In previous posts I’ve blogged about the effect bad diagrams have on organizations. For some odd reason, the worse a diagram is, the more far-reaching the diagram seems to travel in an organization. Bad diagrams seem to have the proverbial “9 lives” cats are proported to have, never dying a natural death. When you think you have finally seen the last of it, it reappears out of nowhere and causes yet a new round of misinformation and misunderstanding!
With that background I recently read a wonderful post directed at infographics in the same light. What ever is going around affecting those who make bad diargams seems to be highly contagious as some graphic designers seem to be suffering from the same disease.
Please take a minute to read a lengthy and informative post by Eronarn in Smashing Magazine. It’s entitled, “Imagine a Pie Chart Stomping On An Infographic Forever.” Ernarn laments the plethora of infographics out there that intentionally or unintentionally mislead people and create all kinds of havoc.
I especially like Eronarn’s pithy advice to graphic designers:
“Here is a simple rule for designers: your project isn’t ready to be released into the wild if you’ve spent more time choosing a font than choosing your data.”
” … if it would lead to the wrong conclusions, not presenting the data at all would be better.”
I feel there are lessons to be learned from Eronarn for those of us creating diagrams of all types!
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