Infographic: The Most Popular Book Genres
In the era of boundless information, the art and science of data visualization is a vital tool for understanding and processing the endless sea of data that engulfs us. With the instant ability to access information through a simple Google search, the need to transform data into meaningful insights grows more important. The Interaction Design Foundation explains the dilemma we face:
“A global economy and instant communication have created an explosion in the volumes of data to which we are exposed. Yet, the amount of data leads to a large amount of possible confusion and decision paralysis. There’s more data available than we can comfortably process,” (Interaction Design Foundation).
Data visualization is a key tool in navigating these issues. It creates a visual representation of the confusing numbers we see, and makes sense of them through graphs and charts. For this project, I took inspiration from artist, Sarah Illenberger. She creates stunning and creative visual representations of data through everyday objects.
Learning about the most popular book genres through infographics
I conducted some research to see what genres of books are the most popular and discovered the most consistent data that I found centered around types of Fiction.
Here are the numbers of how many books are sold of each Fiction genre.
Children's Books: 1 Billion
Modern Literary Fiction: 409 Million
Fantasy Fiction: 350 Million
Classic Literary Fiction: 336 Million
Mystery Fiction: 299 Million
Historical Fiction: 80 Million
Young Adult Fiction: 70 Million
Magic Realism: 50 Million
Although the amount of Children’s Fiction was the highest, I wanted to focus on the top five genres among adults. I narrowed my results to include Modern Fiction, Fantasy, Classic Fiction, Mystery, and Historical Fiction.
The next step was deciding how I could best represent this data. As you can see, the original data is represented in a pie chart, which is often used in order to represent different parts of a whole. However, I really wanted to find a way to incorporate books into that design.
I photographed a few different versions of stacked books from my collection to see what would look visually compelling while also getting my message across to viewers. Remembering the work of Illenberger, specifically the image above of piles of laundry to represent different values, I went with an image of the books fully stacked to use in my design.
Then, I created a single column bar graph in order to guide my design. Similar to a pie chart, a single column bar chart is used to represents parts of a whole. According to Hubspot, these charts are,
“Best used when the total value of each category is unimportant and percentage distribution of subcategories is the primary message,” (Hubspot).
Initially, I left the photo as it was, but I realized something that was missing: color. Color is often an important aspect of mapping data. It can draw attention or create a key for people to understand what values are represented, (Interaction Design).
In the design process, I separated my values into different chunks of the book pile with a duotone effect and then finally added brackets to label each one. The result is below.
Reference:
Data Visualization 101: How to design charts and graphs - cdn2.hubspot.net. (n.d.-a). https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/53/file-863940581-pdf/Data_Visualization_101_How_to_Design_Charts_and_Graphs.pdf?trk=public_post_main-feed-card-text
Errera, R. (2023, October 4). Eye-popping book and reading statistics [2023]. Toner Buzz. https://www.tonerbuzz.com/blog/book-and-reading-statistics/
Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. (2020, July 3). Information Visualization – A Brief Introduction. Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/information-visualization-a-brief-introduction
Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. (2020, July 27). Visual Mapping – The Elements of Information Visualization. Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/visual-mapping-the-elements-of-information-visualization
Sarah Illenberger’s infographics. ALL MY EYES. (n.d.). http://allmyeyes.blogspot.com/2010/10/sarah-illenbergers-infographics.html
Verrillo, E. (n.d.). What are the most popular fiction genres? https://publishedtodeath.blogspot.com/2017/11/what-are-most-popular-literary-genres.html