Week 11 - INFORMATIONAL GRAPHICS



A photo by Chris Jordan which depicts 200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of Americans who died from cigarette smoking every six month



In week 11, the topic on informational graphics was introduce to us. Here, we were demonstrated the use of information graphics as a very powerful tool for visual communication. For this week’s journal, I will be exploring the importance of information graphics as a part of visual communications and how the use of information graphic is able to capture audience attention and summarise long details in order for audience to remember and understand what is being presented easily. The reason why I want to write about the importance of information graphics as part of visual communication is because I believe that information graphics plays a powerful role in relaying messages to the audience than if data was presented  only verbally and presented in a text full of words.

Informational graphics are “visual displays with accompanying labels and text that helps explain an illustration’s meaning”( Informational Graphics and the Six Perspective, p.194). Here, is a very famous image of a skull presented as an information graphics by Chris Jordan. The image is very carefully created by the producer . This famous image has a caption which reads, “ Depicts 200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking very six months.” It is amazing to see that the  producer of this image use graphical form to explain the statistics instead of using words. According to Lidman & Lund (1972, p.171), “people usually see the pictures before reading the text.”. The image here creates a visual stimulus for the viewers and it is very ‘eye catchy’. Chris Jordan may have chosen to give out the statistics in graphical form because it creates a resonance in the mind of the viewers thus the image will have a stronger effect on the audience then if the statistics were explained only by words. Braden & Beauchamp (1986) makes a distinction between ‘reader slides’ and ‘picture slides’.  Informagraphics combines the intellectual satisfaction of words with the emotional power of visual messages.

 According to Neurath (1925), “words divide, pictures unite.” An example of pictures uniting people is when people in a common culture become more literate to visual communications, people from different cultures can be united in their mutual understanding of the information conveyed by the pictures contained in informational graphics. For example, if the statistics of the cigarette above is presented in English, people who are illiterate in English or who do not understand English will not be able to understand what the intended message is all about hence people will not take notice of it, however, when it is represented as a graphic image relaying information,  people from all over the world with different cultures will be able to understand what the message is trying to say.  They are able to see the skull and the number of box of cigarettes and are able to interprete the meaning of the visual information graphic without any language barrier. However, the infographic designers need to be careful in choosing the symbolism for communicating a message to the audience (cited from Information graphic, p.210) .

Imagine a world without images and if all the data representation is to be represented in long words, the audience will have a problem in remembering all the important data. "Information graphics provide the reader with a rapid and easily grasped overall view of a message and are therefore highly suitable as an introduction to and summary of a subject" ( Pettersson, 1993, p.173).   Today, information graphics have been used widely to represent a huge number of statistics as well as representation of numbers, weather forecasts and many others. Information graphics can be used in  charts, graphs, maps, whether charts etc.  It is used in presentations, newspapers, reports, television and magazine news etc.

However, it is also important to note that different rules apply to different graphs. The type of graph used depends on the informations about the statistics that we want to present to the audience. The info graphic has to be in a clear structure in order be able to compare datas. For example if the producer wants to compare and contrast data, it is best for him to use a barchart. Likewise, if he is to compare the trends , linechart will be the best information graphics for him to use.

In creating information graphics, ethics is one of the most important thing to take into consideration. There are a few ethical issues that information graphic designers do to manipulate the audience when creating the information graphics. For example, when creating a bar chart, the scales on the x and y axis should be divided equally. If say the scale is labelled at an interval of 5 hence the following numbers has to follow the same pattern as well. If not, this will result in misrepresentation of the data.

Information graphics does not always show the true representation of numbers . The quotation by Benjamin Disraeli below states the point that “statistical representation of numerical facts can easily distort the truth”. (cited from Informational Graphics and the six perspectives, p.207) .

There are 3 kinds of lies : "lies, damned lies and statistics". – Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister

According to Daryl Moen (1987, cited from Informational Graphic, p. 208)  when he noted Dew Jones Industrial average fell he noticed that 60 percent of the newspaper used infographics to highlight the crash on the front page. However , 13 percent contained factual errors and 33 percent had designed errors that visually distorted the figures.  The writer in journalism stated that the reason why errors and visual distortions occur so frequently is because infographic producers believe that if information graphics was used to grab the viewers attention then presentation errors and decorative flourishes can be overlooked. Furthermore, only a few individuals are familiar with words, number , picutrs and computer operations to identify misleading infographics.  This is a huge ethical problem to be considered when creating the infograph.

One of the critic for Information graphics, Tufte (1983, p. 208, ), said that “a high quality infographic should have an important message to communicate, convey information in a clear and precise manner, should never insult the intelligence of viewers and always tell the truth.” He further argues that the presentation is never more important than the story. He terms infographics loaded with designs as “chartjunk”. He emphasised that these informational graphic serve to entertain then educate the viewers.

However, Tufte’s idea of ‘chartjunk’ has been criticized by Holmes (1983, p. 208) as he claims that people watch television to entertain and they wouldn’t buy newspapers that doesn’t reflect same characteristics. Charts should however accurately reflect the data that they are portraying. This is because images generally have a greater emotional impact than words and chances of misleading  people in visual images is higher.

Using the knowledge of visual communications, the gestalt theory can be applied to this image because the accumulation of the 200,00 packets of cigarette being combined into a collage of a skull is  . As what Wertheimer ( p.53, 2005) said, “The whole is different from the sum of its parts.” This shows that if the cigarette box was to be placed on its own, it would not have created the same effect as when it is combined into the shape of a skull. This is the beauty of gestalt effect in relation to visual communication.

 The skull here , is also a representation of death. A representation refers to the “ use of language and images to create meaning about the world around us” (Image, Power and Politics, p.12).  The skull connotes danger, fear, death and many negative connotations. If we analyse this image, this skull also has a narration within it. This particular image of the skull has a story to tell. Thus, by using this image as an information graphic to represent the number of deaths in America caused by the people who smoke has a very powerful effect as perceptions and communication between the image and the viewers takes place. thus audience are able to understand the message that Chris Jordan intended to relay to them. 

Nevertheless, information graphics is very important in relaying information to the audience in a short matter of time.  The informational graphic tells a story that is too tedious for words, yet too simplified for photographs alone. We can imagine if the producer of the image is to relay that message in words, it will not be as effective as the visual image. Thus information graphics is very powerful and useful tool in getting the audience to understand and digest the information being relayed to them in a short matter of time.

REFERENCES

Tufte, E.R (1990), Escaping flatland, The visual display of quantitative information. Connecticut : Graphics Press.

Petterson.R, (1943), Visual for Information. New Jersey : Educational Technology Publications, Inc.

Lester , P.M (1995) Informational graphics. Visual communication : Images with messages. California : Wasworth Publishing.