{"id":3221,"date":"2014-07-12T11:36:40","date_gmt":"2014-07-12T18:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/?p=3221"},"modified":"2015-11-15T12:10:04","modified_gmt":"2015-11-15T20:10:04","slug":"what-the-fuck-are-infographics-notes-on-a-presentation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/index.php\/what-the-fuck-are-infographics-notes-on-a-presentation\/","title":{"rendered":"“What the F**k Are Infographics?” (notes on a presentation)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ICON8<\/a>
\n“Infographics suck!”<\/strong> proclaimed Jennifer Daniel and Alicia DeSantis, graphics editors for the New York Times. They spoke yesterday at the ICON8 Conference, a national gathering of illustrators. I hung on their every word.<\/p>\n

It’s a pretty sassy claim, but they pointed out that “infographics” have become a style and a marketing ploy<\/strong> to get people to click. I sadly have to agree that the term “infographics” — which IMHO did have meaning before about 2011 — has been completely subverted online.<\/p>\n

They prefer the term “visual journalism,”<\/strong> and they showed brief case studies that illustrated their approach. It’s mostly concept and only a bit execution. They described their job as:<\/p>\n

RESEARCH and CREATE<\/strong>
\ndiagrams\u00a0\u2022 charts \u2022 graphs \u2022 maps \u2022 photos
\nillustrations \u2022 animation \u2022 typography
\nvideos \u2022 multimedia \u2022 code<\/p>\n

Every project they showed was in a different style, because the content and intent of each newspaper\/magazine story is different. Yessss! That’s something the illustration industry often doesn’t understand.<\/p>\n

Editors and art directors often bring them bad ideas, sometimes suggesting illustrations that could be replaced by a single sentence. They then generate their own ideas. They insist on coming up with an idea for\u00a0truly engaging visuals.<\/p>\n

BE INTERESTING<\/strong>
\nReveal patterns
\nDescribe relationships
\nProvide context
\nSpark curiosity<\/p>\n

They described their process in a way that made me deeply envious. First, they emphasized<\/p>\n

RESEARCH<\/strong>
\nBecome a reporter!
\nAsk questions of experts.
\nPick up the phone.<\/p>\n

This reminds me of my plea to clients, “hire me for my head as well as my hands!”<\/p>\n

Then they talked about how every project is collaborative, and my envy soared.<\/p>\n

GET HELP<\/strong>
\nstatisticians \u2022 cartographers\u00a0\u2022 developers\u00a0\u2022 animators
\nphotographers\u00a0\u2022 video editors\u00a0\u2022 modelers\u00a0\u2022 programmers<\/p>\n

Working with all these experts let them<\/p>\n

EXPERIMENT<\/strong><\/p>\n

And that’s when they invent new forms of visually presenting information. ahhhhh.<\/p>\n

The best visual journalism, they suggest, strengthens the story with emotive or intellectual content.<\/strong> It satisfies “both Bart and Lisa” by having both an at-a-glance takeaway and a deep dive into information. This Simpsons allegory they credit to their colleague Shan Carter.<\/p>\n

DEEPLY SATISFYING<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Infographics suck!” proclaimed Jennifer Daniel and Alicia DeSantis, graphics editors for the New York Times. They spoke yesterday at the ICON8 Conference, a national gathering of illustrators. I hung on their every word. It’s a pretty sassy claim, but they pointed out that “infographics” have become a style and a marketing ploy to get people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3221"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3490,"href":"https:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221\/revisions\/3490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/explanagraphics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}