Infographics and Pictograms: A brief history and a little inspiration

Info­graph­ics and pic­tograms are used world­wide, and are seen by almost every­one in a com­mer­cial or pub­lic envi­ro­ment. Info­graph­ics are instruc­tive images, and are aimed at mak­ing some­thing com­pli­cated seem eas­ier to under­stand by graph­i­cal illus­tra­tions. Whereas pic­tograms are basi­cally rep­re­sen­ta­tive images we use to replace words or visu­alise actions, and are often seen either replac­ing or accom­pa­ny­ing a tex­tual instruc­tion. Both have been used for thou­sands of years, with vari­a­tions as cave paint­ings by early man, as Hiero­glyph­ics in ancient Egypt, and more com­monly now as instruc­tions, warn­ings, or direc­tions in pub­lic places.

What makes a good infographic/pictogram?

A good info­graphic is a solid, clean, sharp graphic, with an accu­rate depic­tion of what it is try­ing to rep­re­sent. There are no gra­di­ents, no soft edges, and no excess lines, shapes, or fills. The more you can sim­plify, the better.

Pop­u­lar info­graph­ics in main­stream design

Thumb­nail image shows the com­par­i­son between an actual heart, and the accepted sym­bol for a heart.One of, if not, the most used info­graphic of all time is the sym­bol of a love heart. We are used to see­ing this sym­bol over and over again, yet it hardly rep­re­sents an actual human heart in the slight­est. We have been bom­barded by the com­mer­cial­ism sur­round­ing it, and told by card com­pa­nies like Hall­mark that this sym­bol is a heart, and that it rep­re­sents love and that by giv­ing a pic­ture of it on a card will show that spe­cial some­one how much you love them.

Adobe has a really great film about Mil­ton Glaser on their web­site which tells you a lit­tle about the man and his work. One of the most famous designs to incor­po­rate the heart sym­bol is the “I Love NY / I ♥ NY” logo by Mil­ton Glaser. A time­less cre­ation, it is a per­fect exam­ple of an info­graphic being accepted and embraced by a nation, and one that has now become a part of Amer­i­can pop culture.

Ani­mated infographics

A lovely piece of ani­ma­tion for the open­ing cred­its of ‘The King­dom’ includes a vari­ety of info­graph­ics and some cool motion typog­ra­phy. Found via InfoAes­thet­ics.

More info­graph­ics examples

If you’re really inter­ested in info graph­ics next time your in town, or any pub­lic place, take a look around. You may not see them at first as we’ve become so accus­tomed to them, but if you really look you can see them on maps, tourist infor­ma­tion cen­tres, direc­tions, road signs, banks, cof­fee shops, shop­ping cen­tres, train sta­tions, bus depots, to name just a few.

Cave­men used to paint, amongst other things, their sur­round­ings on the wall so they would know what ani­mals and resources were in the area.

The ancient Egyp­tians used hiero­glyph­ics to tell sto­ries of their life, their work, and their gods.

British road­signs show plenty of info­graph­ics that we pass by on a daily basis. More road­signs from the Direct­Gov site.

Just your bog stan­dard warn­ing signs that when ignored may melt the skin off your face and turn your bones to dust. Per­phaps not, but you can see more signs at Online-Sign.com.

You can usu­ally find lots of info­graph­ics in pub­lic places. A favourite one of mine is the ‘exit’ sign. If ever I’m in the cin­ema or the the­atre or some­where where I’m not enjoy­ing myself, I always look over and have a lit­tle laugh when I think it could be me run­ning away.

Air­ports are always full of info­graph­ics as they are the direc­tions and infor­ma­tion for trav­ellers who don’t under­stand the language.

More infor­ma­tion on the font here.

The web­d­ings font has been shipped with Microsoft Win­dows for years now and con­tains a num­ber of good graph­ics in it.

A big­ger image is avail­able here, and another image of what the tube map looks like today.

This is the first Lon­don tube map to be designed by Harry Beck in 1933, who stripped away the geo­graph­i­cal loca­tions of the sta­tions to leave only the lines of the tracks and show how they con­nect with each other.

Com­puter icons are a good exam­ple of pic­tographs, and if you look back at them in rela­tion to the his­tory and devel­op­ment of the com­puter tech­nolo­gies, you can see how they have become over­worked with reflec­tions, gra­di­ents, and ani­ma­tions, when all we really need is a solid, accu­rate, non-distracting graph­i­cal representation.

There’s also a pic­to­graph lan­guage I’ve seen before, but right now I can’t remem­ber what it’s called or who it’s by. All I can remem­ber, is that I saw it on the back cover of a copy of either Cre­ative Review, or Com­puter Arts. I think. I’d be grate­ful if any­one can shed any light on this because I’d really like to show people.

That’s it for now then. I’ll be try­ing my own info­graph­ics and pic­tograms tomor­row, and I’ll post any more I see that I think are worth­while. Maybe you have some suggestions?