Research: Information is Beautiful

Information is Beautiful is a website created by information designer and data journalist David McCandless, who visualises complex and baffling data in simple and attractive ways, using as little text as possible. The result is clean and simple iconography combining to produce colourful infographics.

This is a good example of his work, creating artwork from a set of data that is intriguing and easy on the eye. Although it is not an example of how he simplifies complex journalistic information, it doesn't need to be in this case, and instead you don't mind poring over the picture and learning more from the key.

This rather lengthy infographic provides all the information about swine flu and the development of a vaccine together with the risks and applications associated with it. The section I find the most interesting is the chances of catching the illness and then the odds of hospitalisation or death as a result, shown using circles of different sizes to denote probability as it visualises clearly the differences between the numbers.

I like this chart due to the use of simple iconic 'toilet door' style people which again is a more visually understandable and appealing way of displaying the data rather than just a bank of numbers. The key can be quickly understood, with each person representing a percentile point over the average and colours denoting gender that are hardwired in our heads to show males and females.

I really like David McCandless' style of information design, and having seen how well infographics suited the report by Rosebery Housing Association, I will definitely try to replicate this style in my own work. I think that this simplistic iconographic style will dictate the rest of the style of the report too, not just the informative sections, to denote any issues raised in the text.