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Contents

1.Designers are not scientists

2.Good infographics are about more than good facts

3.A completely unscientific taxonomy of facts

4.Inspirational Infographics

5.Good designers worth working with

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Designers are not scientists

• They won't understand half of the content you send them

• As communicators of science, we need to take the data which are scientists

give us and translate it for the designers

• Lots of fiddly little things you need to be responsible for:

1. Clearly identify scientific units and population sizes

2. Ensure units are consistent (Gt and Mt)

3. Ensure sourcing is consistent

4. Ensure data label requirements are clearly outlined

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Good infographics are about more than the facts

• They are about a story

• The message is as important as the fact

• Representing the message visually requires good communication cues

Examples:

Facts Message Visual Cues

Bacterial growth rates approximately double with every 10 °C rise in

temperature above 10 °C

Climate change will affect food safety

Spoilt food

Agriculture contributes some 56% of global non-

CO2 greenhouse gas emissions

Agriculture is the largest contributor of non-CO2

emissions Cows

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Sample template for briefing designer

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A completely unscientific and incomplete taxonomy of facts

• Qualitative statements

• Due to droughts, trees are becoming more vulnerable to higher mortality rates

• One big number – percentage or absolute frequency:

• Agriculture emits 5 billion tonnes of CO2 every year

• To meet global food demand in 2050, agricultural production must be 60% higher by weight than in 2005.

• Percentage of a population facts:

• Agriculture contributes some 56% of global non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions

• Changes in absolute frequencies – univariate or multivariate

• The current population is 7.2 billion. In 2050 it is going to be 9.6 billion. In 2100 the total population is 10.9

billion.

• Causal Relationships

• If women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by

20–30%. This could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5–4%, which could in turn

reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12–17%.

Different facts lend themselves to different infographics and impose limits as to what designers can do

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Qualitative statements

Tips and Tricks:

• These are hard to make look scientific•Need to brief the designers with very strong visual cues

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Big numbers as absolute frequencies

Tips and Tricks:• There are not many options with facts like this. • You only have one fact and don’t have the population size it belongs to.• BLOW THE NUMBER UP: make sure to get the balance of text to numbers to pictures right

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Big numbers as absolute frequencies

Tips and Tricks:• You only have the percentage change figure•Scientists often think they’ve given you more detail than they have•No absolute frequencies mean no data labels

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Percentage of a population facts as infographics

Box Charts Focus on Numbers Pie Charts

Tips and Tricks:•Can use really simple charts •Think of every chart as a stand-alone piece, is all the data on their if people want to use it in a presentation?•Do you want to include frequency numbers of population sizes on charts as well as percentages?

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Comparative data – one variable across different region/ populations/time etc

Tips and Tricks:•Lots of options for charts – this is what scientists tend to be after• Keep simple and add a clarifying qualitative statements•Think about data labels, scientific units, etc

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Comparative data – different variables

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Causal relationships

Flow-charts with icons

Traditional Flow-ChartFlow chart with icons

and data

These can be tricky for designers and require the most oversight and direction. We normally sketch a traditional flow chart and write down the data labels and text that need to be added

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Example concept sketch for a causal relationship infographic

agriculture Storage Transport

Possessing Retail Consum

er

100% of food supply 66.6 % of food supply

About a third of all food produced is lost in the food supply chain

Food Supply40% of food

losses in high-income countries occur at retail and consumer levels

40% of food losses

in low-income countries occur at storage, transport and processing levels

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Links to Inspirational Infographics

Inspirational Narrative Infographics

• The World Bank’s Infographic Series:

• http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2013/06/19/Infographic-Climate-Change-in-Sub-Saharan-Africa-South-Asia-South

-East-Asia?cid=EXT_TWBN_D_EXT

• Netherlands Global C02: http://infographics.pbl.nl/website/globalco2/

• The Institute of International and European Affairs Waste Not Want Not Series:

• http://www.iiea.com/blogosphere/waste-not-want-not-the-problem-of-food-waste

• Greenpeace Save the Arctic:

• http://columnfivemedia.com/work-items/greenpeace-infographic-save-the-arctic-tour/

Inspirational Dynamic Visualizations

• U.S. Gun Deaths Data Visualisation: http://guns.periscopic.com/?year=2013

Inspirational Visualizations that represent multiple variables cleanly and simply:

• Fathom’s Health Visualisation: http://fathom.info/healthviz

• Fathom’s Ageing Visulisation: http://fathom.info/aging

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Links to Good Designers

Infographics:

• Column Five - http://www.columnfivemedia.com/

• Speak to Jake Burkett, jburkett@columnfivemedia.com & Travis Keith, tkeith@

columnfivemedia.com

Data visualisation:

• http://fathom.info/about

• http://www.periscopic.com/

• http://developmentseed.org/

Free sources to construct your own:

• http://www.tableausoftware.com/public

• http://infogr.am/

Infographic library:

• http://visual.ly/ - do not recommend their paid-for infographic development service but they host a

library of infographics, similar to Flickr which I recommend you upload your infographics too