Ok, so this one cheats a little because the author isn't presenting information per se but rather re-creating a fictional narrative. Unless Little Red Riding Hood is actually a true account of a wolf attempting to eat a young girl while she was visiting her grandma. Nevertheless, the author (illustrator?) is very successful at telling the classic tale using visual as opposed to textual cues. Also, note that this is quite different from the way in which the story would be told via a children's picture book. Now, check out the data this infographic presents:
Again, likely not what you were expecting. No stats here but there is data, and this data is presented visually. Again the author succeeds in conveying the information he has chosen quite effectively while employing limited use of textual cues. This is a feat that would come as no surprise to Julian Stallbrass who wrote in 1996; "it is obvious that the visual is the pre-eminent arena of contemporary mass culture to the extent that literacy appears to be declining in many affluent societies, not only perhaps because of declining educational resources but because the skill seems less and less relevant to many people." (Kirschenbaum 137) Does the rise of infographics signal the impending doom of text and the universal illiteracy of humanity? I suppose only time will tell, though maybe there's an infographic somewhere that can shed a little light.
Like this one.
