Information is power, but more often than not it isn’t that great to look at, or is it? Infographics is currently our favourite subject, as it displays information in a creative, visually pleasing and comprehendible form, making it beautifully powerful and one of the hottest trends in the graphics world. Infographics was originally created to make maps a little more fun but is now vastly used in communicating a diverse range of information in all sorts of fields.
We recently created an infographic for Premier League 4 Sport, a community initiative developed and delivered by the Premier League, who needed to summarise their achievements in the brand’s 2011 annual report. We had great fun combining pop art graphics with a patriotic colour pallet featuring photos, statistics and statements in a visually pleasing format. The athletes seemed to quite like it too!
What makes a good infographic?
The key to a good infographic is combing creative design with informative data. It should display the information clearly, concisely and beautifully, getting the information across without the need for great reams of heavy text. If it doesn’t look good no one will take a blind bit of notice, so we think carefully about the overall look before deciding on fonts, colours and illustrations. It also needs to make sense and some of the best infographics are imbedded in some serious amounts of data.
It’s also good to be surprising, choosing a theme that may not be an obvious choice, but works. We are finding that infographics are becoming increasingly applicable to a number of briefs we are given, and even use it in communicating our own message:
