Shelley Walsh

About Shelley Walsh

Infographics: visual fast food for information overload

Did you know that 100 years ago it was expected the average person would only read 100 books in their entire lifetime?

In 2007, following research, it was estimated that the average person is exposed to the equivalent of one newspaper (85 pages) of information every 5.5 minutes during the day (based on an average day of 16 hours and 174 papers a day).

That is a tidal wave of facts, figures, stories, data, images and mental junk. Interestingly, infographics (as a term) has seen explosive growth online in the last three years with a rise of more than 20 times in search volume for the keyword.

Could this growth be indicative of how we now want to consume our information and for it to be delivered quicker and easier to cut through the noise. Are infographics fast food for the brain in response to our info-weary brains?