We all live in an age where we are bombarded with information, which is why they call it the information age. We have seemingly unlimited access to it, given the right motivation and patience we can find out anything about everything and everything about anything!
The major downside to all of this information is that it is well… a lot of information and we don’t always know how to process it and how to share it with people. This applies to everyone, from the individual wanting to know more about the world to big corporates wanting to share information with the masses.
Yes this might be the information age, but we’ve been perfecting the method of sharing information graphically for a very long time. Maps are a very simple example of information being shown in a visual form and they have been around since 7500 BC as cave paintings. Supposedly the term “graph” was introduced by James Joseph Sylvester in 1878 to show the relationship between chemical bonds and mathematical properties.
It is clear then that for a very long time we’ve realised that if we want to share information with masses, one of the best ways of doing it was visually.
Nowadays we have extremely creative people, lots of information and powerful tools for showcasing visuals. Bring all of these elements together and what we have is the explosion of Infographics being shared across the net today.
Pictures can be worth a thousand words and they are shared very easily across all platforms. Infographics are great ways to generate content and promote it virally, but the font selection, design and colour usage are all important memory triggers. Infographics and images that are vibrant and colourful will definitely help someone recall things and spend more time on your site.
For examples are really awesome Inforgraphics check out this site, http://visual.ly