Sam Syed: Infographics

Photo courtesy of Sam Syed

For most magazine professionals, stories take on a very similar form: columns of text accompanied by images which "illustrate" certain things.

Layouts usually work like this: opening double page picture (if you're working on a feature) with a head and dek, then the story snakes through subsequent pages, each with one or more images, hopefully appearing on the same page they are mentioned.

This simple seeming formula is the mainstay of magazine narrative construction.

Having worked on literally dozens of different kinds of magazines, I can attest to the universal application of "the formula". Not surprising since it works well and leads to an achievable agenda. Anything more complicated risks creating a blockage in the production workflow, a constipation for which there is no publishing laxative.

Popular Science is the hardest and most complicated magazine I have ever worked on.
—Sam Syed

Designers sit at the nexus of synthesis, overseeing the coming together of text and visual elements like the zipper in your pants.

In terms of page geometry, it's all about columns and boxes. Eventually, images get placed inside the boxes. A portrait. A landscape. A still life.

This simplicity is at the heart practical magazine making. It's why 100 plus page magazines can come out month after month.

At Popular Science, of course, we like to do things a little differently.

Let's face it, science is complicated. Our job is to explain things in an accessible and fun way. In order to do this well we often mobilize the power of that old saying, a picture is worth a thousand (or some other large number) of words.

That's why we love infographics.

But it is a love which comes with a certain price tag.

Instead of simply placing pictures inside boxes in our layouts, we choose complex arrangements of image, text and graphic elements, each competing for space on a portion of the page.

These are whole stories within stories. Stories which in fact are not based on the simplicity of "the formula", but demand their own custom designed narrative organisation. And, of course, need to be researched, written, edited and fact-checked just like any other story.

But we don't just embed infographics inside other stories. Sometimes we run whole stories which are totally infographic, requiring unique editorial and design solutions. Sometimes we run entire packages of infographics.

As you can imagine, this requires a great deal of planning and organisation. We try to use a simple top down, left to right geometry which echoes natural reading habits. We make extensive use of sketches. We have a lot of art meetings. But most importantly, we really try to understand what we are explaining.

Popular Science is the hardest and most complicated magazine I have ever worked on. Lucky for me it's only 60-70 pages!

The city sketch is by Kevin Hand.