The Functional Art

In ‘The Functional Art’ by Alberto Cairo, he explores how visual communication ‘has not been as intellectually elevated as writing’. Essentially, this means that for many people, infographics and images are mainly only used for the physical aesthetic of a piece. ‘Infographics are treated not as devices that expand the scope of our perception and cognition, but as decoration’.

This is an extremely wrong perception that people have. This is not only the case with infographics, but images too. Below is an image that I have seen multiple times on the Internet. It is an image that supposedly ‘tells a thousand words’, without actually having any words on it.

Although it’s such a simple image, it can be so powerful. Another example of how powerful visual infographics can be in shown below.

There are not a lot of words in the infographic above, it’s mainly just titles and labels. However, the bubbles and charts show us the extent of each aspect that is measured in the infographic above. This proves that infographics can be as powerful than words, and they aren’t merely just a decoration. The bubbles in the infographic above stand out, and therefore make you acknowledge exactly how we pay for things for example, in the case of the infographic above.