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As any graphic designer surely knows, the Internet is home to at least as many bad (or non-) infographics as it is a source for clearly-articulated, visually-compelling ones. This twofold criteria is the subject of Chad Hagen's "Nonsensical Infographics": they're certainly a treat for the eye... but the mind, not so much. Rather, as the title of the series suggests, the vibrant geometries are intended to be metacommentary on the opacity of these purportedly digestible graphics.

The science of infographics is an interesting beast. Infographics' level of success is always based on how much and how well they communicate their data—the classic form follows function. In this series, I reversed these roles—form is king and dictates what the infographic communicates. Welcome to the world of fictional visual information.

In other words, these infographics convey information about infographics themselves: inscrutable though they may be, they are often more beautiful for it. Thus, despite its aesthetic affinity with the work of, say, Andrew Kuo, Hagen's work probably has more in common with Tatiana Plakhova's data visualizations, which express the same sentiment through radically different execution.

For his part, the Minnesota-based artist and designer has been at it for nearly two decades, and his impressive client list includes Fortune, Wired, The New Yorker and the New York Times. A print of an illustration for this last publication is available as a poster print through 20x200, as are several of the Nonsensical Infographics. See them all here.

Illustration for the New York Times

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