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<div align="center"><a href="http://www.submitinfographics.com/full-size-infographics/us-credit-downgrade-infographic.png" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.submitinfographics.com/full-size-infographics/us-credit-downgrade-infographic.png" alt="infographic" width="430"><br />Click to Enlarge</a><br /> Via <a href=”http://www.visibletechnologies.com/blog/2011/08/17/credit-downgrade-infographic/"> Visible Technologies </a><br />View Other <a href="http://www.submitinfographics.com">Infographics</a></div> <p>

This infographic was submitted to us by Visible Technologies.

Good organization, clean design and an attractive color palette make this infographic pretty appealing. It’s quite well put together visually, and has lots of fine details that make it interesting to look at. All the fine lines remind me of those on money. There are thorough explanations of every term and event, making this a true “idiot’s guide.” If you didn’t know anything about Standard & Poor’s going in, you do now.

There are extremely valid reasons why this infographic should be text heavy… but unfortunately, it’s completely overrun by text. The designer tried to overcome this by adding a sort of line graph for the different ratings and a winding timeline for “How Did We Get Here,” but this infographic is all about reading. There are no percentages, no numbers… nothing that’s a candidate for data viz, and that’s a problem for infographics. The only number seems to be the $5 trillion that was added to our national debt between the years 2001 and 2008.

(Quick note: in the first paragraph is written United State’s where it should be United States’.)

Some ideas of information to add that would lend itself to data viz: the percentage of countries with each credit rating, the country with the longest number of years at AAA rating, the countries with most and least amount of debt, national debt in proportion to GDP… there are lots of opportunities to be had to break up the monotony of all the text. This might make this what we call a “super infographic,” because all of the text serves a pretty good purpose, but it would make it just that much more informative and tell that much more of a complete story. As is it’s beautiful, but it’s just too much text with no balance, and I’d give this infographic a C.

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<div align="center"><a href="http://www.submitinfographics.com/full-size-infographics/whatiscreditrating.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.submitinfographics.com/full-size-infographics/whatiscreditrating.jpg" alt="infographic" width="430"><br />Click to Enlarge</a><br />Via <a href="http://www.aquacard.co.uk/content/ content.aspx?dsid=880"> aquaCard </a><br />View Other <a href="http://www.submitinfographics.com">Infographics</a></div> <p>>

This infographic comes to us from aquaCard, who provided this description:

“Financial information is quite complex and lots of it can be a bit overwhelming; which is
why aquaCard decided to create an infographic to explain what your credit rating is.

The infographic explains what affects a credit rating and how it’s calculated by credit
agencies; hopefully armed with all this information, in the clear and concise format of the
infographic, people will be much clearer on how they can improve their personal credit
rating.”

This is a good guide for learning about credit ratings in general. It would help prepare a first-time borrower for what they might expect. It’s neatly laid out between good and bad, and ends with steps you can take to improve–this is a classic “storyline” for infographics. It doesn’t have dimensional problems, either.

What I want to see more of, though, are numbers. How many loans are applied for every year in the UK? What percentage of UK residents have at least one loan? What’s the average APR there? This type of data is critical in order to put data visualization to work. This IG is practically all text, and while it has illustrations, they aren’t data viz. They’re just cute pictures.

The white background is also problematic. This will make the infographic bleed into many of the web pages it’ll land on. In general, all-black or all-white backgrounds should be avoided for this reason–and also because there are so many more interesting background options available.

With a more thorough analysis of the subject, a little sprucing up in the design department, and a focus on data visualization, this could work out to be a very useful infographic. As it is, I’m giving it a C.