This book offers a new take on the narration of natural and human history. Nearly 14 billion years information condensed into this visual feast of infographics – facts, trends and timelines – illustrating historic and modern topics in a contemporary tone.

We find infographics at the intersection of data and design; often, though, employed in isolation to support disparate conclusions. Rather than isolate the use of infographics to the visualisation of concepts individually, our goal was to leverage the field of information design and present infographics as a narrative language. In this book, infographics become the storytellers. Data, imagery, and words work together in a system to simplify information, reveal interesting patterns and engage readers in an unconventional narrative.

The first obstacle was determining which subjects to cover and which topics to leave out of a translation of history’s 13.8 billion years. The second challenge was to present the meaning of each dataset in a cohesive, digestible way.

It simply wasn’t possible to include almost 14 billion years of history in just over 200 pages. Rather than looking to define the world’s history, this book looks to leverage the power of infographics to refresh an age-old subject for the general public and the specialist alike.

This book’s intent was to take readers on a journey, allowing them to review the topics, interpret the data and to find the implications that resonate with them. In this way, readers can read the book story in either a linear or a fragmented way. Each infographic is designed to achieve both within-context and stand-alone readability.

Representing billions of years in 224 pages is a daunting task and the full complexity of the data has been highlighted in the book’s appendix.

Beyond the consultation of history and science books, many economic and governmental reports were referenced. Naturally, the Internet facilitated the research process and it also helped locate a handful of helpful contributors.

In order to organise our research efforts, collect the data and fashion a cohesive presentation, the content was arbitrarily divided into four chapters. Each corresponding (roughly) to certain phases of history: before humanity, before civilisation, before 1900 or thereabouts, and the modern era.

The amount of content dedicated to each era is inversely proportional to the number of years that the each period covers. This can be seen on the book’s cover and highlighted in its introduction. The book’s cover itself contains an infographic: spirals on the front cover approximate the volume of time each chapter covers, while the back indicates the number of pages it’s assigned.

The “past” covers approximately half of the book in 3 chapters, while the “present” (more modern topics) spans the second half. The content break, between past and present, is also leveraged by the change of paper stock as well as the use of other visual cues.

The visual grammar of the book evolves with its content. Changes in typography, colour palettes, paper stock and illustration styles give distinct identities to each of the four historic chapters.

Each spread shows a unique type of visualization. Every effort was made to find a balance between visualizing in a way that best illustrates each story and also providing sufficient variety throughout the book.

Finally, imagery of mankind’s evolution has been adopted in the form a visual timeline. Period-specific silhouettes are featured in an evolving footer to provide an amusing reference guide for the reader’s journey.

This book was created for the general public and specialist alike.

The emergence of infographics personifies the increasing relevance of data in the world today. Many infographic books have been published. However, “The Infographic History of the World” sought to tie a collection of unique and compelling visualizations to a single narrative.

The design of this book, married with rich content, is meant to inform and engage readers. Ideally, it will provide one reader with a refreshing reminder of school desk lessons and another reader with an unconventional and perhaps friendlier way to discover history, politics and economy.

The book was published in UK in June 2013. To date, 8 editions have been agreed in foreign countries.