Never be done with things as the design is a perpetual prototype. Reaching a target audience the way you hope and expect to is never guaranteed. With the right team and the next best practices, however, you can get you where you want to be in infographic design practices.
From word clouds to network data visualizations, infographics have become a primary format for content in a relatively short period. Although the ‘infographic’ is nothing new, its proliferation and evolution have been nothing short of the exponential in the past few years.
Whether you love them or hate them, the rising popularity of infographics can’t be denied.
If you want to get a message across, whether it is for your business, blog, or book club, using an infographic can be the best way to do it. If you’re incapable of drawing a recognizable human stick figure, let alone entire data visualization, you may be agonizing over the disturbing fact that infographics are all the rage.
It just so happens that there are many people out there who want to deliver a message using an infographic who do not have any artistic skills. It’s lucky for us that tools and resources have popped up all over the place to help even the most hopeless create beautiful infographics.
Did you know that we remember 80% of what we see, yet only 20% of what we read? The power of visual content is hard to ignore.
Great reference: Free infographic
And that’s why an infographic is such a valuable piece of content.
Not only is it one of the most engaging ways to tell your story, but businesses who market with infographics gain on average 12% more traffic than those who don’t.
So what makes a good infographic? Well, stay tuned, and we’ll give you the next best practices for building them.
To entice, inform, entertain, and impact your target audience, it’s up to you to design well—and with them in mind. That means you can’t overlook the little things (colors, fonts, etc.), nor can you be blind to the big things (proper infographic design styles for target demographics and publications).
To even attract those eyes in the first place, though, you need a strong presence in the right places. You have to ensure that relevant contacts have your content and that it’s easy to share with others. Not only that, but it’s up to you to push it through your channels: your blog, your social, and your employees.
Yes, it sounds like a lot of work, but yes, it does deliver. How do you do it? Keep these best practices on hand the next time you design an infographic.
Infographic design practices … know your design objective
Before you do anything else, ask the following: What kind of client is it? Who is their target audience? And so on.
Ask these questions up front, either directly to the client or quietly in your head in some fevered batch of online research. Blanketing your decisions with broad generalizations rarely works out as anything beyond a surefire study in laziness.
Design spacing is more important than you think
Consistent spacing is really important, and people forget that way too often. Grids and baselines ensure the viewer’s eye has the opportunity to look at, adore, and internalize each component of your infographic.
After all, no one wants their audience’s reaction to their infographic to be dismissive.
Sometimes, an infographic gets lost in its resizing.
The designer makes it huge, and then the developer has to downsize it. In the process, the readability gets lost.
Many infographics have a variety of font sizes. Make sure that the smallest font on your infographic can be seen without too much difficulty.
The infographic should be easy to read and view, whether the user clicks to enlarge or not. 600 pixels wide is a good width to aim for.
Infographic design practices … target communities
“People” aren’t a target demographic. That’s the answer you’d get from someone who’s never really considered their intended audience.
If somebody asked you to design clothes for “some person” without any details beyond that, your head would explode. Designing anything well requires details, and the Internet certainly isn’t one-size-fits-all.
To successfully stand out in the wild chaos of the digital void, think about all the places your infographic might appear:
What’s the biggest size the blog, landing page, or microsite will allow for images?
Don’t forget social. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest all different display dimensions, so consider whether you should truncate your information to focus on 1 or 2 main points.
Is there a chance it will be printed? If so, that it changes the color game. RGB for Web; CMYK for print.
Did you already know the ideal resolution? Well, here it is 72dpi for Web, 150dpi for retina screens, 300dpi for print.
Coming up with an infographic idea is half the battle to creating a killer infographic. And the way to come up with great infographic idea is to figure out what your audience wants.
The infographics with the most traction, most attention, and most virality, are ones that meet your target audience right where they want it most.
Your goal is to create an infographic for your audience, not necessarily for the whole world. Keep it specific, relevant, and targeted.
Data visualization techniques matter a lot
Let the information be your guide. Bar charts make no sense with standalone stats: What are you comparing? And choosing a pie chart to illustrate 20 different percentages will make you insane.
It comes down to determining the data visualization type that’s most sensible and most effective. Is the data information collected over time? Are there multiple categories in the data set? Make it clear to the reader. Assume they are 1) interested, 2) not a data scientist, 3) having a relatively good day.
Persuasive Techniques: What We Learn From the Heath Brothers
Actionable data
The next step should be to find the right data for your infographic, and this should be a heavy focus throughout. Don’t create one because you think it looks cool. For people to want to share it, it needs to feature stats that will back up your case.
The key here is to find stats that will help prove to your audience that your product or service is the solution that they need in their life.
Keep it simple and focused
One of the advantages of infographics is that they can distill advanced ideas into a simple visual form.
But the inherent advantage of infographics can be their demise. An infographic can become needlessly complex, creating a mind-numbing cognitive overload rather than an “Oh, I get it” experience.
Like everything else in life, infographics are better when they are simple.
Simplicity wins. Always.
Break your infographic into appropriate sizes
Beautifully breaking up your infographic into smaller images extends your content’s lifespan. Empower your content by giving it the well-deserved opportunity for multiple social posts across different channels. Your traffic will blow up, and you’ll be the hero your team need and deserves.
My favorite infographic tools
Social Image Resizer Tool
The Social Image Resizer Tool is an absolute must-have if you need to resize images for your social media profiles often quickly.
It lets you upload your photos and easily resize them to set sizes for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, as well as custom sizes and common icon and avatar sizes:
Another similar tool is this Social Media Image Maker which includes even more social network options, such as YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Vimeo.
Easel.ly
Easel.ly offers a dozen free templates to start you off
This free web-based infographic tool offers you a dozen free templates to start you off, which are easily customizable.
You get access to a library of things like arrows, shapes and connector lines, and you can customize the text with a range of fonts, colors, text styles and sizes. The tool also lets you upload your graphics and position them with one touch.
Piktochart
Piktochart is an infographic and presentation tool enabling you to turn boring data into engaging infographics with just a few clicks. Piktochart’s customizable editor lets you do things like modify color schemes and fonts, insert pre-loaded graphics and upload basic shapes and images.
Its grid lined templates also make it easy to align graphical elements and resize images proportionally. There’s a free version offering three basic themes, while a pro account costs $29 per month or $169 for a year.
Infogr.am
Infogr.am is a great free tool which offers access to a wide variety of graphs, charts, and maps as well as the ability to upload pictures and videos to create cool infographics.
Customizing the data that makes up the infographic takes place in an Excel-style spreadsheet and can easily be edited, watching the software automatically change the look of the infographic to represent your data perfectly. When you’re happy with your infographic, you can publish it to the Infogram website for all to enjoy and even embed it into your website or share it via social media.
The bottom line
The next big thing always starts out looking like nothing at all. If it was easy to see coming, everybody would be doing it already and the market impact would be minimal. So you can never create something truly new based on what you already know. The only way to find it is to start looking.
Not all who wander are lost. The trick is to wander with a purpose.
