Creating Infographics: 10 Tips and Tricks for Infographic Designers

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Infographics are graphic visual representations of data and information. They are very useful when you need to explain complex information, numbers, or data in a quick and effective manner. Infographics can be pretty hard to design, so here are some great tips for creating effective infographics.

Also, there are lots of free infographics packs on the web, with different pre-made elements, such as icons, vectors, and more, but sometimes they lack quality. So if you need any help with starting to create an infographic, here are some infographic tools to help you out.

In this article, you’ll find some helpful tips for designing high-quality, creative infographics.

1. Simple is better!

Make sure your infographic is not overdesigned. Its main goal is to deliver information quickly and easily. You have to keep it simple and effective. A crowded infographic won’t attract viewers. An infographic is created for the purpose of conveying a substantial amount of information in an easy-to-see and easy-to-discern way. Both its design and content must be easily scannable and detailed enough to thoroughly cover the topic on which you’ve created the infographic on. A simple design will often work best for infographics as it makes it easy to present data and for the user to read through it. User-friendliness should be your main concern here.

Web Developer and Web Designer

Example of a well designed infographic

2. Choose only one topic per infographic.

Your infographic will be effective only if it will answer one question. This way it will be visually clear and you’ll avoid any confusion. If you try to cram too much into the same infographic, it may lose the purpose for which it was created. Don’t try to do too much and stick to discussing only one topic at hand. Check out the example below, which covers just one subject – the psychology of color in design.

The Psychology of Color

Helpful Infographics and Cheats for Designers - color infographic

The psychology of color is a very important element that is also commonly overlooked by some web designers. Colors do influence a website’s visitors. While we’re on that topic, you should be familiar with the psychology of color if you are trying to get your visitors to act on something through your infographic, and in general, when you are creating your designs.

3. Research the topic thoroughly

Infographics’ main reason for existence is to give detailed information about a specific topic or issue. Don’t forget to give clear facts and figures and make sure they’re correct. Research carefully before starting to design an infographic. Always make sure the facts are right, as your aim is to give information. Take a look at the example below, which gives information about social media data and performance. It was very well researched!

tracking your social media data

This great infographic will teach you everything you need to know about tracking your social media data and performance. It will also give you some tools you can use to measure how effective and engaging your social media presence is. You can see that a great amount of research went into creating an infographic like that.

4. Have a creative and original design

Visuals are very important even if it’s a simple infographic. Use your creativity and create an appealing design. Choose carefully the typography, color scheme, and layout in order to emphasize the most important parts. While there are some infographic templates available that will help you create infographics quickly, you may want to think about creating one from scratch, especially if the infographic is on a niche topic, such as trolls, as seen below.

how to out-troll a troll

This is an infographic that will teach you how to deal with internet trolls and how to handle them. It’s funny and creatively designed and featured a nice troll illustration at the top.

5. Use an attractive color scheme

Colors are very important when designing infographics. We touched on this topic in tip #2, however, it’s important enough to discuss in greater detail here. Choose colors that have a great impact on the readers of your infographic. Do you want them to feel sad because of the findings in the infographic, such as an infographic created on endangered species or some other topic that should provoke sadness? Do you want them to feel shocked about the findings in the infographic – so shocked that they will immediately share the infographic with their friends on social media or on their own blogs and websites? Not all infographics have to be colorful though; choose what best suits your subject. A black-and-white infographic can work perfectly given the right topic.

Color Emotion Guide

Helpful Infographics and Cheats for Designers logo colors

6. Use short text

Infographics are all about visuals so be brief when using texts and get straight to the point. The information must be clear and the accent must be on the visual part of an infographic. The text should be used to support visuals and to make your information compelling, not the other way around. Don’t make your infographic text-heavy while using very few graphics. Also, make sure to choose the right fonts – headings should be easily visible and the main content should have a font that is easy to read.

Helpful Infographics and Cheats for Designers fonts infographics tips

What better way to showcase our point about using the right fonts than an infographic created on the best fonts? In the example above, find out what the top 10 fonts web designers love most and why! Learn how to choose beautiful, high-quality fonts for your infographic as well as your website.

7. Make sure your infographic is small in file size

Infographics with small file sizes are much better because they’re easier to download. This isn’t always easy to accomplish as the infographic is actually one huge image containing many graphics and a decent amount of text. Make sure you compress your infographic before distributing it, but in such a way that image quality isn’t compromised. It’s really important not to sacrifice the quality of the image because a fuzzy infographic will look unprofessional, dated, and untrustworthy. If you are to choose between image quality and file size, of course always make sure the quality is there first, and then compress as much as you can without diminishing quality.

8. No legend.

Your infographic shouldn’t need a legend to be understood. Your explanation and data should be inserted right in the infographic so the readers won’t have to work hard to understand.

Example of infographic that is easy to understand

In the example above, you can see how famous logos were analyzed in order to discover what makes a good logo. All the information presented in the infographic is easy to understand.

9. Be Different!

Avoid using bar, line, or pie charts as they have been overused in the past. Be original and unique! Try new layouts and other ways to group together the message you wish to communicate through the infographic. Try to use unique illustrations wherever appropriate. Play around with fun, cool fonts to make the infographic stand out. Create unique infographics and they will surely be a success and are much more likely to be shared.

10. Share the smart way

getting past your social (media) anxiety infographics tips

Make sure your infographic includes the following: copyright, source data (so anyone can check the facts), designer’s name (this way you’ll receive credit for it), and original image/article URL. When you publish an infographic, it’s a good idea to provide embed code that includes your link. Infographics can easily be shared without linking back to the author, and you don’t want that. You need to make sure that when your infographic is shared on other websites or blogs, you get a link back to your original page. In the example above, the creator of the infographic included a sentence about the author with a link already there.

Creating infographics may seem like an easy task, but following the best design principles when doing your infographic design is always a good idea. Use this guide to create an infographic that will surely be a success.

Author
Iggy
Iggy is an entrepreneur, blogger, and designer who loves experimenting with new web design techniques, collating creative website designs, and writing about the latest design fonts, themes, plugins, inspiration, and more. You can follow him on Twitter

3 thoughts on “Creating Infographics: 10 Tips and Tricks for Infographic Designers”

  1. Those are the most boring looking infographics. Infographics used to be more interesting than what is being done today. Only no 8 seems in any way non dull.

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