“We find ourselves in the era of big data, a time when information moves faster than ever, and infographics provide us with quick, often influential bursts of insight and knowledge. They are a mesmerizing new way of seeing and understanding our world”, says Gareth Cook, Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist and series editor of the Best American Infographics.
In Cook’s latest book, Best American Infographics 2013, a melange of examples show the different ways infographics can be used to portray data, statistics, facts, information and reports effectively. Those featured range from mapping ocean noise and New York’s carbon emissions, to gun ownership rates by country and the anatomy of speed.
Increasingly in science, infographics are being used to break down and simplify complex messages. “Science is a field where infographics are particularly useful and powerful, because there is so much drama, but it’s often hidden from human eyes or difficult to comprehend, says Cook. “Our quest to understand space is a great example of this – with distances and forces so large it’s hard for the average person to make sense of what has been discovered. What is it like to land on Mars? How alone are we in the Milky Way, truly? These are questions that demand visual answers.”
Infographics from Nature and Scientific American featured in Cook’s end-of-year book, both coincidentally focused on space.
Kelly Krause, art director at Nature, talks through the thinking behind the ‘7 Minutes from Terror’ infographic.
“The graphic was created as a visual guide to NASA’s Curiosity rover landing on Mars in August 2012, counting down from guided entry into the atmosphere, illustrating key events and details along the way. Nature’s audience is predominantly scientists, so the graphic is heavy on precise measurements — such as altitude and velocity at specific moments—while at the same time giving an overall context for the mission by using step-by-step illustrations on a map of the landing site, and also compares key details with previous missions to Mars.
“NASA missions continue to amaze and inspire, so the editorial decision to feature the Curiosity landing as a two-page infographic was popular from the start. The whole graphic took just over a week to complete, with Eric Hand, chief of correspondents, in Washington providing excellent reporting rich in detail for the art team to digest.
“We began with gorgeous source illustrations from NASA—this allowed us to spend more time on information design, which I think is the real triumph of this piece. There is an amazing amount of information on these two pages, but it all comes together seamlessly, thanks to assistant art editor Jasiek Krzysztofiak’s simple but effective illustration of the landing as a central element, with events and other details arranged around the perimeter. This piece also benefits from a consistent key (time, altitude, velocity) that runs through the events, and a disciplined design (such as, each NASA spot image appears in a circle, consistent typography, and a good text to image ratio).
“Our biggest challenge was legibility of type, and some might argue that reverse type is difficult to read. There are compromises to be made in almost every complex graphic. In this case, we felt that mentally transporting the audience to Mars, with the aid of Martian sky and soil background, was an opportunity not to be missed, so we worked hard to place text in areas without too much background detail.”
Similarly Jen Christiansen, art director of information graphics at Scientific American, believes infographics in science are an engaging way to appeal to a wide and non-specialist audience.
Here she explains the idea behind the graphic by Jan Willem Tulp entitled ‘Planets Everywhere’.
“In the midst of a few particularly neat exoplanet discoveries just over a year ago, the time seemed right for Scientific American to develop a stand-alone graphic on the topic for our ‘Graphic Science’ page. Editor John Matson tracked down the data set, and I reached out to freelance data visualizer Jan Willem Tulp, to see if he was up for the project.
“For the final form, Tulp took inspiration from a few classic genres—sky maps and star charts. By splitting the view into two hemispheres, and including a few benchmarks (one well-known constellation in each hemisphere), he provides the reader with a comfortable and evocative framework within which to explore the less-familiar exoplanet data.”
Summing up the effective use of infographics in science, Christiansen says, “Graphics can often communicate scientific concepts more efficiently than words, for any audience. Visuals that are developed for a science savvy but non-specialist audience, like this one above, can help make scientific findings accessible to broader audiences. By removing barriers (such as technical jargon), and providing context (in this case, the two constellations), the information is presented in an immediately intuitive and engaging manner.”