What’s more interesting, more illuminating and more powerful for presenting information than the infographic?

The infographic’s unchallenged value makes me feel a bit doltish to be writing at all. Why not present my thoughts as infographics and people will read, understand, share and ultimately mount my work on their walls for proper worship?

The magnificence of infographics is such that there’s now a great infographic on the greatness of infographics. Here it is http://tinyurl.com/ofy7clp and it has all you need to know about the popularity of this tool of all communication tools.

Of course, infographics aren’t really a new idea. Could you argue that cavemen used them with their drawings and notches on their stony walls? Weren’t Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks actually infographics? And who can forget the posters of the solar system in my 5^th Grade science class at St. Robert’s: the planet photo, its name and size, its distance from the sun, its arching orbit’s distance and duration, and some other neat-o facts.

The infographic’s current popularity is more an inevitability than a surprise. People have always been visual learners. Kids books are photographs and drawings. Instruction guides are filled with diagrams. Missouri is the “Show Me” state in deference to the power of seeing. Virtually every memory class I can remember teaches you to convert concepts into visuals. The visuals trigger the memory, not the concept or the facts.

When it comes to data, the world has always had a struggle. First, factoids have both a precision and a “relativity” to them. Knowing the number is great, but what does it mean? Is it big or small in scale? Is it a trend or an eternal truth? That requires explanations that can be crazy complex.

Second – and perhaps most significantly – trouble is found in the first syllable of the word “number:” numb. Data can be awfully numbing. Doubt me? Ever heard a research presentation? Delivered in monotone? For 90 minutes? Just after lunch? Of course you haven’t. Nobody has. By minute four everyone is dead asleep at those.

Communications instructors since time immemorial have stressed the importance of visuals for bringing information to life. That’s not lost on numbers people.  Consulting firms have made gazillions based on their nifty ways to sort information into visual forms. The list is fabulous, including bar charts, pie charts (and sister donut charts), bubble charts, spider diagrams, scatter diagrams, trend lines, spark lines and the beloved matrixes, both two-dimensional and 3D. Now, it’s the infographic’s turn and voila!

Helping expand their popularity is their ease to produce. You don’t need special graphics talent to create infographics. There are several free sites where you can build your custom infographic from arty templates using simple tech-tools. The best of them I’d highly recommend a visit to, including:

• Easel.ly
• Piktochart
• Infogr.am
• Visual.ly
• InFoto Free
• Venngage
• Dipity

What’s next? The interactive infographic? Oh, we have those, too. I stumble on them from time to time and get caught in their web of fascination. They get the added benefit of tactile engagement, which is another key tenant of learning theory. The only problem is that they don’t print out neatly for placement on the grotto wall. But they are fun and effective, as you can see from these examples:

http://www.webbymonks.com/infographic/webtesting/infograph.html

http://autodesk360innovates.com/landing/social-collaboration-infographic/#

http://www.nuspire.com/linked/infographic/#/slide3

http://neomam.com/interactive/13reasons/

As if I need to draw you a picture, I like infographics. They work a sort of magic on me and I’ve found myself collecting them on Pinterest. I’ve loaded up on them for many things that interest me and every one is useful to me. My small collection includes some great topics, such as:

• Food marketing
• Strategy
• Public speaking
• Social media
• Innovation
• Wines

Check those out here and enjoy:  https://www.pinterest.com/johnnyz1959/

But that’s not to say all infographics are great or even good. They may have a cool look and tons of great information, but many simply don’t make a point. Nothing jumps from the bad ones and they are as messy as the big pile-o-data they were supposed to clarify.

The best infographics have an implied objective and attain them through the applicable communications structures. The most common take these recognizable directions:

• To educate: Logically build the storyline from basic to more advanced concepts in buckets people can understand and remember.
• To persuade: State a challenge, posit a solution, support the argument, debunk alternatives, direct steps to the solution.
• To entertain: Surprise and delight with something new, peculiar, funny in a visually engaging way.

Infographics can be great tools applied to content marketing and brand development. An infographic can connect to and support a brand if it has the same look, sound, feel and overall messaging you’d expected from the brand. The trouble occurs in B2B communications when marketers and their creative partners lose track of their brand guidelines or don’t believe they apply to their infographics. Of course they do.

The infographic is a powerful and popular tool for communicating data and complex ideas. Which begs a question:

Should I have done this in an infographic?