Hill+Knowlton Strategies

We’ve always been a fan of infographics here at Tech_Labs towers. Over the past few days we’ve seen an infographic on the buzz of trendy tech conference SXSW (where there were three times more conversations about parties than panel discussions), and a day in the life of the internet (detailing how 864,000 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube per 24 hours  – that’s 98 years of non-stop cat videos). We’ve even spotted a Mother’s Day infographic, illustrating the value we put on our mums (note: it doesn’t go down too well if you send this in lieu of the standard bunch of hastily ordered Interflora flowers).

But you know, while we’ll happily spend a couple of minutes perusing infographics on the worst dinner guest ever or the 10 weirdest things you never knew came from Irish inventors, we felt it was all going a step too far when we came across the following. Yes, an infographic on infographics. Another one. A mind blowing topic we know (or rather, thinly veiled advertising for companies creating infographics, but we’re not cynical or anything).

Now we’re not saying this is a bad infographic. Not too many random images, no sign of the oft-present angled bar chart. On the whole it’s readable and the stats add up. There are plenty of far worse attempts just a Google search away. Rather, we’re asking the question of why does nearly every topic, trend and trending topic have to have its own infographic?

“Can someone please stop the infographic madness?” pleads Om Malik in a recent blog post. “Quit with all the infographics already” implores another. With their explosion in popularity (and subsequent onslaught of below par interpretations) is it the case that infographics, once the darling of information sharing, have reached their zenith on the curve of cool and are already considered overdone, passé?

Well no. We don’t think it’s game over for the infographic. There are plenty of brilliant ones out there, explaining large amounts of data in an easy to interpret way. As technology develops, we’re bombarded with more and more information; we need it quick and simple to digest. Rather than jumping on the bandwagon and creating an infographic off the cuff however, we all need to stay aware of the reasons why and the times when we should create an infographic. And an infographic detailing this information is an infographic we’d be happy to see.

(This post was written by Sophie who you can follow at: @HK_TechLabs)