Infographic

Infographic (short: Infographic ) is the visual representation of context in a picture.

Besides the two classical disciplines text and photojournalism, it is an independent journalistic representation form, the information processed visually.

Infographics come exclusively in visual media used primarily in print media such as newspapers, magazines or magazines and on television. They play a major role in education and textbooks.

Infographics strive for the most efficient communication of facts and place great emphasis on clarity, accuracy and clarity. In humans, the visual perception is at the forefront of information recording. Texts need to be understood and then classified content. Information graphics have here benefits when they serve the human brain, the factual information in prepared form. Therein lies the strength of the infographic and its advantage over the other journalistic disciplines. A well-known proverb summarizes this together very memorable: A picture is worth a thousand words. Opinions, evaluations, classifications have no place in an infographic. They belong in a text as well as the writing of feelings. The representation of faces or persons, actions, and complex situations are illustrated in this genre, landscapes or objects of art, however, can also be represented photographically.

Methods

Contents are always clearly identifiable factual information as rows of numbers, proportions, local materials, construction and investments of organizations or corporations, decision making, technical, biological or chemical modes of operation, arrangements of parts or layers, and the like. The most important info graphic elements are diagrams such as column, bar, pie or trend charts, geographic thematic maps or plans of any kind ( eg map or history card), organizational chart and structure diagrams or schematic representations such as explosion drawing (eg, cross sections for illustrating the operation of an internal combustion engine or for the preparation of rock strata ).

History

Largely unexplored is the extent to which, for example, prehistoric cave drawings as stipulated in the Spanish Altamira could be regarded as the nucleus of the infographic. So there is not only different species may have been mapped, but also hunting techniques, hunting seasons, locations of certain herds etc.

Though founded in the modern infographic is often called the year 1786, in which William Playfair 's Commercial and Political Atlas published in which there are numerous diagrams. A graphic generalization of qualitative facts and content has historically developed from the baroque frontispiece or title image and thematic cartography, ie from panoramas and similar cartographic mapping method that summarize the contents of a paper or a book, a picture or card work in a synopsis. Therefore, including both orientation plans for parks, buildings and exhibitions such as the machine- generated sitemaps of websites to information graphics. So if we understand a map as information graphics, maybe even as a super characters, the name Carl Ritter as the founder of the Universal geography, should be emphasized. As a colleague of Alexander von Humboldt in the Military Academy, and later in the Academy of Sciences and Humboldt University, he can be understood as one of the forefathers of a traceable, repeatable, reliable and accurate information graphics.

A well-known graphic designers also applies in professional circles, the Frenchman Charles Joseph Minard, in 1869 the Russian campaign Napoleon represented from 1812 to 1813. His infographic shows the schematic profile to Moscow, the decrease in the number of troops and a sequence of temperatures to which the soldiers were exposed during the retreat in winter. In a similar form provided by the Irish engineer Matthew Henry Phineas Riall Sankey energy flows in a steam engine dar. According to him, named this diagram form, which is known as the Sankey diagram today.

The broad enforcement in the mass media, however, was chiefly driven by the United States. Above all, the newspaper USA Today has very much set to info graphic visualizations and celebrated great successes. Infographics experienced there, for example during the Second Gulf War a boom. There were so well to get as any images, troop movements, front lines, terrain gains or losses, or the activities of weapons were taught to American readers and viewers by means of infographics. In Germany, the news magazine Focus has played a major role in the spread of infographics.

The systematic study of the quantitative information graphic was effected from 1983 mainly by Edward Tufte.

Vocational

Graphic designers have studied either design or journalism, or trained as a media designer or cartographer; often they come from art schools or colleges of Fine Arts. Even newcomers have a chance with appropriate creativity and journalistic ability.

Newspapers, magazines or magazines in Germany with its own infographics department are, for example, image, focus and star. Even smaller newspapers and magazines now employ free or salaried graphic designers for their own production.

News agencies also have their own infographic departments. For example, the dpa bought the Cartography Service GmbH; it was renamed later as GLOBUS infographic GmbH, and today as dpa- infografik GmbH.

Creation

Infographics are usually created with vector graphics programs such as CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator. 3D computer graphics programs are increasingly being used. However, these are less suitable, since the creation of the infographic is much more time consuming than with vector programs for daily infographics. Pixel programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, are usually used within the infographic only as an additional tool to additionally enhance the infographic. If the static infographics are animated, Adobe After Effects or Adobe Flash can be used for it. Interactive infographics can be implemented with Web Standards ( HTML5, Javascript, CSS, SVG). Known techniques are Google Chart Tools, the JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit and D3.js. If it is a very comprehensive and great infographic that contains a lot of data and statistics, there is the possibility to split the data and convert the static graphics in a slide show. Are suitable for this example, PowerPoint or Gif animations.