Photo credit:lumpentimes.blogspot.com
It is no secret that our American society has evolved into a seemingly never ending sex crazed era, in which physical appearance (and our perception of it) directly or indirectly determines the fate of… just about everything. It has been documented that physical appearance is the biggest contributor to personality development, as well as ranked number one in importance when choosing a mate by males.
Big business has already capitalized on this ever growing, highly lucrative mindset, from plastic surgery and personal trainers to expensive grooming products and artificial nutritional supplements. Certain other companies that opted out of these appearance-alistic industries may have been applauding themselves throughout the appearance domination as they continued to focus on what was initially important to them, continued to uphold the ethical standards they have always had, and continued to resist being sucked in by the outside’s outright obsession with looks. But have they?
It seems that everywhere you look corporations are making their way into the porn industry; “info-porn” that is. Sexy, which is defined as: “tending to arouse sexual desire or interest,” is no longer something just used to describe the latest Victoria’s Secret catalogue, but a way in which to present logical information. Numbers are not exempt from society’s sexualization; all of a sudden they can be manipulated to be “hot” and arranged in a way to arouse those sexual desires that were once confined solely to the bedroom.
Today it has been widely noted and quoted on VisualComplexity.com that innovative statistical analyses and extensive computational algorithms mean nothing without the aspect of functional visualization. Matt Woolman, a Digital Information Graphics Artist, stated that these visualizations, “must make sense to the user and require a visual language system that uses color, shape, line, hierarchy, and composition to communicate clearly and appropriately, much like the alphabetic and character-based languages used worldwide between humans.” As more and more minds build on Edward Tufte’s 20th century work of information design and people like Manuel Lima, founder of Visual Complexity, continue to push the envelope into the 21st century we can be certain that what Print Mag has labeled “The Irresistible Appeal of Info Porn” is just going to get even more seductive.
It seems that if you do not currently present clients something to look at that “arouses” them you may be falling desperately short very soon. Recently at Sitewire we have brought on a new hire with a background in just this, information design. Our econometrics team has started and will continue to work directly with him and the rest of the creative team to enhance the reporting experience for all of our clients as we make the dive head first into a world of alluring data visualization. For anyone that ever said, “the numbers speak for themselves,” they were dead wrong.
