Baby Proofing Your Home – An infographic by the team at Baby Care Journals

This infographic was submitted to us by Baby Care Journals.

There are a lot of indispensable tips here for ensuring that your home is ready when your baby gets moving. The illustrations are all very helpful in showing expectant or new parents exactly how these safety tips can be enacted around their home. Although it shares a lot of information, it’s also not too long — so it doesn’t take more than 5 minutes to get all of the info.

That said, this graphic could use a bit less text throughout. While it’s important to properly explain why/how to babyproof the home, with so many tips included it really gets heavy quickly. There are a lot of easy places to cut just a few words — and it really makes a world of difference. For example:

“Place covers [or sliding plates] over unused outlets[;] Use outlet covers or sliding outlet platesinstead of avoid [choking risks like] outlet plugs, which can pose a choking risk.”
or
“Don’t hang shelves or artwork directly over baby’s crib for obvious reasons.”

It would also be nice to see more numbers/statistics. Although morbid, numbers on this topic really would help to prove the point. For example, the stat about 2,000 children ages 14 and under dying annually is a good stat to help prove that proofing your house is really important. If there are similar numbers about how many children die or are injured from a few of the specific rooms/appliances mentioned (the stat about drowning is a good example), it would be impactful to include them.

In all I’d give this infographic a B — great info, good visual connections to the tips, but some more data and less text would bring it up considerably.

This infographic was submitted to us by 12 Palms Recovery Center.

This graphic makes clear use of typography, iconography, and some data visualization to tell its story. Especially effective elements are the map of relative percentages of drug-related pregnancies by state and the breakdown of pregnancy risks by drug. The organization and layout are quite clear, so it’s easy to follow this infographic from start to finish.

There are a few instances where I wish that more illustration or data visualization had been invoked. For example, the first section relies almost entirely on text to explain the total numbers of births and babies born with birth defects. The stopwatch imagery used for “247 births per minute” and “4 births per second” could have easily integrated a pie chart or other tool to illustrate the numbers. One we reach “This means (3) out of 100 babies…” the data viz steps in at last!

I’d also like to see more iconography integrated into “How Drugs Can Harm Your Baby”. The icons used for the harmful effects are excellent, but because the drugs are just spelled out and not illustrated, and the numbers of usage, birth defects, etc. are also just written out, it still ends up looking a little text-heavy. This would have been a great opportunity to invoke more data visualization, too, to show how many pregnancies are affected by each drug. If you read through, you can see that marijuana affects about 100x more pregnancies than ecstasy — but this would be easier to grasp with pictograms or a bar chart.

I think the graphic would also benefit from a greater variety of colors in the human body diagram in “Drugs and the Areas Affected.” Once you start looking at the body, it’s hard to make the distinction between Meth and Cocaine, Steroids and Marijuana, etc. since the colors are so close together.

In all I’d give this infographic a B. It’s easy to get through, data-rich, and doesn’t drag on too long or leave much out. It could just be enhanced by reducing the reliance on text and typography a bit, and making some of the data easier to interpret.

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This infographic was submitted to us by BabyBlankets.com. They also provided a description:

Have you ever realized that shopping for baby gifts usually mean shopping for the needs and wants of the baby’s parents? We know how important proper parenting is to a child’s development and what better way to help this process by providing tools that parents might be able to use in raising their young ones. Whether you are gifting for brand new parents or for those who are already veterans of the parenting world, this infographic will help you find the perfect present to give their little babies. Show how thoughtful you are of their parenting style by getting their baby something that is also close to their hearts. For example, an organic baby blanket is a great gift for couples who really care for the environment. As for tech-savvy parents, hi-tech baby monitors might do the trick. Review this baby gift guide for more examples and surprise your loved ones by showing how well you know them.

Since there is no data here, it isn’t really an infographic. What percent of expectant parents throw a baby shower? What percent of parents regift? How many baby showers are there in America every week?

I’m also a bit confused by the key — “Doting Parents” need large jars of baby food? Only “Survival Parents” carry diaper bags? “Bargain-Hunting Parents” will appreciate eco-friendly diapers? Not to mention that unfortunately I find the baby illustration pretty creepy: pink rhinestone sunglasses and a bear hat on a baby that seems to be hovering above the ground.

I think a better approach to this might be to have a few icons of the type of items one might buy for these parents next to the description of the parents. It takes the eye some time to match each gift in the central image with the appropriate-colored pacifier. Then there could also be a few stats — most popular tech gifts for new parents (by number sold?), percent of parents that will spend more for fashion-forward clothes for baby, etc.

As an infographic, this is an F, unfortunately, but with consideration to a new approach and design, it’s certainly not a bad CONCEPT for an infographic!

This infographic was submitted to us by Beckon Media, in partnership with FamilyCord. They provided this brief description:

The concept of this infographic is based around your baby’s first 24 months of life, and all the amazing accomplishments your baby will make.

This is a cute guide for new or expectant parents who might be wondering when their baby might accomplish major developmental milestones. Of course, any guide for human development should be taken with a grain of salt — no panicking if your baby takes until 9.5 months to eat with her fingers! — but it makes a nice tool to plan for when to be there with the camera.

If this infographic was developed alongside a few case studies, it would have even more impact. It would also be able to cross the border between graphic and infographic, as there’s currently no data here. If such information were available, it would be wonderful to see statistics like, “In a case study, xx% of babies began teething at 4 months” or, “On average, x out of 5 babies are imitating others’ actions by 12 months.” That would also take a little bit of the guesswork away for the parents: instead of saying that definitively, between 10-12 months, their baby should be doing these things, they could see that a certain percentage of babies aren’t on that schedule. That would offer a bit of reassurance if their own child doesn’t adhere to each of the milestones.

The illustrations are adorable and the tree motif works fairly well, but without data we can’t properly call this an infographic. It’s a great chart, guide, and tool, though. So in all I would give it a D as an infographic but a B as a tool.