News, the only non-violent desire that every human possess, started as hearsays, folks or to the best as government proclamations until the seventeenth century. News got democratised, structured and organised after the advent of “Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien”, world’s first weekly newspaper.
During the early days, newspapers were textual and serious yet popular. They only carried columns of text, and it took two whole centuries for the first headline to ornate newspapers, this heralded the first method of condensing information into smaller and fewer words devoid of textual pleasantries. It was followed by the use of illustrations in the year 1806 by ‘The Times’ and later as pictures during the 1880’s by ‘The Daily Graphic’.
The birth of Infographics
During this same period in a parallel timeline, infographics were progressing steadily but confined mostly to science and technological illustrations. It first appeared in a book named ‘Rosa Ursina Sive Sol’ by Christoph Scheiner who used illustrations to demonstrate his findings on the sun’s rotation patterns. Later by 1786, William Playfair a political economist who used statistical graphs, charts and a pie chart in a first, to represent the economy of England in his book.
However, it is Florence Nightingale, an English nurse who innovated the illustrations into infographics by merging multiple elements of visual representation through her coxcomb chart to illustrate the causes of mortality during the Crimean war.
Infographics in newspapers
All these developments revolutionised infographics which already started appearing in newspapers as early as 1970’s by Peter Sullivan for 'The Sunday Times'. After this, they became a prominent feature of every important story in every newspaper, so much so that the newspaper USA Today was criticised for over visualising the news often giving importance to the visual appeal than the content.
Later into the 21st century after the digitisation of newspaper production and due to the advent of vector graphics and raster graphics in computers, visualisations became more visually appealing and accommodating to data thereby a mainstay in data-oriented news stories.
Every infographic essentially possesses three parts the visual, the content, and the knowledge. The visual consists of colours and graphics, the content is the data depicted in it and the knowledge is the information behind and from it.
There are two different types of graphics – theme and reference. Theme graphics are included in all infographics and represent the underlying visual representation of the data. Reference graphics are generally icons that can be used to point to certain data, although they are not always found in infographics.
Newsgraphics aims to complement today's newsreaders with a visual experience. An experience that is simple and several folds informative. Here News is presented in a simplified manner without shedding out the necessary information using illustrations, text, videos, audio, images and many more innovative ways.
THE AUTHOR
AJITH M S
Ajith, is a student of masters in Journalism and Mass communication at Kristu Jayanti College, Bangalore, India.
He has close to six years of vibrant experience in areas of business, marketing and graphic designing. He loves to create videos, take pictures, read non-fiction, draw on the computer and explore with his taste buds.
Professionally his interests are video documenting, creating content for new media, photography and writing.
During the early days, newspapers were textual and serious yet popular. They only carried columns of text, and it took two whole centuries for the first headline to ornate newspapers, this heralded the first method of condensing information into smaller and fewer words devoid of textual pleasantries. It was followed by the use of illustrations in the year 1806 by ‘The Times’ and later as pictures during the 1880’s by ‘The Daily Graphic’.
The birth of Infographics
During this same period in a parallel timeline, infographics were progressing steadily but confined mostly to science and technological illustrations. It first appeared in a book named ‘Rosa Ursina Sive Sol’ by Christoph Scheiner who used illustrations to demonstrate his findings on the sun’s rotation patterns. Later by 1786, William Playfair a political economist who used statistical graphs, charts and a pie chart in a first, to represent the economy of England in his book.
However, it is Florence Nightingale, an English nurse who innovated the illustrations into infographics by merging multiple elements of visual representation through her coxcomb chart to illustrate the causes of mortality during the Crimean war.
Infographics in newspapers
All these developments revolutionised infographics which already started appearing in newspapers as early as 1970’s by Peter Sullivan for 'The Sunday Times'. After this, they became a prominent feature of every important story in every newspaper, so much so that the newspaper USA Today was criticised for over visualising the news often giving importance to the visual appeal than the content.
Later into the 21st century after the digitisation of newspaper production and due to the advent of vector graphics and raster graphics in computers, visualisations became more visually appealing and accommodating to data thereby a mainstay in data-oriented news stories.
Every infographic essentially possesses three parts the visual, the content, and the knowledge. The visual consists of colours and graphics, the content is the data depicted in it and the knowledge is the information behind and from it.
There are two different types of graphics – theme and reference. Theme graphics are included in all infographics and represent the underlying visual representation of the data. Reference graphics are generally icons that can be used to point to certain data, although they are not always found in infographics.
The success of infographics can be attributed to the fact that visuals are easy to comprehend than texts and photographs as fifty percent of the human brain is dedicated to visual functions, and images are processed faster than text.
Beyond Infographics
Simplification of news does not fall under infographics alone, with multi-level convergence with the advent of computers and internet tools are plenty for the purpose. This extends to the usage of graphical videos, interactive graphs, hyperlinking of texts, simplification of complex data into simpler means and even presentations.
Beyond Infographics
Simplification of news does not fall under infographics alone, with multi-level convergence with the advent of computers and internet tools are plenty for the purpose. This extends to the usage of graphical videos, interactive graphs, hyperlinking of texts, simplification of complex data into simpler means and even presentations.
Newsgraphics aims to complement today's newsreaders with a visual experience. An experience that is simple and several folds informative. Here News is presented in a simplified manner without shedding out the necessary information using illustrations, text, videos, audio, images and many more innovative ways.
AJITH M S
Ajith, is a student of masters in Journalism and Mass communication at Kristu Jayanti College, Bangalore, India.
He has close to six years of vibrant experience in areas of business, marketing and graphic designing. He loves to create videos, take pictures, read non-fiction, draw on the computer and explore with his taste buds.
Professionally his interests are video documenting, creating content for new media, photography and writing.
nice work Ajith
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