FEED’s Irresponsible Infographics

There are two kinds of infographics:

  • The kind that deceive
  • The kind that clarify

This is the former. Shame on you, Razorfish designer.

EDIT:

My friend and colleague-from-another-agency, Guthrie Dolin (Odopod), helped me get in contact with Garrick Schmitt, the publisher of the FEED report. His tweet in response to my post is copied below.

I appreciate (a) the understanding that it’s not the best way to display the data and (b) that his point wasn’t to highlight/obfuscate. So, that’s good. Thanks, Garrick, for the response.

Comments

9 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.
  1. Haaaa what are they even trying to say with this.

  2. Natalie B,

    color are soooo sad :-(
    + a small dislexia tendency here…
    :-/

    • Natalie -

      Not exactly the point I was going for (the colors don’t really matter one way or the other, and that’s a taste-based argument), but I’m largely concerned that the report isn’t clearly communicating its point.

      Thanks for stopping by, though, and thanks for the comment.

  3. 25% seems pretty high. Aren’t they just pointing out that it’s actually quite significant? Nobody with a couple of braincells would actually be deceived by this.

  4. Natalie B,

    oh yes, of course colors isn’t the point here, this was an incontrolable spontaneous critic of mine :-) a ‘dislexia tendency’ was my point, a bit obscure choice of word i must admit :-/ aaah communication… culture… always fascinating how people understand each other… even through graphics :-D so what i really wanted to say is: representing a low score in a bigger circle to represent your point is confusing

  5. Mike -

    Agree, you’d have to be pretty dense to miss the actual story behind the numbers. But if the point of the image is to illustrate that 25% is significant, I’d have picked something other than circles of different sizes, which tend to indicate proportion.

    Natalie –

    Agreement! And, thanks for stopping by.

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