THE INFOGRAPHIC AND THE MAP: WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES?
C.R.F. Vianna, P.M.L. Menezes
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Department of
Geography, Rio de Janeiro,
incar@terra.com.br
In the “Information Era” and “Audio Visual Society”, the information design, despite being associated with the structure of information, focusing the storage in a database, it needs to observe that the information visualization emphasizes not only its storage and representation but its presentation to the user as well.
Infographic,
as a visual resource for communication, is a tool to be explored for presenting
of the geographical information. Its use in magazines and periodicals around
the world shows the important details of the news assists its comprehension
through a faster notion due to the attractiveness offered by the mixture of
text and illustrations (maps, photos, image, graphic, etc.). Is it possible to
say that a map or a page of an atlas is an infographic?
Although
the illustrative character of infographics, in a great number of news this
graphic representation takes over a character much more informative than
illustrative, enabling a larger interest regarding the news text through the
maps. The issue of this project is to observe the spacialization of the news.
It is possible to note that maps accompany the news in several sections:
political, weather forecast, environment and, even, sports.
Regarding
the weather forecast, for example, the maps and satellite images utilization
have been explored for a long time. More recently, it has been presenting
details with any increase of color and legend showing simbology that represents
information in addition to what is represented in the map. Moreover, in one of
the newspapers of national circulation, it is possible to tell that the weather
forecast section acts like a source of information produced by official
agencies.
From the observation above, some questions are aroused:
Why spacializing the news?
Which is the importance of the geographical location for the journalism?
Does infographic contribute for the increasing of geographical knowledge?
How is geographic information developed by the art editor in newspapers and magazines?
Is there any difference between information design methodology for infographic and for map elaboration?
There is any specific program being used for the development of an infographic?
Where to apply the concept of infographic?
The goal
of this research project is to identify the differential methodology points for
infographic elaboration and if these differentials points could be used to
produce maps for teaching geography and cartography.