October 28, 2015 | less than a minute read

The rise and fall of infographics

Passle

We internauts do love declaring the demise of various products, when it’s not Google +, it’s infographics, but, as is often the case, the rumours have been grossly exaggerated.

It would be more accurate to say that there is infographic fatigue. Now that everyone and anyone can create infographics in a few clicks, they are no longer seen as the shiny new kid on the block.

This does not mean that you should remove infographics from your marketing vocabulary – they’ve been around for centuries and will undoubtedly continue to be important.

What it does mean is that in a world over-saturated with infographics you should favour quality over quantity to stand out. Save it for special research projects and spend time designing it so that it is as effective as it could be.

I have written a guide to creating beautiful infographics without Photoshop here.

Today’s information overload leaves us with even less time to make an impact. Studies show we have less than 10 seconds to clearly communicate a proposition if we want to gain a few minutes attention. More than half of all users who view a web page spend less than 15 seconds looking at it. When it comes to information consumption, download speeds are not the problem; it’s our brains. Our brains process visual information much faster than text. On average, it takes 50 seconds to read 200-250 words but only 1/10 of a second to process a visual scene. Great visuals convey maximum information in as little time as possible. Here’s how to make sure your infographics fall in the “great” category rather than the bad or downright forgettable.