Infographics: Aren't They Just Pie Graphs by Another Name?

Have you ever heard of infographics? No doubt you've seen them. More and more, infographics--a combination of textual information and illustrations--are being used in print and web publications as a more engaging and effective means of portraying stats, data sets, quantifiable relationships, procedures, relational networks...just about anything that would otherwise require a solid paragraph of text (or more) to explain.

We've all seen pie charts, bar graphs, and density maps before, but they often lack the design clarity and aesthetic quality to elevate visualizations of information above board room-level boredom.

So are infographics really all that different? Read on.

Infographics and Visual Cues

Infographics purpose to make this information more aesthetically pleasing, readily consumable, and spatially meaningful. No wonder they've become so prevalent. Consider this example of the Environmental Impact of Cell Phones. Notice how you're much more likely to view a graphic about this rather than a two-page report? What's more, the design continues to draw the eye down the page, and it's likely that the average user would view the entire piece and retain the information better since it's been processed alongside of graphics and spatial relationships (visual cues).

This methodology might interest multimedia-savvy professors who need to guide students through webs or flowcharts of data. I'm sure that student pitches in Business and Leadership courses could be enhanced by some smartly designed infographics as well.

Free Data Visualizers

I could keep geeking out about this, but for the time being, you can experiment with these data visualizers, all free to use.

Tableau Public (interactive capability, non-flash)
Many Eyes
inforgr.am (template-ready, easy to use)

Customizing Infographics

Let's say you want to design an infographic in Illustrator or Photoshop. You plan to represent concentrations of diseases in different regions of a continent by using circles that are bigger or smaller relative to the concentrations found in the other regions. I for one am not the best at guessing how big a circle denoting a 13% concentration should be in relation to a circle for a 8% concentration. Using one of the above data visualizers could provide accurate references that you could then overlay with your own graphics. Neato!