The Best Pictures from the Academy Awards

The Best Pictures infographic from Beutler Ink is an iconic timeline through the history of the Academy Awards winners for Best Picture.  Can you identify the movies from the icons?

Beutler Ink celebrates the 2014 Oscars with a poster commemorating each of the past 85 Best Picture winners. See how many movies you can recognize from the icon alone.

This is a fun design that draws the readers in by challenging them to identify the past winners based on the icons or illustrations shown for each film.  I could only identify about half of them, so I appreciated the answers included in the footer.

The big lesson we can learn from this design, is that once an infographic image is published online, it takes on a life of its own.  Infographics are usually shared online by people without any of the accompanying text that the publisher included on the original infographic landing page.  Because of this, all of the relevant information needs to be included in the infographic image file itself, or it gets lost when people share it.

In this case, the audience would have no idea that the award winning pictures in this design are from the 2014 Academy Awards (popularly known as the Oscars).  The landing page includes the introductory description text “Every Best Picture winner since the inception of the Academy Awards…” but there’s no introduction in the infographic design itself.  There are literally hundreds of different types of Film Awards (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_awards), and the audience doesn’t know what this infographic is sharing without that introduction.  It needs to be included in the the infographic itself.

There’s no information that identifies this design is relevant for 2014.  Infographics are generally available online for years, and for a timeline based design, it’s important to clearly state the timeframe represented.  When someone finds this design in 2016, the section for “This Year’s Nominees” won’t be accurate.  Additionally, if they update this design next year, there should be a clear way to identify the version based on the timeframe shown.

Also, when readers find this infographic shared on other sites, they have no way to find the original without a URL.  The URL to the original infographic landing page should be included in the footer.

Thanks to Jarred for sending in the link!  Also found on Visual.ly