Topic

Midwest Infographic

Instructions

Workplace writers are professional communicators. In your repertoire of skills and abilities, you will not only be asked to write print-based and electronic documents but to present oral presentations and, furthermore, to communicate with readers visually. In workplaces, you may be asked to analyze or contribute to performance dashboards, balanced scorecards, or other ways of visually tracking company performance.

This assignment asks you to work collaboratively in a team of two or three colleagues in order to produce an infographic, which can, among other possibilities, do the following:

Present complicated data in a way that interests your readers
Describe a complicated process through a combination of images and words
Make an argument visually

In these three cases, you’ll want to make sure that you meet these three dominant criteria of effective infographics. They should

Appeal to your readers. Your readers should find them interesting and engaging; you and your partners might consider a visual metaphor that your readers find humorous or alarming or indicative of another emotion
Aid the comprehension or learnability of your readers. Your readers should gain a stronger understanding of your data, process, or argument because of your visual approach
Aid the retention of your readers. Having understood your infographic, the information should “stick” with your readers for a longer time; they should remember the story that you are telling in your data, process, or argument

Although your infographics will include illustrations, they should not merely be “decorative” without any meaningful purpose. Although an infographic may be more effective than a statistical pie or bar chart, you’ll want to make sure that the illustrative or decorative elements make sense and do not take away from your readers’ ability to understand and retain the data or your message. Check Chapter 1 of Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling for an explanation of the criteria of appeal, comprehension, and retention.

Come up with a rhetorical situation. This situation will end up motivating your design choices. You’ll want to be able to identify the following elements:

Workplace or organization: What is the workplace or organization that is sponsoring the infographic? In other words, who is asking you to produce this infographic? Is this a private company, a government- or education-affiliated organization, or a non-profit organization?
Audience: Who are you designing the infographic for? Employees at this workplace? Clients? Investors? Members of the public? If so, what qualities do they possess that are important to remember? For example, when it comes to statistics, what type of sophistication will your audience have?
Purpose and message: Why are you producing this infographic for this audience? What do you hope to achieve? Do you want to tell a story to your readers about a particular set of interesting data? Is there a process you want to describe? An argument that your organization finds important?
Genre and medium: Although your genre will be an infographic, where do you envision your audience would access it? Will you produce an 8 ½ by 11 visual, or a larger 17 by 11 poster? Or, will this infographic be accessible on the web? (Note: Whatever you decide here, you need to reproduce for your instructor. When you are working on one of the online infographic programs, make sure early on that you can export your infographic as a pdf, jpeg, or another accessible file type.)

Here are a couple of examples of hypothetical rhetorical situations:

A non-profit organization wants a flowchart redesigned as an infographic to explain to donors where their donated money goes to. The writers are especially concerned about readers who are skeptical that any good is coming out of their donations.

A local non-profit recycling company that wants to raise community members’ awareness about the amount of waste that people in the United States produce on a weekly basis.

The Public Works Division of the City of Manhattan wants to raise residents’ awareness about water demand during the summer months and to persuade them to switch to an alternative lawn watering schedule.

After you have collaboratively brainstormed your rhetorical situation, you and your team members will want to develop your overall message: what do you really want to communicate to your readers about this data set, process, or argument? At the same time, begin finding visual strategies to communicate this message. Produce a “mock up” or “storyboard” example of your infographic using pen and paper and discuss it with your partners. Make sure to determine whether your infographic “mock up” is accurately depicting your data, process, or argument; additionally, make sure your infographic is ethically depicting human beings.

Note: For groups who are producing an infographic based upon a data set, you’ll probably want to first start off with the basic graph or chart that displays the statistical information; you can then enhance the visual message that this graph is showing by transforming it into a infographic. Check Chapter 9, pages 207-219 of the Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling to determine what type of data visualization makes the most sense for you.

Answer preview

This memo serves to provide information on the infographic that was presented about living in the Midwest region of the United States. Having been commissioned by you, it has taken the team a considerable period in deciding what information that would be crucial and relevant in the infographic. It serves to provide an overview of the Midwestern region of the United States for individuals that do not live in the area. The information in the infographic can be used for prospective tourists, investors, and those seeking to understand the area. The states within the region have been well listed, together with the population of persons and the acreage of land that is arable. The piece also gives information on the tourist situation as well as climatic information that may assist tourists to prepare in the event that they want to visit.

Word count: 1188