While we try to be as comprehensive as possible in supporting your infographic creation process (by yourself or with a class) on this website, there are also many great resources online, printed in books, and more for general inspiration, useful references, visual design, and some humorous infographic failures to learn from. Check out our recommended selections below.
Infographic Examples for Inspiration and Humor
- Jose Duarte’s physical infographics images and handmade visuals: Creatively visualizing data with physical objects. The inspiration for our physical infographics lesson.
- Dear Data, a website and book by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec: Visualizations capturing aspects of everyday life, hand drawn on postcards.
- W. E. B. Du Bois’ Hand-Drawn Infographics of African-American Life (1900): A selection of hand-drawn charts created by Du Bois and his students at Atlanta University, many of which focus on economic life in Georgia, and compellingly demonstrate inequity.
- The Invention of ISOTYPE: How a Vintage Visual Language Paved the Way for the Infographics Age: A Brain Pickings article about Otto and Marie Neurath’s pioneering work in the 1930s on using pictograms for accessible public communication
- Gerd Arntz: This website includes thousands of the pictogram designs by the German artist who worked with the Neuraths in the 1930s on Isotypes. Strong influence on modern icons and symbols.
- Popular Science Infographics
- Good Infographics: Infographics reporting, part of a site that focuses on political news.
- WTF Vizualizations: Examples of the worst graphs and visualizations found online, on TV, in newspapers, or anywhere. Good for sharing and discussion in classrooms.
- Spurious Correlations: A collection of hilarious charts by Tyler Vigen to remind us that correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
Data and Graph Support
- Data Visualization Catalogue: The Data Viz Catalogue is a reference tool for helping people decide which type of visualization to use for the type of message they want to convey.
- Storytelling with Data: Blog post lessons on how to make better graphs, better versions of graphs, and step-by-step graph makeovers.
- “Misleading axes on graphs” and “The Principle of Proportional Ink”: useful cautions from Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West’s “Calling Bull___”
- Spurious Correlations: A collection of hilarious charts by Tyler Vigen to remind us that correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
- A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods: A meta-visualization of different types of visualization methods, not just for data.
- Storytelling with Data: Blog post lessons on how to make better graphs, better versions of graphs, and step-by-step graph makeovers.
- Books by Nathan Yau
Design and Data Visualizations
- The “little” of visualization design: each article focuses on “just one small matter—a singular good or bad design choice—as demonstrated by a sample project.”
- “Six Questions with”: interviews with data visualization professionals.
- Data Revelations: Blog posts documenting one man’s insights on different ways of visualizing data and explores cases where atypical charts are actually useful.
- Alberto Cairo’s blog and books The Functional Art: An Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization, and The Truthful Art: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication: Excellent principles and examples of visual design for journalistic purposes.
- Book Infographic Designers’ Sketchbooks: by Steven Heller and Rick Landers (see also a Slate article by Kristin Hohenadel, “How Doodles and Sketches Become Gorgeous Infographics”)
- A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods: A meta-visualization of different types of visualization methods, not just for data.
Visual Storytelling
- How to Be an Educated Consumer of Infographics: David Byrne on the Art-Science of Visual Storytelling: An article on Brain Pickings summarizing ideas from the Best American Infographics 2013
- Storytelling with Data: Blog post lessons on how to make better graphs, better versions of graphs, and step-by-step graph makeovers
Social Media
Stay current by following these social media accounts. If you plan to share these in classrooms, please bear in mind that some content may need to be filtered.
Twitter: New York Times Graphics • Daily Infographic • Data Sketches • Info We Trust • Jon Keegan, Visual Journalist • Heather Krause • Ritchie King, Data Viz Editor for FiveThirtyEight • Alberto Cairo • Visualizing Data • Lisa Charlotte Ross • #infographic • #dataviz
Instagram: Mona Chalabi