As I prepare to create my own infograph, I find this to be highly interesting. There is definitely something intimidating about these types of projects. Visual information has to be easily understandable and usable I thought some of the graphs were interesting but wasn’t sure how much I’d actually get from it as a viewer. I thought back to Xu’s class where we talked about the user getting frustrated by clicking through and not learning as much. I feel like this a dangerous area. We’re more likely to look at the visuals and get involved but not learning anything. Isn’t educating the public supposed to be purpose of journalism?

I didn’t learn it isn’t enough to be a good designer. You need to understand Excel and statistics. More importantly, be able to analyze what is important in that information and how it can be shared. Now more than ever, it isn’t enough to design a pretty picture; it has to tell a story… Even if that story is boring statistics.