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THE REMARKABLE IMAGES readers consistently find in National Geographic today weren’t possible when the publication began in 1888. The technology cost too much, and travel moved too slowly to send photographers on assignment. So National Geographic leaned on information graphics, instead. “In the first magazine, the first images that appear there are drawings. They wanted to use maps from the very beginning, because that was how they could tell people about their expeditions.” […] as the cost of professional photography dropped, National Geographic’s editors grew to favor it over the hand drawn maps and charts it once relied on… Then, late in the 20th century, the photography trend reversed course. A proliferation of data generated fresh demand for designers to take on subjects that a camera lens cannot capture.
“We are deployed to subjects that can’t be photographed,” writes Kaitlin Yarnell, a cartographer currently in National Geographic’s art department, in the book’s introduction. “Things too small (atoms!), too big (black holes!), too complex (migration patterns!), too old (Roman ruins!), too conceptual (dark energy!), or too numeric (trade flows!) to be photographed are our specialty.”
National Geographic’s classic infographics, now in one stunning book