I have noticed over the years that info graphics have become a big business in the graphic design field. I think it is at least in part because of the pace of our modern lives. A quick read is more important than ever. If your information can be consumed in four seconds rather than thirty seconds, it will have a higher success rate for being noticed, understood and remembered. But, in addition to the tendency to want to read data quickly, there is now a new level of data availability. When available data meets competent designers – art happens.
Watching Journalism in the Age of Data helped me clarify the importance of visualization which includes data visualization and infographics. Humans are “wired” to quickly understand the visual world. Half of our brain is dedicated to visual information. Visualization is more about art than programming. When Koblin showed the visualizations of the the air traffic around international airports, it said much more in a glance than statical data could have explained in pages and pages of numbers. And they were beautiful!