Infographics and data visualization are popular media to market products and services and present news and data. Ivan Cash summarized the the elements of the trend with his Infographics of Infographics.

Although new and trendy, infographics has a history going back centuries. Bogdan Raduta has assembled some Beautiful Examples Of Very Old Infographics. The Associated Press provided infographics through their News Features Service 50 years go. Check out Tom Paprocki's Sports Slants and the graphic above. (Thanks to Allan Holtz for saving an example of Tom Paprocki's Sports Slant. in his Stripper's Guide blog.)

Update:

A great example of a modern infographic is:

European Space Agency. Rosetta’s Journey and Timeline. JPEG, October 2014. http://bit.ly/1F8JT6T.