Information graphics

If you can't picture it, you just don't understand it well enough…

Information graphics are an omnipresent vehicle of information transport. Few articles in science, politics and economy can avoid concentrating their content in statistical graphics, tables, pie charts or other little informative pictures that back up the headline of the article.

Info graphics are one way we deal with complexity. Like a product design, which shapes an abstract idea of "something" into a concrete case of our daily life sentiments, graphics comprehend an abstract flow of information into a concrete picture plot. This character makes them a powerful tool in the design and appearance of knowledge. Although omnipresent the epistemology of graphics and a sceptical, conscious approach to them is still no commonplace among the scientific and business players.

Sandra Rendgen, an art historian, and Julius Wiedemann, a graphic designer, put together a study entirely dedicated to the visual communication throughout history. Their book "Information Graphics" follows and reflects our need for visualizing information. So far as graphics do give an answer to the variety of data and information floating around us ("What do we do with all these data?" – "We make a picture out of it!"), the question remains what we are supposed to do with the new simplicity of all these graphics? The way we design information shapes its content. Graphics propose interpretations, in some cases foster one way looking at them over another. A critical approach to is therefore necessary and we will continue to write on this subject on further occasions.
For everybody interested in an interview with Sandra Rendgen in the German "art magazine" follow this link.