This week’s lecture focused on all the different ways data can be visualised from basic tables to interactive infographics. As part of our current Apollo 11 project, we have been provided with data on the Saturn V rocket and all of the Apollo moon missions from Apollo 11 to Apollo 17. I will need a way of including some of this data within my project in a visually interesting way that increases my user’s immersion in the narrative. For this reason, this week I wanted to look deeper at infographics to gain further inspiration.
After this week’s lecture on amplifying data, I wanted to take a deeper look at how to design infographics and find some inspiration for my infographic designs.
I started by looking at this article from Smashing Magazine:
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/the-dos-and-donts-of-infographic-design/
The interesting thing about this article was at the start of the article there was a link to a second article:
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/the-dos-and-donts-of-infographic-design-revisited/
After reading both articles it seems there is some dissent among designers about the best way to design infographics with the first author concentrating on the visuals and unique ways of displaying the data. The second author concentrates on the data, making it clear that unique visuals still need to represent the data accurately, not allowing the visual to amplify the difference between two data points. This is an important point and something we discussed during our lecture and something Apple was accused of many years ago.
Source: https://www.labo.mathieurella.fr/?p=403 (Last Accessed 15/03/24)
This is a key point when designing infographics, you still must represent the data accurately even if this does not lend itself to an exciting visual design. Sometimes the correct answer is to create a simple graph or even table for the data, it may not be the most exciting way of visualising the data, however, it does ensure you represent the data accurately and can not be accused of trying to mislead readers.
This is the major complaint about the first article and it is a big one, however, there are other useful tips within the article which I can bring to my infographic design.
A key part of an infographic and one of the key reasons they are used is to tell a story, and one of the best tips from the first article is to wireframe infographics before trying to create them. This allows you to plan out the infographic and ensure the layout works. From here you can make sure the infographic tells the story you want or make any required adjustments.
Colour is a key feature of infographics and can make a huge difference in whether they work or not. The colour palette of an infographic especially for the web needs to fit with the overall aesthetic of the webpage it is part of. It also needs to be usable by a range of users and be accessible. The author advises sticking to three main colours, and if more colours are required using tints or shades of the three primary colours to increase the colour palette. They also advise using colour palette selection tools such as Adobe Colour or Coolors if you are struggling.
Below are some suggested palettes to use and not to use:
Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/the-dos-and-donts-of-infographic-design/ (Last Accessed 16/03/24)
With all this theoretical information about infographics what I wanted to do was look at lots of different infographics to find out what styles I liked best and what may work for the data I have. For this, I borrowed this book on infographics from the University library.
