What is an infographic?
An infographic is a communication tool based on the visual representation of data, also known as data visualization. As part of your digital strategy, its concise format allows you to quickly capture your audience’s attention and facilitate a clear understanding of your message.
“A good sketch is better than a long speech.” It’s not us saying this, it’s Napoleon 🤴, an unwitting infographic king!
Jokes aside, infographics have a huge impact in marketing.
More accessible, more easily shareable, and more shared, marketers and communicators have understood that there is a real opportunity to seize to convey their messages to a broad audience.
In this article, you will find everything you need to create powerful infographics (+ examples)!
Why create an infographic?
Simplify complex data
The main advantage of infographics is their ability to simplify complex data and make it more digestible. People love numbers and statistics, but much less reading a 100-page report to find one or two answers to their questions. Infographics allow you to tell a story around the numbers: a fun and dynamic way to make any of your subjects attractive!
Capture your audience’s precious attention
The goal of an infographic is to make your data speak.
Through illustrations, animations, or just colors, the graphic work based on the collected data allows giving meaning to a number at a glance.
It’s simple: it’s the most concise format we know today. An unmissable opportunity to win the attention war against increasingly active competition on the internet.
Educate and inform your prospects
90% of the information that reaches our brain for scanning and assimilation is visual.
As part of a B2B inbound marketing strategy, infographics are a great way to demonstrate your ability to analyze a trend and encourage your targets to discover your expert content.
For example, you can summarize the most significant contributions of a blog article or a white paper.
Generate engagement on your social networks
Favored by many brands, infographics are one of the most popular and shared content formats on social networks. On Pinterest, for example, your infographics can achieve unexpected virality. Today, the social network lists thousands of them, on all subjects.
Integrating infographics into your social media strategy is an excellent idea if you need to boost your posts’ engagement.
Convey your brand messages
Infographics can be used on any topic. So you can use them to:
- Talk about your product or services: their functioning, their benefits, or the results obtained
- Develop your brand image by sharing a number of figures on an issue that matters to you and on which you want to speak out.
A beautiful way to convey your messages smoothly!
Improve your organic search ranking
Infographics can also be a way to obtain more inbound links (backlinks).
Indeed, journalists are fond of these quantitative data and do not hesitate to illustrate their articles with beautiful infographics.
Result? A link pointing to your website, giving you an additional chance to improve your SEO.
The Different Types of Infographics
Although there are many ways to classify the different types of infographics into categories, we would like to present the 3 main categories of infographics used today. Each of these categories serves different purposes and can be a powerful storytelling tool if used correctly.
Data Visualization Infographic
The founding concept of infographics, data visualization, or visual representation of data, has long allowed public and private companies to illustrate reports and presentations, making the content more digestible and accessible.
This type of infographic serves to simplify often complex information and generally translates a substantial amount of data.
The chosen display method is rooted in a context and serves to convey a specific message.
Conceptual Infographic
A conceptual infographic aims to present information in a more effective way. At a glance, the target audience gets a 360° view of the various pieces of information you share.
Unlike data visualization, which turns data into visuals, this type of infographic is based on existing visual concepts such as timelines or hierarchical information.
Widely used by brands in their communication strategies, they can visually represent any information without the need for much data.
Editorial Infographic
This last category has been used for decades by traditional media to illustrate certain articles with numerical data. With the rise of the web and social networks, this visual communication tool has evolved in the style of visual content produced. Far from simple bar, line, or pie charts, editorial infographics are increasingly creative in representing figures in original ways.
Many startups have adopted this format on their company blogs to attract attention to their website or assert their expert positioning. These infographics have thus become powerful content marketing tools.
Different Infographic Formats
In recent years, regardless of the content or data represented, infographic formats have evolved. Here are the three formats most commonly encountered today:
Static Infographic
These are the infographics we are used to seeing, used in articles, reports, or brochures.
Animated Infographic
This is an infographic with some of the graphic elements… animated 🤷.
The animated infographic allows you to capture your audience’s attention faster and, above all, keep it! It is therefore particularly interesting on social networks to stand out from the hundreds of content pieces in your target’s newsfeed.
Be careful! This format is a bit more complex to produce, as it requires the intervention of a developer.
Tips: Don’t hesitate to evolve your static infographics into animated infographics for even more impact.
Interactive Infographic
The principle? Certain consumer behaviors or actions trigger an animation.
These infographics are used to visually translate a large set of data when the static representation does not allow the viewer to understand the message well enough with a traditional visual.
3 Examples of Infographics
Why Strengthen Support Teams? ZenDesk
In this superb animated infographic, Zendesk shares some updates about its internal organization, particularly explaining why they decide to strengthen their Support teams. It’s a great way to show the importance ZenDesk places on its customers’ experience! Discover the complete infographic.
The Slowdown of Nuclear Power, Wired UK
An outstanding data visualization work by Valerio Pellegrini, focusing on the slowdown of nuclear power and the question of its replacement with renewable energies. View the entire infographic.
The Wall: A Threat to the Environment, Sofia Guajardo
This effective infographic allows us to understand, in just a few minutes, the various environmental impacts related to the construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico. View the infographic.
6 Tools to Create an Infographic
Today, anyone can create an infographic, whether you’re a pro at using DTP (desktop publishing) software or not.
Since there are various preferences, here are the top 3 favorite tools for designers and the top 3 favorite tools for marketers and communicators.
Adobe Illustrator
A benchmark in the industry for creating illustrations from scratch, Illustrator produces vector images: the image quality remains the same regardless of the size or resolution of the image.
If you had to choose just one software from the Adobe suite, this is by far the most suitable for creating infographics.
If you are just starting out, Adobe offers practical “How to” guides, like this one on infographics.
Price: $23.99/month for Illustrator alone, $59.99/month with the Adobe suite
Adobe InDesign
InDesign is also highly appreciated by graphic designers since it allows you to combine text, vector illustrations, and images in the same file. This enables you to produce the most sophisticated infographics!
Price: $23.99/month for InDesign alone, $59.99/month with the Adobe suite
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a powerful photo editing tool. Although its primary purpose is not the creation of visual materials, feel free to use Photoshop if it’s the tool you’re most familiar with!
Price: $23.99/month for Photoshop alone, $59.99/month with the Adobe suite
Canva
Canva is an ultra-powerful visual creation software. Highly ergonomic, its interface is easy to use and allows you to produce all kinds of visuals (social media posts, resumes, presentations, infographics, brochures, booklets, etc.).
Canva offers dozens of customizable templates by theme.
Price: free + a $10/month option that gives you access to even more infographic templates and allows you to save your brand’s visual identity.
Venngage
Quite similar to Canva, Venngage offers a few additional options, such as choosing a template based on the type of infographic you want to create (statistical, informative, chronological, graphical, etc.).
Their flagship feature: a beautiful gallery of ideas to inspire your infographics, updated almost every day!
While these tools are fantastic, they do have limitations. We recommend working hand in hand with an Art Director who can guide you in organizing your information intelligently based on your infographic’s objective.
Price: free for students; starting from $17/month depending on your organization’s size
Piktochart
Piktochart is another good option for creating an infographic from scratch or using a template.
Their strength: their YouTube channel offers helpful tutorials to help you get started with the tool.
Price: free, with a paid option starting at $10/month that gives you access to more features and templates.
The 6 Best Free Infographic Template Libraries
Most infographic creation tools offer hundreds of free templates. If you’re looking for inspiration, here’s our list of the best libraries:
How to Create an Infographic in 8 Steps
Creating an infographic is a process that involves following different steps. Here’s how to proceed in 8 steps, to be followed in order.
Step 1: Define the target audience and objective of your infographic
An infographic never comes out of nowhere. It’s part of a well-defined content strategy beforehand. First and foremost, make sure you’re clear about the audience you want to reach and the main objective you want to achieve.
Example questions to ask yourself: Do you want to educate your audience on a topic? Entertain them? Share the results of your annual study, strengthen your legitimacy on a subject?
Our advice: Don’t rush this step, take your time. All these considerations determine the vocabulary and tone to use, the dimensions of your infographic, and its design.
Step 2: Choose the right theme
Like a blog post or an ebook, choosing the subject of your infographic is essential. It stems from the analysis made around your target audience and the intended objective.
Our tips:
- Don’t hesitate to brainstorm with others to define the themes you want to use in this format.
- Integrate your infographics into an editorial calendar to have a medium-term view of the topics being covered.
Step 3: Collect data and information
In creating an infographic, the most important step is researching relevant data.
Two scenarios:
- If your infographic accompanies a blog post or study, you simply need to reuse the information reported in the original content.
- If your infographic is independent of any other content, the research step is key. It requires extracting relevant statistics from credible sources and then gathering all the textual information and data found.
Our advice: Don’t forget to verify each piece of information you plan to include, or you risk producing a flawed infographic and losing your audience’s trust. Also, keep all the URLs you visited so you can mention them at the bottom of the page.
Step 4: Choose the right way to represent your data
The first step in data visualization is to separate textual information from data. Depending on your data, you can choose from different types of representation: charts, diagrams, tables, timelines, or maps.
Step 5: Define the tone of your infographic
Now it’s time to set the tone to be used, which will serve as a guide for writing the texts of your infographic.
Don’t hesitate to refer to your editorial charter, and if necessary, specify the tone to be adopted for your infographics.
Our advice: To succeed in this step, ask yourself the following question: What vocabulary and tone should you use to achieve your goal and reach your target audience? Academic or friendly? Light or serious? Do you need to stay corporate, or can you allow yourself a slightly more humorous tone?
Once this question is resolved, it’s time to write your texts!
Step 6: Write the texts for your infographic
The writing stage is crucial: the idea here is to design a clear textual plan for the Art Director in charge of creating your infographic.
Not sure where to start creating your brief? Check out our guide dedicated to the creative brief.
Your infographic must tell a story. Writing the texts is very different from writing an article or a report. It’s more like a plan divided into sections than a text with paragraphs. Your texts should be concise and easy to read.
Our advice: Work with a pro! In our community of creative freelancers, some copywriters specialize in writing texts for infographics!
Step 7: Create a wireframe
Once all the elements are gathered, it’s time to start designing your infographic. The process begins with creating a wireframe, a format intended to simply represent the shape the infographic will take.
Our advice: Don’t spend too much time on this step. The goal here is not to showcase the final appearance of the infographic but simply to organize the different sections to get an overview of its overall structure.
Step 8: Design your infographic
Now it’s time to lay out your infographic!
Starting with a template is certainly the easiest way to create a professional-looking infographic without spending too much time on it. However, if you have the opportunity to create a 100% original infographic, that’s even better!
Choose the right template
To determine the most relevant template for you, consider the textual plan of your infographic and the wireframe. Many template libraries allow you to select the category that corresponds to your topic to save time.
All you have to do is insert your content into the designated spaces of the template. Depending on the length of your infographic, you can add or remove sections with just a few clicks.
Create the graphic universe of the infographic
Whether you start with a template or create your infographic from scratch, you will need to create your graphic universe beforehand. This involves defining the following elements:
- The illustrative style: How will you illustrate your different sections? Which icons should you choose? What illustration should you create to bring your data to life? Your illustrative style stems from all the prior thinking and planning.
- The typography and color palette: Make sure you are consistent with your graphic charter. However, you may decide that a different color or typography is more suitable for the subject of your infographic or the message you want to convey.
How to find relevant data for your infographics?
What internal data can you gather for your infographics?
For a marketer, internal data is particularly interesting for two simple reasons:
- You are the sole owner of the data
- You have direct access to it
Your internal data allows you to create original, credible, and exclusive infographics – the Holy Grail in content marketing.
Our best tips for gathering internal data:
- Conduct surveys on trends related to your business
- Collect customer data (demographics, results, etc.)
- Compile key information about your company, your actions, your internal operations, or the causes you care about
- Analyze your website’s statistics
- Use your annual reports and premium content (white papers, ebooks, etc.)
- Browse your human resources data and company culture information
Where to find free data for your infographics?
If you want to cover a specific topic, many free data banks are available on the web as open-source resources. These public data sources are a gold mine for finding data to use in your upcoming infographics!
However, we know that finding quality sources can quickly become time-consuming.
To save time, check out this great article from ColumnFive that lists 100 free data banks from reputable organizations worldwide. To make your search even faster, they are organized by theme!
Our 10 tips for creating a successful infographic
The best infographics engage the reader with strong storytelling. To conclude, here are our top tips for making your infographics stand out!
1. Don’t neglect the briefing stage
Better to say it too much than not enough! The briefing stage is often overlooked due to time constraints. The risk: endless back and forth once the first version of the infographic is created. This wastes time for both you and the designer responsible for the creation. To create a truly impactful infographic that serves your marketing and communication goals, this preparation time is essential!
2. Define a limited color palette
Avoid using more than 2 or 3 different colors. As much as possible, the colors should be in line with your graphic charter and help highlight the key information in your infographic.
3. Choose an original illustrative style
While it’s helpful to take inspiration from the best, reproducing the style of infographics seen everywhere can really hurt you! Be creative in developing your own illustrative style to make your infographics unique!
4. Make the numbers (really) speak
Be original in how you represent the data. There are plenty of interesting ways to make your infographic more lively than a bar chart or pie chart.
5. Write compelling headlines
To capture the reader’s attention, write clear, impactful, and ultra-synthetic titles and subtitles. Sometimes, the title will come to you immediately; sometimes, it will require a little more thought!
6. Present the context
This tip is especially useful if you have multiple data points. Presenting the context in which they fit allows you to add depth to your narrative and engage your audience more easily.
7. Prioritize information
The most important information should appear larger, and key figures even more so. The goal: the reader can access the main information even when scrolling through the infographic quickly.
8. Consider mobile reading
As with all web content, be careful to create an infographic that is readable on smartphones!
9. Develop a solid distribution strategy
No matter how great your infographic is, if it’s not seen by anyone, you won’t achieve your goal. For this, it’s important to have thought through a clear distribution strategy beforehand.
Moreover, don’t hesitate to reuse your infographic to transform, update, or feed another format like an ebook or a webinar presentation.
10. Share the HTML code of the infographic
We also recommend including the HTML code of your infographic at the bottom of your web page. This way, anyone can easily integrate it into their own website (crediting you and with a link to your site, of course!).
Ready to create your first infographic?
With this article, you have all the tools to create high-quality infographics!
If you lack time, inspiration, or in-house skills to create your infographics. HP & Amazon are among my clients, Contact me!