Typography, Headlines and Infographics

Glasgow broke the hurricane down into several stages and then wrote
a blurb (a brief description) for each stage. “I wrote how I thought a hur-
ricane works based on the information I had researched,” he explained.
After Glasgow focused his thoughts and ideas, he moved quickly from a
few rough sketches on paper to the computer. He decided to use Adobe
FreeHand to create the clouds. Using a combination of drawing tools,
he drew the shape of the cloud as a kind of squiggly line, added some
depth and then placed arrows throughout the illustration to show wind
direction.
The project was almost finished when hurricane experts spotted a
technical error. Because of the direction of the trade winds over the
Atlantic Ocean, Glasgow’s hurricane was headed in the wrong direction.
To solve the problem, Glasgow simply selected the reflection tool and
flip-flopped his cloud, arrows and all.
Finally, Glasgow reversed the type in the darker areas so that words
would be readable. “First and foremost,” he said, “the information has to
communicate to the reader what it is about. If they don’t understand, or
if they can’t read the statistics on the piece of art, then I’ve failed.” Figure
16.4 has three examples of infographics from USA Today.

TYPOGRAPHY, HEADLINES AND INFOGRAPHICS^369

FIGURE 16.

INFOGRAPHICS

Most feared

threats 33 %

21%

12%

Ter

ror

ists

Iraq

Chi

na

Dow’s milestones

Time it took the industrial

average to go from:

5,

days

365

days

1,

00

to

2 ,

00

1,

00

to

2 ,

00

9 ,

0 0 t

o 1

0,

00

9 ,

0 0 t

o 1

0,

00

Cost of the

federal debt

Per person

1900 2006

$28,

$