I’ve spent quite a lot of time recently researching infographics – trying to get an understanding of what makes a good one (of which the examples are few and far between) and thinking about where infographics go next (after the exhaustion of this seemingly new thing that everyone’s doing because everyone else is doing it). While doing so, I stumbled upon this post on Atlas Obscura which alerted me to Alexander von Humboldt’s “thematic maps”. These maps (see below) are very much a precursor to modern-day infographics. The interweaving of the data with the visual presentation is sadly lost in many present day infographics. A definition offered by Atlas Obscura in this post really brings this point home:
… to present data in a way that emphasizes both its beauty and its interconnectedness…
All too often infographics are a visual pinboard of numbers designed to be visually pleasing but never aspiring to reach the heights of this ideal. Caveat: I don’t believe the above quote is or should be the true definition of an infographic, but it sure is a lovely aspirational target.
The composition of the earth’s crust
[Atlas Obscura: The Exquisite 19th-Century Infographics That Explained the History of the Natural World via Boing Boing]