Medical pamphlets or posters have been doctor’s office mainstays for many decades. They promote healthy habits, like good nutrition or exercise; explain the risks of unhealthy habits, like smoking or drinking alcohol to excess; and educate about specific medical conditions, like high cholesterol or diabetes. Most include a call to action (write to this address, call this number, or visit this website for more information); all are intended to help the public understand important scientific data.

In recent years, medical infographics have taken up the mantle, delivering similar sorts of information online to a worldwide audience. (While the traditional poster is certainly an example of an infographic, here we’ll distinguish between those you see on the screen and those you find in analog form in a doctor’s office.) So, is the new way (online infographics) better than the old (pamphlets and posters)? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each?... keep reading

In the past three weeks, we’ve been running a series on the tweaks that designers do to charts to make them fit the aesthetics of the graphics they are creating. So far, we showed you some of the ways designers get creative with pie charts, bar charts and area based encodings. Line charts also... keep reading

People sometimes ask me if cartography is dead. Students wonder if they should pick something else to stake a career in. Professionals wonder if their business will dry up soon. No one really knows what’s coming, or if “cartographer” is soon to be listed alongside “cooper” and “cartwright” in the tally of occupations of... keep reading