I don’t know about this class but in english we are supposed to treat wikipedia like the gritty underbelly of the internet. However, I feel that you can find a lot of important information on wikipedia so this post is going to be all of the really important/interesting things I find on the infographics wikipedia page.
“In 1626, Christoph Scheiner published the Rosa Ursina sive Sol, a book that revealed his research about the rotation of the sun; Infographics appeared in the form of illustrations demonstrating the Sun’s rotation patterns.”
It is commonly believed that cave dwellers were the first infographic creators, I think that is really cool but Christoph’s creations were the first infographics like the ones created today. Other early infographic creators include Florence Nightingale and Carl Ritter.
Nightingales infographic which was presented to Queen Victoria.
Infographics were even created to communicate with aliens! Visual data representation is truly universal. It is so cool to consider that as humans we can create something that can, hopefully, be understood by an extraterrestrial.
Infographics became more popular in the 20th century. “In 1972 and 1973, respectively, the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft included on their vessels the Pioneer Plaques, a pair of gold-anodized aluminum plaques, each featuring a pictorial message. The pictorial messages included nude male and female figures as well as symbols that were intended to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft. The images were designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake and were unique in that their graphical meanings were to be understandable to extraterrestrial beings, who would have no conception of human language.”
Washington DC Metro Map
This picture made me realize I have an infographic hanging in my house.
The Tate Gallery By Tube
This is a picture of the image that is hanging in my house I honestly never even realized that this could be considered an infographic but it is pretty cool.
“Closely related to the field of information graphics is information design, which is the creation of
infographics. Author and founder of the TED, Richard Saul Wurman, is considered the originator of the phrase "information architect" and many of his books, such as Information Anxiety, helped propel the phrase "information design" from a concept to a job category.”
This was actually really cool to find out. It connects two of my favorite parts of my studies this year, and reminds me that I never have time to watch Ted videos lately which sucks.
*I tried to get all of the images on here instead of the links but my laptop froze whenever I tried to insert them*
