I just have one question from watching this video:
Why have American artists not discovered whimsical ice skating choreography for live award show performances? (Go to minute 26:30).
I mean come one! High-pitched male singing with open shirt and wind blowing, a violinist on his knees all surrounded by an ice skating man has to attract some attention!
I digress.
Anyways this video was pretty interesting and I am going to introduce myself to Amanda Cox because I feel we share the same love for infographics (though not for statistics, that stuff can burn in some lonely hole somewhere for all I care). I beleive this new found art can be of great use to newspapers as well, for many reasons.
1.) Newspapers are going down the drain fast, like someone just ignited the pipe with some Drain-O, but I believe this use of this visual information will attract many and new readers who might actually read the story instead of skimming the first two paragraphs. As the one lady said half of our brains react to visual learning (some brains more than others) so why not construct information to such a large amount of the (brain) and population? Plus, I love infographics and I am also simple minded and let’s be honest so is more of our country.
2.) With the blossoming effect of tablets and many newspapers/magazines jumping on that electronic bandwagon, infographics not only can be much more fun and easy to read but create interactivity with the user and can increase consistent readership. I see dollar signs (hopefully that will find their way into my bank account).
3.) I love infographics. So everyone should be using them.
My favorite part of this video was the discussion of what actually works for an infographic though. Sure, a lot of the graphics look beautiful and our visually pleasing but they are not information OR user friendly. Especially the silky, wave formation. No one can read that information, and no one really wants to spend time learning how to read the information in order to get information from the graphic and then read the story that accompanies the graphic. I’m tired just from putting that situation together, imagine completing it.
Another one would be the flower shaped graphic for Fortune 500 companies. I’d rather Google search an image of a sunflower that try to rip apart that graphic for information. And, again, I love these things, so if I’m not willing to do the work not many people are after me (unless they love Fortune 500 information, but I still don’t think that’s too many).
Overall, the main piece of information to grab from the academia of infographics would be to understand the user, which can be said of anything that a user is going to use. It sounds so obvious, but look how many bad websites are out of the web right now, and I think there many be five people in the world who put a website out for just themselves, so the statistics are messy. But, because this form of information sharing can help many industries thrive they best be looking into some media strategy researches in order to best benefit from the awesomeness of infographics.
Did I mention I love infographs? I love infographs.