Making Infographics Online
Since I started here at Gryffin Media, a big part of my job is conducting research for the various infographics we put together. As someone who is naturally curious, I quite enjoy the process of hunting down all possible relevant information for a topic or concept.
Infographics take the consumption of information–something that can often be a tedious and forced routine–and makes it interactive for the user. Infographics increase your brand authority, and–simply put–infographics are fun.
Here are a few simple steps for creating an interesting, interactive infographic your visitors will love.
Conceive
An infographic is useless without absorbing, engaging content. The idea is to draw readers to the image with the promise of explaining the idea in a simple, non-time-consuming manner.
Format
When conceptualizing an infographic, thinking of how the information will be displayed can be difficult. The flow of the information can ensure the reader continues on with their reading, or turn them off completely.
Making sure that each section seamlessly rolls into the next section is often just as important as having a well-thought out idea for an infographic.
Find a Theme
Finding a fun theme for an infographic can be tricky. Since the object of the infographic is to turn relatively mundane information into an amusing learning experience, an infographic’s theme combines the format with the content. Using the content and the research (foreshadowing!) to mould a theme makes the process much easier.
Research
The part of the operation I particularly enjoy, researching the topic directly affects every other aspect of the creation process (told you!). A great infographic idea is a great infographic idea only until a lack of reliable–or worse yet, boring–information presents itself.
Conversely, a particularly tedious topic often has interesting facts and statistics that can lend themselves perfectly to the infographic medium, as opposed to a text one. Finding great great information will make coming up with an engaging theme much easier.
Illustrate
What makes an infographic an infographic is illustration. As noted, all the steps to creating an infographic directly influence each other, but by this part of the process: an illustration style should be readily apparent to the illustrator.
After we combine the research, theme, and format into a work order, we make specific notes as to what should be illustrated, and what should be conveyed as regular-old sentences. By doing it this way, we ensure a fully-collaborative conception process, where every piece of information is scrutinized. The results are pretty great.
Finalize
Some information in an infographic may have seemed vital at some point during the process, but once the final product is available, it becomes evident that it doesn’t work with the rest of an infographic. Changing the format of an infographic and the presentation can make it flow better than it had before.
Tips and Tricks
Easy on the Content. Making the information digestible for the reader is key. Points made in a good infographic are typically no longer than two sentences, maximum.
Rely on Statistics. While making sure to minimize the wordage in an infographic, statistics lend themselves perfectly to a functional infographic. They’re easy to understand, easy to illustrate, and require only a few words to explain.
Simplicity. Too many infographics try to cram as much information into a small space as possible. Over-complicated infographics not only fail to achieve their goal of making a topic interesting, they turn the reader off to the subject.
Size. When it comes to infographics, size matters. Readers don’t want to have to resize the image; they’re more likely to leave if they have to. Consider it this way: an infographic is an interesting compression of a large amount of information, done to streamline a learning process. Do the same for the infographic to ensure all the reader has to do is read.
Shareability. Like videos and memes, infographics are highly shareable. In all steps of the process, this should be considered. Will someone share this concept with their friends? Will someone like this theme enough to post on social media? Once an infographic is created, share it with as many people as possible, to get the theoretical ball rolling.
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