Infographics and pictograms are used worldwide, and are seen by almost everyone in a commercial or public enviroment. Infographics are instructive images, and are aimed at making something complicated seem easier to understand by graphical illustrations. Whereas pictograms are basically representative images we use to replace words or visualise actions, and are often seen either replacing or accompanying a textual instruction. Both have been used for thousands of years, with variations as cave paintings by early man, as Hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt, and more commonly now as instructions, warnings, or directions in public places.
What makes a good infographic/pictogram?
A good infographic is a solid, clean, sharp graphic, with an accurate depiction of what it is trying to represent. There are no gradients, no soft edges, and no excess lines, shapes, or fills. The more you can simplify, the better.
Popular infographics in mainstream design
Thumbnail image shows the comparison between an actual heart, and the accepted symbol for a heart.One of, if not, the most used infographic of all time is the symbol of a love heart. We are used to seeing this symbol over and over again, yet it hardly represents an actual human heart in the slightest. We have been bombarded by the commercialism surrounding it, and told by card companies like Hallmark that this symbol is a heart, and that it represents love and that by giving a picture of it on a card will show that special someone how much you love them.
Adobe has a really great film about Milton Glaser on their website which tells you a little about the man and his work. One of the most famous designs to incorporate the heart symbol is the “I Love NY / I ♥ NY” logo by Milton Glaser. A timeless creation, it is a perfect example of an infographic being accepted and embraced by a nation, and one that has now become a part of American pop culture.
Animated infographics
A lovely piece of animation for the opening credits of ‘The Kingdom’ includes a variety of infographics and some cool motion typography. Found via InfoAesthetics.
More infographics examples
If you’re really interested in info graphics next time your in town, or any public place, take a look around. You may not see them at first as we’ve become so accustomed to them, but if you really look you can see them on maps, tourist information centres, directions, road signs, banks, coffee shops, shopping centres, train stations, bus depots, to name just a few.
Cavemen used to paint, amongst other things, their surroundings on the wall so they would know what animals and resources were in the area.
The ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphics to tell stories of their life, their work, and their gods.
British roadsigns show plenty of infographics that we pass by on a daily basis. More roadsigns from the DirectGov site.
Just your bog standard warning signs that when ignored may melt the skin off your face and turn your bones to dust. Perphaps not, but you can see more signs at Online-Sign.com.
You can usually find lots of infographics in public places. A favourite one of mine is the ‘exit’ sign. If ever I’m in the cinema or the theatre or somewhere where I’m not enjoying myself, I always look over and have a little laugh when I think it could be me running away.
Airports are always full of infographics as they are the directions and information for travellers who don’t understand the language.
More information on the font here. 
The webdings font has been shipped with Microsoft Windows for years now and contains a number of good graphics in it.
A bigger image is available here, and another image of what the tube map looks like today. 
This is the first London tube map to be designed by Harry Beck in 1933, who stripped away the geographical locations of the stations to leave only the lines of the tracks and show how they connect with each other.
Computer icons are a good example of pictographs, and if you look back at them in relation to the history and development of the computer technologies, you can see how they have become overworked with reflections, gradients, and animations, when all we really need is a solid, accurate, non-distracting graphical representation.
There’s also a pictograph language I’ve seen before, but right now I can’t remember what it’s called or who it’s by. All I can remember, is that I saw it on the back cover of a copy of either Creative Review, or Computer Arts. I think. I’d be grateful if anyone can shed any light on this because I’d really like to show people.
That’s it for now then. I’ll be trying my own infographics and pictograms tomorrow, and I’ll post any more I see that I think are worthwhile. Maybe you have some suggestions?
2 Comments
Interesting exploration of infographics, but you missed the very best and maybe the most ancient example still in use today: Chinese calligraphy. The written language of China (later borrowed and adapted by the Japanese), is ideographic (pictographic) in its origins and probably evolved out of some kind of early hieroglyphic. But it’s also very sophisticated.
An example: “Tao” is often translated into English as “way of life” or something to that effect. The symbol for “tao” incorporates three essential elements. One is a stylized representation of a human head (a rectangle with three segments for eyes, nose and mouth), and atop the head is a representation of thoughts rising upward. Alongside and underneath these two elements is a representation of a person walking. So the essential meaning conveyed by “tao” to a native speaker of Chinese would be something like “the path of wisdom.”
I find all this, including your own experiments, fascinating to consider. Thanks for exploring it. I’d also recommend a book to you that explores not only symbols, but archetypes. It is called “Man and His Symbols,” by Carl G. Jung. A better understanding of all this will surely help us to develop better interfaces for the web … eventually!
Again, thank you.
Excellent example!
I still have a fair bit of research to do for my next post on infographics, so I’ll be sure to have a look at Chinese calligraphy and include it.
Cheers Jeff.