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When infographics get political

OK, say you’re a Republican member of Congress.

The Democrats have just unveiled an enormously expensive, complex omnibus health care plan. You want to smack it down.

How better to do that than by constructing the world’s ugliest infographic?

(Click for a larger view):

Visio-JEC_Health_Chart.vsd

This was released today by House Minority Leader John Boehner, a Republican from Ohio, reports Fox News.

Now, we’re quite sure the plan is complicated enough as it is. And it sure as hell is expensive enough, from what we’re reading. ($1.5 trillion? Yikes!)

But the designer who put together this chart has gone way out of his way to make the plan look even more complicated than it might be.

Dare we even try to list the graphic no-nos here?

Things that add unnecessary clutter to this chart:

  1. The mix of garish colors. They don’t appear to be color-coding anything.
  2. The mix of typefaces. Ditto.
  3. The mix of arrow styles and sizes.
  4. The mix of copy block shapes. If there’s a pattern to these, we’re missing it.
  5. The grey background. The whole chart would be much cleaner with a white background.
  6. Is this an organizational chart or a process/flow chart? It can’t seem to make up its mind.

But then again, this chart isn’t really designed to tell a story; to make clear the inner workings of a proposed plan, is it? It’s designed to confuse, confound and terrify.

Mission accomplished. Heckuva job, Brownie.

No word yet if Boehner’s people also designed this web site.

Download a PDF copy of this graphic travesty here. Find the Fox News story here.

Thanks to Ernie Smith and ShortFormBlog for the tip.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Amusing stuff, Graphics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Responses to “When infographics get political”

  1. Mike Higdon Says:
    July 15th, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    I like how the lines jump over each other, it’s cute! But wow, seriously? Can’t Homeland Security do something about that terrorism?

  2. Douglas E. Jessmer Says:
    July 15th, 2009 at 2:47 pm

    Boehner may be trying to illustrate that the same government that can’t run anything else now wants to run one-fifth of the U.S. economy… and that it would be just another clusterfark. So, yeah, I’m with Apple — great job, even though it’s a horrible flow chart.

  3. Courtney Flaherty Says:
    July 15th, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    Sure this administration is terrible, but don’t take out on the poor, innocent little infographic!

  4. Clif Says:
    July 15th, 2009 at 4:08 pm

    This looks like the page of stickers I used to have to place on my son’s toys on Christmas Eve. Even sober they made little sense.

  5. jenn b. Says:
    July 15th, 2009 at 6:19 pm

    If it’s designed to confuse, confound and terrify… ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. Also two different styles of clipart people. I wish the shapes could have at least been organized and placed to make the infographic look like a big skull shape overall.

  6. Brian Cubbison Says:
    July 15th, 2009 at 6:42 pm

    It reminds me of those Death and Taxes posters, which while nicely rendered, break all the rules of infographic design.

    http://mibi.deviantart.com/art/Death-and-Taxes-2009-86140295

 

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