In the lead-up to our recent federal election I spent more time than usual on Facebook. The medium encourages visual communication for some fairly obvious reasons, and I was struck by the skill and inventiveness with which people used it. I started collecting favourites (the ease of doing so is one of my “obvious reasons”) and I will share them here (the ease of doing so is another of my “obvious reasons”) with minimal comment. I would like to be able to give all their creators credit for their work but some images have been shared too often and some were anonymous to begin with … sorry, folks.
These images all argue the case for the environment in one way or another, just because that’s where Green Path’s interests lie, and I have grouped them by technique rather than topic.
Cartoons
A very old form which wasn’t readily shareable until the photocopier and fax machine arrived on the scene and is now going stronger than ever. I noticed after collecting these three that the second was by Joel Pett who also created my all-time favourite climate activism cartoon (see it here – it’s the top one – with more of his work).
Text with illustration
The roots of this style, to me at least, lie in poster design and calligraphy. Lolcats (2005 onwards) are an obvious influence on some recent examples (e.g. the first of this group, and the turtle here) but many have higher artistic ambitions. In any case, there is no great communicational difference between the Vandana Shiva quote below and Uncle Sam Needs YOU, however large the political and technical separation.
Infographics
A relatively new form of communication based on the pie-charts and bar-graphs used for statistics but going far beyond them; Wikipedia’s articles on infographics and data visualisation present a good overview of their history and the current state of play.
More
• I Love Climate Scientists and (less specific but more prolific) • Upworthy
Too good not to add
3 thoughts on “Graphic communication: environmental themes”