• 14 years ago

As 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?

hoopism2• 14 years ago

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?

EvilTerran• 14 years ago

can't for the life of me figure out why any legit business (maybe that's my answer) would do that

I think they're hoping it'll "go viral". And they pronounce that with the quotes.

billpatrianakos• 14 years ago

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.

pault• 14 years ago

    Self respecting graphic designers won't create these awful "info graphics"

Disagree! Kelli Anderson is a fantastic designer and makes all kinds of infographics (although I imagine they cost a lot more than $200): http://www.kellianderson.com/projects/infographics.html

mark_integerdsv• 14 years ago

Andersen is a great example, as is Feltron!

theycallmemorty• 14 years ago

> I agree completely but unfortunately I doubt people will do them right until they stop attracting eyeballs.

The problem is you can't know if they're worth your time until you actually spend the time to look at them.

korzon• 14 years ago

For 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

astral3032• 14 years ago

+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.

aiscott• 14 years ago

Was there a specific book you had in mind? There are 8 at the link.

portentint3• 14 years ago

Also check out "Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis". Another great one.

tokenadult2• 14 years ago

Tufte's site includes this analysis of a good example of an infographic:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...

henrikeh• 14 years ago

I 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.

benologist• 14 years ago

It's not even a crappy graphic. It's just eyecandy for social news sites and blogs to generate traffic and backlinks.

fromhet• 14 years ago

Has the quality of links on HN declined the last months?

olalonde• 14 years ago

Yes. This is obviously link bait, SEO content.

juddlyon• 14 years ago

I'm not sure that's fair, Ian Laurie has been a solid blogger for years and is often critical of current trends. He ventures into technical topics from time to time too.

He may not be your cup of tea but he's certainly not the cheap PR stunt kind of internet marketing guy (I'm not sure you're insinuating that, just wanted to let folks who are interested in web marketing topics that he's worth paying attention to IMO).

kevinpet• 14 years ago

Title makes it sound like he's going to delineate the difference between "infographic" and "non-infographic", but it seems to run into the "real Christians" problem where anything he doesn't like "isn't an infographic". Apparently it's categorically impossible for an infographic to be less than fantastic, which is an odd definition of infographic.

tptacek7• 14 years ago

Let's not pretend there's more controversy here than there really is. If anything, the point he's making is too banal. Almost the whole of _The Visual Display of Quantitative Information_ argues against the style of visualization this post argues against.

Virtually all infographics are indeed terrible visualizations of information.

lloeki4• 14 years ago

> Virtually all infographics are indeed terrible visualizations of information.

I do not agree. I've seen quite a bunch that – although obviously not a definitive source of information – give a good sense of perspective. Here's one [0] that came back to mind.

[0] http://mozy.com/blog/misc/how-much-is-a-petabyte/

a5seo• 14 years ago

That may be true, but Portent is an SEO firm and Ian is addressing a certain type of braindead SEO who jumped on the infographics bandwagon as a link building strategy.

They tend to know not, nor care, a thing about visual design of quantitative information. They think they're executing a strategy because their fingers are moving on the keyboard.

Then they don't get results and wonder why. The point is to tell them they aren't even in the right ballpark.

StavrosK• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

saraid2163• 14 years ago

He delineates it fine, I thought. The quality goes down as you get further along--Number 11 says nothing, for instance--but the 1-4 are perfectly valid.

Does your "infographic" add clarity? If no, it's not an infographic. Does your "infographic" actually use data? If no, it's not an infographic. Does your "infographic" communicate more compactly than a paragraph or a spreadsheet? If no, it's not an infographic. Does your "infographic" tell a story or make an argument? If no, it's not an infographic.

Basically, infographics are yet another one of those academic things that got subverted by marketers in service of the masses. Now that they have a different audience, it's a lot harder for them to hold onto their original identity of "a piece of tri-fold cardboard at the science fair".

replicatorblog• 14 years ago

Maybe instead of bashing infographics designers would benefit from figuring out why they are so popular? This "Cult of Tufte" stuff is kind of grating. Minard's map showing Napoleon's march into Moscow is a great example. It is an elegant chart that shows 6 key bits of information (# of troops, location, direction, temp, time, attrition), but it's a bore to look at.

It might be the greatest piece of info design ever, but it will draw less attention than a lame "infographic".

I think "Infographics" have huge potential, just like blog slide shows do. Both are universally reviled by "serious" thinkers, but are incredibly popular. I see them revealing a need for more condensed, actionable information, not a scourge. There is signal in that noise.

saraid2163• 14 years ago

Flashy > Informative?

ghaff• 14 years ago

I'm not sure I'd have used the term "a bore," but I think the parent poster's point is that the Napoleon graphic doesn't immediately draw you in. If you study it for a while, it manages to accumulate a great deal of information in a remarkably integrated way but it takes study to appreciate what is being communicated. While that graphic is rightfully famous, it wouldn't IMO work especially well in, say, a conference presentation setting or even a newspaper.

kstenerud• 14 years ago

If you're going to use a flashy javascript popup mechanism to view image links, please make sure at the very least that people whose screens aren't as wide as the image can access the close button!

shabble• 14 years ago

The wide proliferation of really terrible ones seems to tie into some murky SEO tactic of getting a designer to whip you up something 'viral', stick it on the www.totallylegitadultdiplomaswithfreeviagra.com root, and then have a cute little 'share this' link that gives you the url along with a blob of html stuffed with invisible SEOjunk keywords, and rely on people's laziness and stupidity to get the backlinks flowing.

I recall reading a good article on it a while back, but oddly enough, "SEO infographics" is now a sufficiently desirable niche that there are junk infographics just waiting to take your call.

jrockway• 14 years ago

I disagree. I now mentally associate the word "infographic" with "poorly-thought-out blog post that the author wrote in Photoshop in order to familiarize himself with all of its features." As for a graphic that conveys information, well, those don't exist anymore.

Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

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