Among the many effects attributed to the pandemic event of 2020, in addition to the collective shock and the erosion of the determinism to which we were accustomed, there was the parallel and global phenomenon of “data production,” reports, and accounts that, unprecedentedly, affected everyone. The result was an exceptional data set that became—and still is—one of the main measures to describe the vastness of the event into which we were projected.
A reality made up of multiple and persistent information that immediately prompted an empirical reflection on the tasks of Information Design, with particular attention to the functions of Visual and Data Literacy in generating figurative dimensions and magnitudes to support the consistency, value, and transversality of the data. In this context, questions arise about the role that communicative systems in an Infographic key
have assumed in the technical-scientific and socio-cultural chronicles of the effects caused by Covid-19*. It seems appropriate to understand the impact of these effects on the quality of the visual content delivered, to trace the actual increases concerning the understanding of the described phenomena, and to evaluate the representative models in graphic and semantic terms, also concerning the different devices used, examining their strengths and weaknesses based on the expected communicative objectives. On the other hand, it is about observing the narrative meanings generated by the pandemic, whose manifest complexities require tools to navigate between the various genres. In this framework, Infographics can assume the dual role of a project tool and, at the same time, a device for acquiring key concepts. From these observations arises the desire of Sapienza University of Rome to initiate an interdisciplinary debate in the presence of scholars, researchers, and professionals in design and communication. A discussion through which to attempt to map and assess the civil functions and purposes that Information Design possesses and must have in translating such a vast and feverish social event into visible, rhetorical, and metaphorical data production, but inevitably resilient.