Often, when a presenter wants to express a complex topic, he or she will rely on charts and graphs to express concepts, comparisons, and more.

Statistics, charts, and graphs can help to clarify things, or — in the wrong hands — bore and/or mislead audiences. It’s tempting to lean on these tools too much, or craft them hastily from PowerPoint templates, draining them of their expressive power and value.

Two clever minds have thought about this ‘PowerPoint culture,’ and explore what might happen if life — in all of its complexity — were reduced to simple graphs and charts. The results are humorous, and yet fascinating.

Jessica Hagy maintains a unique blog, Indexed, whose content is expressed through hand-drawn notecards, each bearing a different explanatory graph or chart that covers one of life’s mysteries. It’s a compelling concept, and — best of all — an ongoing blog, so there’s always a new insight to enjoy.

A nice introduction, however, can be found in Le Grand Content, a movie by Clemens Kogler, inspired by Indexed.

Both are worth a look (and, in the case of Indexed, an RSS subscription):

(Thanks, Presentation Zen)