Steven, the creator of the Weird Units Converter and a member of the Omni Calculator project, shared a few of his thoughts with Bored Panda on presenting data in a way that engages others better. We were interested to know how scientists can tell what data to focus on when showing others their findings if they feel like everything might potentially be worth others' attention.

"I would focus on findings that have the greatest impact on the most people in the potential audience," he said.

"If a finding is less important and only interests a niche group of people, it can be left out with little impact on the presentation," Steven told us.

We were also curious in learning about why the way in which data is presented has such a different impact on the audience. Steven, from the Omni Calculator team, explained why visuals are so powerful when sharing information.

"We are visual beings and much prefer a picture to a lot of text," he said, adding that text is a relatively recent way to communicate.

"It is easier to make general conclusions from a graph or diagram without getting bogged down by the noise of too much detail," Steven said.

"Part of impacting an audience is being memorable, and images are much easier to remember than bullet point lists. Adding a bit of entertainment also helps to be memorable and generally stops people from tuning out from what you are saying."

The r/Infographics online community has a long and storied history. Founded all the way back in July 2009, the subreddit will be celebrating its 14th birthday this summer!

Over the nearly decade and a half, the community has continued to remain relevant thanks in large part due to the interesting topic it focuses on, as well as its active community. At the time of writing, there were 221k members on r/Infographics.

The sub’s moderators have even put together a handy-dandy infographic about what is and isn’t an infographic (talk about meta!). You can find it right over here. It should help you navigate the world of visual information a bit better.

In short, infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data, or knowledge. “These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education. Do not post: brochures, flyers, posters, graphic images with swaths of text laid over them, three-page long images that simply add costs,” the mod team asks its members to focus on infographics and infographics alone.

If you post things other than infographics, they’ll probably end up getting removed by the mods. For instance, if your infographic is just a picture of text, it’s gonna go. The mod team running the entire show stress that the visuals have to add something to the image.

If you transcribe all the text into a text post and get the exact same content, there’s no real point in posting it on the sub. In short, the visuals have to add some sort of info! What makes infographics, well, infographics is the importance of the visual aspects of the graphic: they’re not just for show, they are integral to the entire experience.

Obviously, the subreddit is all about education and entertainment. There’s no room for self-promotion or actively promoting this or that company. Blatant promos get removed for the sake of fairness. r/Infographics isn’t a place for ads (well, aside from the ones that Reddit dumps on you in your feed, but that’s a whole other question entirely).

Now, infographics and guides aren’t necessarily one and the same, but there’s still a bit of overlap between them. Redditors are huge fans of visuals and graphics as a whole, no matter the specific category. Not long ago, Bored Panda interviewed the founder of the massively popular r/coolguides subreddit, a community of nearly 3.2 million members. The founder, u/dadschool shared how he changed his approach to having people post infographics on the sub dedicated to guides.

The founder of r/coolguides explained to Bored Panda during an earlier interview that he had quite a tough approach toward infographics when he founded the subreddit. Nowadays, he’s far more lax and tolerant when it comes to infographics and lets the community decide what direction it wants the group to go. So there's a lot more love for infographics than just on r/Infographics!

The secret to any good visual representation of info, whether it’s an infographic, guide, brochure, poster, or the unholy unity of all of the above, is clarity. You want to find the golden balance between giving your audience all the information that they need without overwhelming them or losing their attention.

Your infographics have to be as brief as possible without losing important data, and that means using the visuals to reflect a part of that info in an intuitive, accessible manner. However, what seems clear to you might be confusing to the regular Joe or Jill on the street.

So before you go order a thousand printed copies of your infographic, show it to some people: your friends, your colleagues, your family parrot even. Get some honest feedback about what works and what doesn’t. Do some editing and proofreading. Don’t be afraid to go back to the drawing table! Though try to avoid the massive trap that is perfectionism, too. Aim for creating a great infographic, not a ‘perfect’ one.

Which of these infographics did you find the most interesting and intriguing, dear Pandas? Which ones stood out to you the most from a purely visual perspective? What kinds of infographics would you love to see in the future? Share your thoughts in the comments.