Infographics are everywhere these days and everybody, from data driven financiers to muffin making grannies, seem to love them! The amount of infographics (already in the billions) grows by 1% every… day! If you’re remotely into numbers, you will understand how staggering that growth rate is (especially when considering the billions of existing infographics base figure). Infographics have by all measures gone totally viral and experienced dizzying exponential growth in the last few years. Which means, like everything growing exponentially, that the trend is gaining ever increasing momentum. It’s viral gone viral and it’s here to stay... How insane is that? But what makes infographics so successful in the first place or in other terms: what’s the science behind the boom?
We Are Visually Wired
The use of visualized information has increased 400% in literature (since 1990), 142% in newspapers (between 1985 and 1994) and a whopping 12,000% on the internet (since 2007). Yes, you read that correctly: 12,000% in just a few years! This is because we are fundamentally “visually wired”. Almost 50% of your brain is involved in visual processing (i.e. only 50% left for all the other tasks you can think of), 70% of all your sensory receptors are in your eyes (side note to all you guys and girls out there: drop the fancy talk, it’s all in the eyes…) and we can get the sense of a visual scene in less than 1/10 of a second. Woooah! Consider this: it only takes us 150 milliseconds for a symbol to be processed. Plus 100 milliseconds to attach a meaning to it. That’s 250 milliseconds to actually… comprehend. These are supercomputer figures… Yet human! Terminators out there, are you getting this?
Abort! Information Overload!
Infographics are additionally so wildly loved because we practically all suffer from information overload! Several studies show that we receive from five to ten times more information today as we did in… 1986. 1,000% more thanks to our all (smart)phones, (i)pads and other toxic gizmos…To give you a sense of perspective, that’s 34 gigabytes or 100,500 words consumed outside of work on an average day (let alone what we consume during work)! On websites and on average, users only read 28% of words per visit (side note to web designers: you better choose your words carefully). Researchers even found that color visuals increase the willingness to read by 80% (side note to authors: stuff your books with color visuals no matter where or what they mean).
Stunning, Engaging And Accessible? She Can’t Be…
It’s just that infographics are so much more engaging and accessible! A study found that when it comes to comprehension rates of medicine labels, there was a 50% rate of understanding for labels with text only and a 95% rate of understanding for labels with text and pictures (infographics). People following directions with text and illustrations do 323% better than people following directions without illustrations. Do you finally see where we are headed according to such dramatic research: an ever-increasing graphic society. Welcome to the graphic revolution and its corollary: the great shift in information transmission. And here comes the magic formula (I patented it so no use trying buddy): Information Transmission + Graphic Revolution = Info*Graphic². Or in its mathematical format: IT + GR = IG². Move over E = MC²…
Persuasion 101
Infographics, as if they have not yet claimed enough laudatory attributes, are radically more persuasive too. A study conducted at the Wharton School of Business (an obscure but astute think tank lost somewhere in the forests of Pennsylvania…) found that 50% of the audience were persuaded by a purely verbal presentation while 75% of the audience were persuaded by the verbal presentation that had accompanying visuals (side note to all professionals on this planet: add visuals to whatever you are selling, pitching and even talking about).
Because Girls (and Boys) Just Want To Have Fun…
Beyond the indisputable findings of science, I guess Infographics are simply so easy to digest, fun to share and addictively engaging that there probably is no better way to convey most kinds of information effectively. Side note to myself: launch an infographic related startup. Which I did: Infographiqs ®, The Infographic Search Engine (www.infographiqs.com). All the Infographiqs you can eat in just one click…
Charles Corm. November 24, 2014. More at: linkedin.com/in/charlescorm.
