Infographics make me smarter

Posted February 23, 2013 by Maggie Davidov

What are infographics and why are they awesome? This customermagnestism.com post is an infographic, you guessed it, about infographics! Wild, I know. Essentially the infographic distills all relevant statistics and facts about a topic into one pretty picture that relaxes the mind. Margaret Rouse says it best when she defines infographics: “Infographics (information graphics) is the display of information in such a way that it can be easily understood at a glance.”

You’ve probably come across a bunch of infographics in your information consumption lifetime. I did, but didn’t really know why I was more likely to process the information from an infographic than from say a 30-page journal article my professor wanted me to read for next Thursday. Both are valid forms of conveying information. I just think that after reading 400 pages for classes this week I’m way more likely to read an infographic post sent to me by a colleague than a New York Times article about the exact same topic.

Think about it then next time you get a fascinating article sent to you by a friend or colleague. How can I make this easier to process? How can I turn this into something much more likely to go viral? If you are as inspired as I am by this medium and feel like making your own infographic about how awesome cats are then check out this website: infogr.am  to make your very own infographic and share your thoughts about cats with the world.

P.S. This whole post idea started when I got an email from a colleague at my school. I didn’t open the email for a long time because I was really dreading reading another professional article. When I finally opened it I was so pleasantly surprised by the ease with which my brain enjoyed reading about technology in libraries that I knew I had to find out more about these suckers. This infographic came from an edudemic.com post titled How Technology is Shaping the Future of Libraries.