Is there Progress in Information Design?

 William Playfair more than 200 years ago used paper, ink and his brain as primary sources for his charts.

Today we use computers, charting software and obviously not that much brain for the same output....

http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/blog/2018/1/22/88-annotated-line-graphs

So it seems that there was little progress during the last 200 years when it comes to information design, considering the chart results from todays authors.

Fortunatelly the situation is not that bad since Edward Tufty introduced for example “small multiples” (as shown in an example above from Jorge Camoes) and IBCS with Rolf Hichert and his community in the field of business communication are working hard in bringing the visualisation of content by notation principles to a broader public.

https://zebrabi.com/gallery/