The working mandate  of the Infographics Group is the exploration of
methods and alternative  graphic designs to illustrate
European Spatial Policy aims

The works of the group show that two major approaches must be considered when producing images to communicate spatial development policies and represent problems:

-Creative methods which produce images based on arbitrary symbolic languages, invented somehow based on the tradition of spatial planning studies. 

From more strict rational methods (scientific-oriented, involving an objective searching process) and creative methods (artistic-oriented, involving a subjective imagination process), in between approaches were developed as well. In fact, the purely scientific methods presented in the Collection involved an implicit process of translating   "scientific languages" (in this case cartographic conventions)  into a "policy-oriented" language, and the purely creative methods follow the opposite direction. Therefore, none of them can be labelled as "pure".

On one hand, scientific methods have advantages providing objective visualisation of real spatial problems and opportunities, as well as mapping future trends (the "real context" for policies,  so to speak). On the other hand, creative methods are required to represent abstract aims and somehow to shape desired futures.

The first explicit "in between" approach presented in the Collection proposes just the overimposition of policy symbols into a cartography of spatial problems and trends. This approach clearly suggest to readers that policies are "created" (as arbitary as the symbols representing them) to solve real spatial problems (so objective that they can be mapped by using scientific cartographic methods). The unavoidable gap between policies and problems (policies never emerge "only" from scientific knowledge, but requires purposes and goals) becomes apparent.

Other approaches in between consisted in rationalising creative inputs. In one proposal, virtual landscapes were created by overimposing the three layers constituting build environments nowadays (physical features –mountains-, communication networks –transport, telecommunications- and urbanised areas). Each layer was represented according to their intrinsec spatial attributes (physical elements as realistic 3D images, networks as links and nodes, urbanised zones as grids). Selected fragments of the landscape were then selected as representations of policies. In other proposal the procedure was similar, but the virtual landscapes were created by re-designing maps produced by GIS.

All considered, any representation method presented in the Collection involves a combination of both rational and creative methods. Somehow, the "invented policies" and the "discovered problems and trends" were merged. The paths of each alternative method started from very different and distance places, but reading carefully the final proposals, all of them show the same paradox, the one that never can be solved: there is gap between policies and problems, between imagination and reality. The merit of cleaver images is to evoke the tension of this unsolvable paradox to the reader.

Clever images (and human communication in general) is embedded into metaphors (something refering to something else) and methonimies (taking the part as the whole). In the case of communicating spatial policies, images and maps always will have this tension. We can consider as a reasonable goal knowing (and even controlling) the fundamental tension in any image, and helping readers to realise that scientific knowledge generates more questions that the ones they answer, and artistic knowledge provides answers to actually unknown questions.