Say you’ve got some data you want to visualize, maybe for a presentation or your company’s social media page. That’s where infographics come into play. A well designed infographic can condense a thousand words and narrative onto a single page.

Why Should We Use Them?

According to Forbes, infographics can help aid marketing and business development. According to a report done, 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and we remember images more easily than words, which makes graphics so effective.

So how do we go about creating one?

Explorative or Narrative?

Before creating any infographic, it’s important to decide how you’d like to structure your information. Explorative graphics center around the data, while narrative graphics can be more text and illustration heavy. Below is a chart that explains when and how each style is used.

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In marketing or social media work, narrative infographics are usually your best bet. These can include topics such as how-tos, features of a product, or company contact info.

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However, if you’re working as an analyst or researcher, explorative graphics will help condense information and make it easier for others to visualize the data.

Choosing a Software

There are many different applications to choose from depending on your starting design skill level. A quick Google search on infographics pulls up infographic makers on popular design sites such as Canva and PicMonkey. These sites mainly offer templates for narrative infographics, which can be helpful for design beginners and are also a great resource of inspiration.

For more explorative data-driven designs, softwares such as Excel, Tableau, and Illustrator work well. These are great for creating graphs and charts, which can then be exported into other applications as an image. However, using Tableau and Illustrator effectively requires experience.

Presentation

Explorative infographics are used as an aid to explain or support information. Therefore, they are rarely presented alone and may need verbal or written context. However, narrative infographics should be easily understood, with all relevant information portrayed in the graphic.