The collective Simpleinfo has been in existence for more than a year, and it has handled the design of more than 150 infographics, which have attracted more than 25 million views. Its Facebook page has more than 90,000 followers. Its information charts and simple breakdowns of complex topics (“Don’t Be Fooled by a Typhoon’s Good Looks!” or “Let’s Talk About Random Killings: The Art of Emergency Self-Defense on the Metro”) are socially relevant and easy to understand, and they have created quite a splash among netizens. 

In one week the infographic “Let’s Talk About Random Killings: The Art of Emergency Self-Defense on the Metro” garnered 1.4 million hits and more than 14,000 shares on Facebook.

Inducing entrepreneurialism with infographics

After quickly discovering that the public at large had a great need for excellent information of this type, the collective’s founders Sasha Chang and Stanley Wang went on to set up a corporate marketing and design firm with the same core group of people. (Somewhat confusingly, both the collective and the incorporated design firm are known in English as Simpleinfo). The company is focused on commercial design and the collective on fostering social participation.

The Simpleinfo collective’s clear explanatory infographics cover topics of great concern to the general public, and they have been widely disseminated on social media, which has in turn brought greater exposure to the design firm for its work on marketing projects. What’s more, the fame of Simpleinfo’s infographics has given its designers much greater leverage for negotiating price on commercial projects than a typical design firm.

And that’s not all: “Because Simpleinfo’s business model is wrapped up with its involvement in social issues, we want to take on even more pro bono cases that give back to society,” says Sasha Chang. “Only by so doing can we get the public to help disseminate our infographics, which in turn will give us more exposure to potential clients.”

On the basis of this kind of happy cycle of mutual benefit, the original Simpleinfo infographics collective has become a platform for giving back to society under the umbrella of the commercial design firm, whose main focus is on marketing campaigns. The public service infographics remain an essential part of Simpleinfo’s core mission, so that about 30% of the team’s time is spent on public interest work.

Typhoons are getting named and some of them depicted as cute young women, but don’t be fooled by appearances: The torrential downpours unleashed by typhoons can generate terrifying losses and tragedy.

Holding true to their original mission

The original aim of Simpleinfo was “to use design to close information gaps and foster communication.”

In his junior year of college, Sasha Chang, who was an urban planning major, posted a detailed note on his Facebook about the urban redevelopment project displacing the Wang families in Taipei’s Shilin District. In the note he used simple language to explain the controversy surrounding the government’s appropriation and development of the Wenlin Yuan properties. Later Chang joined the “ Info2act” information visualization team and met Stanley Wang, an international business major. They discovered that they were very much on the same wavelength and decided to form their own team to fight vicious cycles of misinformation.

They recruited a bunch of friends with similar ambitions. The team of four expanded to a team of 24, including members who had studied or gained expertise in the realms of animation, information engineering, nursing, Chinese, political science, law, biomedicine and public health and who were eager to incite revolution with their keyboards.

How do you start a revolution with information design?

“Increasing the efficiency with which information is disseminated” is the goal of information design, and work in the field is divided among information architects, marketing planners, visual designers, and illustrators, who collectively package information into interesting and easily digestible content that reveals the many sides of an issue and allows the general public to see every side’s point of view. After all, understanding is the beginning of communication, and without it there is no possibility of change.

Take the subject of random killings, for which Simpleinfo created the infographic “The Art of Emergency Self-Defense on the Metro: Let’s Talk About Random Killings.” From the planning stage, the team was extremely careful about what angles to take in the infographic. From personal self-defense, it moved into a discussion about the causes of these incidents before clearly explaining that this is a case where “prevention is better than cure.” Moreover, the infographic looked at measures adopted in Japan, the United States, Norway and other countries. It left no stone unturned, but it didn’t try to provide definitive answers to all the questions it raised. It let readers come to their own conclusions.

The infographic was first released online after the 2014 Taipei MRT attack by Cheng Chieh and then was reposted shortly after the beheading of the young girl in Neihu early this year. In the week after its reposting, it had 1.4 million hits and 14,000 Facebook shares. It generated warm feedback and passionate discussion on Facebook, thus realizing Simpleinfo’s aim of using infographics to generate discussion in society.

Simpleinfo has helped with fundraising for the Advanced Rocket Research Center. The potential for creating industrial transformation was clearly laid out in this infographic.

Not just infographics

Another innovation of Simpleinfo is in combining information design with social media management. It’s the only firm in Taiwan to be doing that. 

But the growing success of Simpleinfo’s marketing-oriented design operations has led to manpower shortages for the original collective’s more socially oriented activities. “The collective has got to figure out a new way of selling itself. If it is to survive by its own efforts, it needs to grab hold of business opportunities,” says Chang.

Chang and Wang are now pursuing a “Beyond Infographics” program for the Simpleinfo collective, using Hahow’s crowdfunding platform to offer an online course: “Learning the secrets of infographics for those who don’t understand design.” The curriculum originally comprised 16 lessons over five hours, at a cost of only NT$990. From May 9 to June 8 a total of 11,423 people enrolled. That’s twice as many as Simpleinfo anticipated. The collective “unlocked” free bonus lessons for all the students each time the enrollment reached a certain level. They ended up giving out ten of those bonus lessons, bringing the course to 26 lessons running seven hours in all.

The curriculum covers information gathering, copywriting, data visualization, information delivery strategies, and visual logic. Most importantly, it emphasizes the logic behind information design, encouraging students to use systematic thinking to deconstruct the logical relationships between things. 

But the Simpleinfo collective holds an even greater ambition: Its team hopes to develop courses to find and train people to become “seed members” who achieve an understanding of information design and are also passionate about social issues. When issues require graphics to elucidate them, Simpleinfo will stir up discussion online, and the seed members can create infographics that approach the issue from different angles. These will be exhibited in physical exhibitions organized by the company, to which members of the public can come to join in the discussion. Afterwards, Simpleinfo will re-organize the content and share it online. This process will turn these seed members into mini-Simpleinfos, generating content about social issues that will ripple outward to create social ferment and action.

Simpleinfo may well embody an entrepreneurial dream that is a bit headstrong and pie-in-the-sky, but with every step they take team members get just that much closer to realizing their dreams. Simpleinfo is still very young, and young people tend to be ambitious, believing they can both make a lot of money and change society. Who is to say that they can’t do both? 

The timely “Join the Matsu Pilgrimage Procession” provides a means of going beyond the hubbub to understand folk customs in greater depth.

Simpleinfo uses a variety of graphic approaches. The heartwarming style of “No Two Bears Are Alike” was much loved by netizens, and Simpleinfo took advantage of that popularity to remind people that many bear species are endangered and in need of our concern and protection.

The newfangled online politics show Talk to Taiwan delves into social issues such as food safety, housing justice, national health insurance, and education. Its infographics are all provided by Simpleinfo.

The narrative infographic “Job Search Trilogy” offers tips to graduates on how to find employment.