- Infographics
- Colour codings
- Timelines
- Signs and symbols
- Communication
- Visual language
- Pioneer Plaque
- Interactive devices
- Caves at Lascaux
- Hierarchies
- Infographics acts as a visual shorthand for everyday concepts such as 'STOP' and 'GO'
- In 1931 Harry Beck designed the London underground map communicating a complex transportation system simply for all to understand
- The map at 'Catalhoyuk' (an ancient town) is one of the oldest on record and dates form around 7500 BCE
- In 1857 Florence Nightingale used an information graphical format to persuade Queen Victoria to improve conditions in military hospitals.
- In 1801 Playfair introduced the first pie chart in Statistical Breviary.
- A new set of pictograms were released at the Munich olympics in 1972
- In 1972 the pioneer plaque was launched into space with an infographic inscribed on the inside.This was intended as a kind of interstellar message in a bottle
- The term 'information design' emerged as a multidisciplinary area of study in the 1970s
- Amazingly the first recognized visual communication supported with pictograms and symbols was found between 15,000–10,000 BC, in the Lascaux caves in southern France
- In 1909, nine European governments agreed on the use of four pictorial symbols, indicating "bump", "curve", "intersection", and "grade-level railroad crossing"
- The UK adopted a version of the European road signs in 1964
- he intensive work on international road signs that took place between 1926 and 1949 eventually led to the development of the European road sign system
- The use of the rabbit and tortoise symbols to represent fast and slow have now become world widely recognised
- Stephen Toulmin proposed a graphical argument model that became influential in argumentation theory; in 1958
- Toulmin's graphical argument model was based around there being a visual purpose behind arguments and not purely theoretical
