If you ever want to go down an internet rabbit hole, try typing “museum history infographic” into your favorite search engine. I did that myself this week because our content planning team has been discussing the use of infographics as a component for interpreting really big and complex ideas in Texas history. We are all wondering: what would it look like?
An infographic about infographics designed by Ivan Cash (ivancash.com)
I’ve seen infographics used for all kinds of reasons over the last few years: tourism brochures, annual reports (including one we recently did here), Top 100 movie quotes, and a case for keeping cursive in the curriculum, and even infographics about infographics.
So then I backtracked. What is an infographic really supposed to do? There are plenty of explanations out there (here’s my favorite) which basically seem to boil down to this—infographics are a visually appealing way to provide people large amounts of information in a small space, but don’t overuse them because everybody’s doing it, but use them because everybody’s doing it (now, and, as it turns out, for decades).
Will it work in our case? I hope so, and I’m really excited to have the conversation.
