The Brilliant creative team blog

I’ve written about Information Graphics before on this blog, some of you will know it’s a passion of mine. The BBC News website has published a great article celebrating the crucial role diagrams have in helping us to understand the world around us - read it now.

Florence Nightingale is one of my favourite Information Designers. Better known for her nursing than her graphics, for me she represents a special anomaly: the anonymity which arises from communicating ideas so well that few people notice the means by which they are communicated.

Napoleon Bonaparte once said "Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu’un long discours," or "A good sketch is better than a long speech". That phrase embodies the sentiment of information graphics, a branch of design which has always fascinated me and was the focus of my studies at university.

Little did Napoleon know that his disastrous march to and retreat from Moscow in 1812-1813 would be recorded in one of the best statistical graphics ever drawn (above), by Charles Joseph Minard in 1869.

The drawing communicates the story in seconds, effortlessly describing the route of the march on a map, combined with underlying statistical data about climatic conditions and the resultant separation and loss of soldiers from Napoleon’s army along the journey.

Minard’s graphic is not only enlightening, but also inspiring; and in my view, as designers we should always aspire to communicate messages as clearly and concisely as this, regardless of the medium being used.