A genuine appreciation for information design has always been key in both my vocations and avocations. Whether it takes the form of information architecture or information presentation, it has been a prime consideration of mine as an analyst, a journalist; a content creator and content consumer. So it’s no surprise that infographics, when well done, can motivate me to think, if not act. Such is the case with the Venn diagram ‘How To Be Happy In Business.’
click the pic for a full size image
It’s creator, Bud Caddell, has captured some rare insights into how things actually are, if not work, and those insights are profound: “Mediocrity is not a sustainable strategy. Being able to recognize your own weakness is a profound strength, and acting to improve what you do is key to any kind of long term growth and stability” … “We’ve come across things people want us to do, that we do well (or at least better than the competition) that we really don’t want to do. This is perhaps the most fatal trap for any business I’ve worked in. These are the sirens calling you to shipwreck. You’ll hemorrhage your best people, you’ll stop loving what you do, and you’ll lose the passion that built your business in the first place. Start saying ‘No.’“
Aside from embodying the characteristics of the infographic archetype; clarity, completeness, accessibility, the source of my resonance with this particular formulation was the fact that I’d been considering various business models for a social media venture since May. Struggling to find the intersection of what I do well with what people are willing to pay me to do, I was continually confronted with the need to justify why I would not just continue as I have, being paid to do something I do well and people are will to pay for. Staring at the diagram, I realized that it was the graphic representation of the mental process I’d been cycling through in evaluating each model. It was as close to an epiphany I’m likely to encounter. Now I had something to point to and say ‘Here. This is how I came to this decision.’ Something that Bud is able to turn a buck on. Talk about being paid to do something you want to do.
This wasn’t the first time good information design has inspired me, only the most serious. Other times were more entertaining. It started as a nine year old and Otl Aicher’s popular stick figures introduced at the 1972 Munich Olympics. By the 1990′s some of the charm was lost, due no doubt to the pervasive Visio flows that had invaded my work life. But the video for Röyksopp’s “Remind Me” brought it back.
A product of the H5 studio, it illustrates the power information design has to tell a story. A lesson not lost on Areva it seems in its promotion of a more serious topic.
But the fun with information design didn’t stop there. Greg Dizzia showed me that there’s more than one way to present your resume, and an altogether other way to present your dating history (follow this link and view the PDF to see what I mean).
I’m unsure whether I’m more impressed with his method of presentation or the breadth of his data set, considering he’s had only around ten years to accumulate it. At the heart of every infographic is usually data and the point of the infographic is the imparting of the meaning and implications of that data to the reader. There Greg succeeds brilliantly.
Getting across that data in the most accessible means implies choices, and when it comes to chart selection it becomes more art and less science nowadays. New tools used to generate the images are becoming more common and easier to use, opening the even the most complex chart types to amateurs and business managers. Complex types, such as arc charts, take on a beauty of their own. Combine slick graphics with animation and the web, and the experience is most compelling. In the end, information must be conveyed in order to be useful. Sometimes the information is complex notions.
Other times it’s simply just a fairytale.
Either way, the lesson is if you are interesting people will be interested.
Sources
- http://nicolasrapp.com/
- http://www.h5.fr/
- http://dizzia.deviantart.com/
- http://vi.sualize.us
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/densitydesign/
