5 Cool Infographics that Design with Lots of Data
When creating a piece of content, particularly an infographic, it’s important to have the correct data that fits the piece you are designing. What’s equally as important is having a good idea of how you want to portray that information to the person that will be reading and digesting it.
Infographics can be effective and powerful tools for marketers to leverage (you can read more about that here), but without a perfect marriage of data and design, you will most likely end up with something that doesn’t pack the punch you hoped it would.
Here are 5 cool examples of infographics that design with lots of data.
1. History of Life
This infographic is impressive for a number of reasons. First off, life is an extremely broad topic that you would think has too much data to show in the form of an infographic. But what’s really impressive here is that everything is within the reader’s view without scrolling. All of the important data is here, and it’s easy to read because, along with breaking the data out into chunks, it connects everything together (even down to mass extinction events!). You can picking your own starting point and follow from there.
2. How addicted are we to our phones?
Just the topic of this one is enough to entice people to click, but the main thing that this infographic does right is call out all of the important statistics. My eyes gravitated toward those large, bold, blue stats and the way it is structured guides your eye through the entire infographic. There are lots of great snippets of information, and because of the way it is broken down, you are not likely to miss any of them.
3. How much $1 used to get you
What this infographic does really well is provide comparison data for the items that are being discussed, so you are getting a like-for-like comparison, rather than coffee being compared to silver, for example. Also, the illustrations help bring the data to life. The scary part? How $1 in 1998 could get you a gallon of gas while today it would buy you an air freshener! Yikes!
4. Neighborhoods of Manhatta
This one has a simple aesthetic, but I found it really informative, mainly in the way the data was presented. The neighborhood locations are paired with street numbers, so not only can you visualize where each neighborhood is, but having that avenue pairing is also very useful to the reader so they can have an idea of where each neighborhood is.
5. Which Star Wars planet should you vacation to?
Being a huge Star Wars fan, I found this infographic and its use of data (albeit fictional) very impressive. These types of flowchart/decision-making infographics are naturally interactive and engaging. Starting in the middle, the reader follows the directional arrows and makes decisions.
At each stop, there are surrounding graphics and illustrations to keep it engaging. Once you reach your final destination and the planet of your choice, you can find the description of the place, which goes over things like types of activities, climate, and history.
