Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The best infographics are like good novels: They grab you by the collar, transport you to another world and refuse to let go until the real world steps in and gives you a rude awakening.

This is how I felt when I picked up Gareth Cook’s The Best American Infographics 2015, the third volume in a series of infographic compilations.

Like an avid reader absorbed in a gripping tale, I found myself poring over these visual stories, eager to distill the meaning contained within each of them.

From breath-taking illustrations to ingenious visualizations, these beautiful data worlds introduced me, in each case, to a reality I didn’t know existed. At first glance, they might seem like abstract eye candy, but if you take the time to delve into each of them, they can change your perspective of the world like nothing else can....

"More isn't always better: no more in information design than in poetry..."

Nate Silver, the author of The Signal and the Noise, considers the two factors that make an infographic compelling — providing a window into its creator’s mind and telling a story that “couldn’t be told in any other way.”

He writes:

Design has traditionally been seen as a field for “right-brained” types: those who think visually and spatially rather than with symbols like words and numbers. But modern information design is equal parts art and science, form and function, architecture and engineering. It combines the best of at least three fields of achievement: aesthetics, technology, and journalism.

By aesthetics, I mean all the usual things, but especially proportionality. For information designers, this quality is not so abstract as it might be in other mediums. Their goal is tangible: to convey as much information as possible given some set of constraints....