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I am very much a visual learner. I love getting information from pictures and charts. I am a map person (vs. GPS, which is also an infographic, but a constantly changing one), and I studied for my vet tech classes by creating my own infographic notes. I didn't know they had a name, but that's what they were!
It's great to see that this medium, or genre, or whatever it is, has earned some recognition. Kudos to Best American editors for presenting this annual volume.
It's easy to take the "art" side of this for granted: after all, what's so difficult about a Venn diagram or color-coded table? But if not produced by a deft hand and a sharp mind, the reader/observer is merely subjected to a lot of meaningless gobbledygook. In order to really convey its message, the infographic has to be engaging, accurate and memorable.
Today, we're bombarded by visuals. We want to be able to take a "snapshot" of data and then wade in further. That's what the best of these do. The range of creativity is impressive. In short: most of the book is very, very cool.
I had run across a few of these before in their original publications, but it was fun to revisit them.
The book is divided into four sections: You, Us, The Material World, and Interactive. Some of these provide useful information ("The Perfect Wine for the Meal" or "How to Pick a Pope"), fun trivia ("Previously, On Arrested Development") or fascinating takes on topics we may not know much about (including baseball park design, judging surfboarders, and the species health of wild bees).
"A Fire Disaster Unfolds" was interesting to me, because my husband is a Chicago firefighter.Read more ›
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"The Best American Infographics: 2014" Edited by Gareth Cook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) . . . . .
I've been reviewing books and music for a couple of decades, and I think this review may be the first time I've been compelled to draw attention to the fact that I'm looking at a review copy, and not a finalized edition. The reason for this is that the publisher (unfortunately) made the cost-cutting decision to send out an unfinished, black-and-white-only "ARC" review copy for a book whose essence and entire appeal is graphical and color-related. I can't actually give a "real" review of this book, only of my experience reading it. To a limited degree, I can comment on the "info" part of the book, but not so much the "graphic."
Oh, well.
To be sure, there are several two-page spreads where color is not required -- the page comparing "old" Justin Bieber to "new" Justin Bieber, for example, is as of little interest to me as if it had been in color. Also easy to understand are the spreads showing how fastballs are pitched and what they look like face-on (these are two separate baseball pages -- guess people like sports.) However there are literally dozens of pages where you can't see the information they are presenting because one gray tone looks the same as the next - the gray for homophobia is the same as the one for approving of gay marriage. Hmmm.
Based on the text, many of these graphics are of a serious nature, though many are devoted to ephemera and document the latest iterations of American self-absorption and devotion to triviality.Read more ›
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Every detail of this title is well-designed, logically organized and carefully curated. From the detailed introductions, to the sensible part/chapter designations to the back matter...it's all engaging stuff. I particularly appreciated the footnotes added to each info-graphic and the "Brain Trust" designer profiles. This book is a literal round up of the best of the best--on page, you'll find some of the most provocative and talked about pieces published. Even the cover, which is a specially commissioned info-graphic on...info-graphics. These entries illuminate, collapsing concepts and data into easy-to-grasp visuals. Some are serious (Racism on Social Media by Geographic Area) and some are whimsical (How about a map of the London Tube system, as mapped by a person who experiences synesthesia?), but all are interesting. My one gripe is that since my copy is a review copy, it was printed in black and white and did not include some of the gatefold pages. I'm assuming that the final title will be printed in glorious color. All the better to analyze. This one's a winner.
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The problem I have with infographics is that many of them are a triumph of graphic design over meaning. In my mind, the content of an infographic should not be drowned out by eye-catching design. Unfortunately, many of the examples in this book do have overly eye-catching graphical elements, but in most cases, once you start looking at them, they are full of fascinating information. I do wish the examples here did a better job of putting the information first, along the lines of the work of Tufte, because others will use what is here as examples to emulate. But this is a fascinating collection with a lot of good ideas, and covers a wide variety of fields.
There is a brief introduction by Nate Silver that makes the point that infographics are best used when they convey information that "couldn't be told in any other way". This is one of the best ways to figure out whether or not an infographic is successful.
One problem with the book is that it enjoys the use of faint non-black ink, which is harder to read no matter how much graphical artists think it looks sophisticated. Also, in spite of the large page size, some of the print in the graphics and the captions is quite small, maybe font size 6. This is understandable, but will still make it harder to enjoy for those who need reading glasses. Also, it is mostly organized by topic (You, Us, the Material World), but I would have appreciated more analysis of the graphical techniques -- but I suppose that is another book with a different purpose. Only the final section, Interactive, is technique oriented.
The worst infographics are ones which don't communicate very much, but which nevertheless get the os-so-trendy graphic design treatment.Read more ›
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