Anymore infographics seem to be everywhere and personally, I love it. I enjoy trying to interpret and understand statistics when there is a stimulating image involved. After having watched the documentary Journalism in the Age of Data, I have even more of a respect for infographics and those who make them. After having made two in classes so far, I have quickly realized my approach was wrong and my work isn’t as compelling as it could be.
One of the biggest components of inforgraphics that I (and telling from the documentary) that others struggle with is balancing between providing the “reader” with the right information, but also making it look good (or vise versa). Infographics can look amazing and be extremely intricate, but if the reader can’t understand it or take anything away from it, then there is no purpose. On the other hand if statistics are just statistics with no thought to how it is presented, then people won’t be compelled to spend time looking at it.
In a part of the documentary the “future” of infographics is discussed. I actually got excited about where they could be going. I think that being introduced by making our own, could definitely be beneficial in the future. It seems that interaction is only going to increase in inforgrahics. Motion graphics are also going to become more important, so learning skills like After Effects could be very beneficial.
As our groups finish up our infographics, I think it is important to think about some of the issues brought up in this documentary. Most importantly though, our group needs to make sure that we are presenting valuable information in a well designed form.