An infographic by definition is “a visual representation of information, data or knowledge”. Infographics are designed to make data and information easy to understand at a glance. They are used to display complicated information in a creative, clear manner, which communicates a message to others easily, with the use of bar graphs, pie charts, histograms, images, etc.
Infographics have been around for years (since the 1960’s, when the words information and graphics were blended together to create the adjective infographic) and have become increasingly popular recently, due to the internet, social media and the ability for people to share infographics online. The growing knowledge of how our brains work in relation to digesting information help us understand why infographics are so important and beneficial for the spreading and sharing of information to others.
We as humans have a short attention spam and naturally digest visual information a lot faster and easier than text. According to Visual Teaching Alliance, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text. Look at the following as an example:
A 4-sided flat shape with straight sides, where all sides have equal length and every interior angle is a right angle (90°)
It is much easier to visually show the square than describing it. Dr. Lynell Burmark explains how “…unless our words, concepts, ideas are hooked onto an image, they will go in one ear, sail through the brain, and go out the other ear.
Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about 7 bits of information (plus or minus 2)”. 40% of people respond better to visual information than text (Jensen 1996). It is therefore much more productive using an infographic to share information than writing lots of text.
Infographics are everywhere these days – the word “infographic” is searched an average of 547,000 times per month in Google. What makes them so successful is that they are proven to work. Infographic Effectiveness Statistics show that high quality infographics are 30 times more likely to be read than text articles. Publishers that feature infographics grow traffic 12% faster than publishers that don’t feature infographics. Infographics are enagaging, accessible, easy to digest and our brains love them! As they say: “A good infographic is worth a thousand words”.
Check out our infographic on infographics below:
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