Rules for infographics

Often, I have to review "infographics" as potential website content. Through many tedious hours of such reviews, I've arrived at these tenets for what I believe makes a good infographic.

1. Delete the words. The info should be in the graphic.
2. Cut out more words. I don't care if you like them. This thing's meant to communicate pictorially, bub.
3. Reduce that reduced word count by, oh 70%. If you can't, you need a new designer. Or to just stop writing so damn much yourself.

These are my expectations when viewing an infographic:

• No. Reading.
• Single- or double-word prompts/labels are okay.
• The design should communicate the message entirely.

I'm not kidding. Too hard-arsed? Maybe.

I'm now trying to find a designer who I can make an infographic with, so we can prove that a near-zero-tolerance approach to verbiage in this communications format is not just a good idea, but is actually achievable. If you are such a designer, let me know.