text: Infographics are effective because of their visual element.  Humans receive input from all five of their senses (sight, touch, hearing, smell, taste), but they receive significantly more information from vision than any of the other four.  Fifty percent of the human brain is dedicated to visual functions, and images are processed faster than text.  The brain processes pictures all at once, but processes text in a linear fashion, meaning it takes much longer to obtain information from text.  Entire business processes or industry sectors can be made relevant to a new audience through a guidance design technique that leads the eye. The page may link to a complete report, but the infographic primes the reader making the subject-matter more accessible. Online trends, such as the increasingly short attention span of Internet users, has also contributed to the increasing popularity and effectiveness of infographics.
  When designing the visual aspect of an infographic, a number of considerations must be made to optimize the effectiveness of the visualization.  The six components of visual encoding are spatial, marks, connection, enclosure, retinal properties, and temporal encoding.  Each of these can be utilized in its own way to represent relationships between different types of data.  However, studies have shown that spatial position is the most effective way to represent numerical data and leads to the fastest and easiest understanding by viewers.  Therefore, the designers often spatially represent the most important relationship being depicted in an infographic.