Project: Information Graphics

Infographic, /ˌɪnfə(ʊ)ˈɡrafɪk/ , noun;

a visual representation of information or data, e.g. as a chart or diagram.

“a good infographic is worth a thousand words”

Oxford Languages

We’re surrounded by Information Graphics (Infographic’s hereafter), and in the digital age they are becoming more widespread. The earliest Infographics were found on the walls of caves, showing how to hunt wild animals. These were then followed by shamanic and religious glyphs including stain glass, and fresco’s of the Stations of the Cross to inform a largely illiterate or disinterested population. Some of the most breathtaking of these were the Nazca Lines in Peru and Michelangelo’s Sistine chapel paintings.

From cave paintings to huge shamanic glyphs to recounting the Old Testament Infographics are far from a modern
*phenomenon*

As humanity grew and expanded its horizons some of the earliest secular Infographics were maps and charts; from the Dunhuang Star Chart AD650 to the Templers map of Jerusalem circa 1535-1590. In more contemporary times the underground maps of Harry Beck are some of the finest infograph’s about, bringing order to chaos as it were.

Dunhuang Star Chart AD650 (L) and Harry Beck’s London Underground Map 1933 (R)

By the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first the info graphic had come of age. The proliferation of mobile devices, more sophisticated DTP and faster soft and hardware means the Infogrpahics is currently enjoying a golden age.

Examples of Infographic’s; there’s even an infographic for making infographics

Creating Graphics

The next stage is to experiment; I’ve been using Affinity Designer a great deal as it’s relatively straightforward to get my head around. However no one got experience by driving in a straight line so a quick play with the pen tool in making a simple box network followed a quick scan of Chelius and Schwartz’ book Learn Adobe Illustrator CC.

This was a great moment to have a play with the various aspects of the program including shape tools. At this stage my work looks more like an experimental art piece than serious investigation. However that’s how you learn.

Typography in information graphics

As the research point here is to look at how Type is physically arranged, I found some interesting example of type in use and the idea is Keep it Simple Stupid. Each approach was subtly different, and one very interesting approach was to use the shapes used in the infographic to also spell out the location the information was about, Cape Town.