FastCo has published their selection of the 22 best infographics of the year, and adds some bold flavor text to match.
As infographics go mainstream, infographic designers grow bolder. Some of the most tantalizing projects we came across this past year stretched our understanding of what a data visualization can be: It can be a set of interactive commuter-train maps plotted not according to distance but time. It can be a metaphorical chart of how water flows from the source to the consumer. It can be the spikes and dips of the Dow Jones Industrial Average rendered as notes on a musical scale. Infographics have clearly evolved into something greater than just a way to make raw numbers more enticing. They’re a full-blown art form.
Of course, 2011 is also the year that Infographics “Jumped the Shark“, flooding the internet with garbage bit-sucking images that blow 4 sentences of information into a 4Meg graphic.
What do you think?
