How to design best infographics?

Information can be useful and beautiful only when it’s presented well. Like other people, i am also prefer look at pictures, charts, and diagrams rather then big block of text. here we going to learn how to design a best infographics.
In today’s world, any guidance through the clutter comes as a welcome relief. That’s the main reason of popularity of infographics. Statistics prove that people love infograpics. Google search for infographics have increased 25x.

The Process in which information is displayed in visual form that can be related to  knowledge, concepts, data, or just general stuff etc. They’re used to present information easily, quickly & clearly. The process by which we can create visualization is also known as data viz(data visualization).

 # Step 1

Decide the Infographics Topic

There’s no right or wrong way to comeup with a solid idea for a infographic, but first and foremost keep the brief simple. Firstly, think about the topic you want to cover. What surprising, useful or informative information you can provide? Note that find a topic that’s in demand, i didn’t say “Hot Topic”. The first thing people often think of sharing information from a recent survey or report.
You can use statistics to create a series of chart. The easiest method is to try to identify holes zeitgeist. These are often disconnects between what people are talking about. In 2008, Everyone was worried about the financial crisis, but often the media were just talking heads with no context… It was an excellent opportunity to fill that hole with an infographic.
Here are few resources you can use to get right idea

• Google Trends :-  If you want the hot topic , you definitely want to do research on Google Trends to see what type of  inforamtion people currently searching on internet.

 

 # Step 2

Research  & Gathering data of infographics

Have a topic? Great! Now, the next step is to gather information. This can be your industry knowledge and expertise, or information from outside sources. This is where it all begins. Find out excel sheets, PDFs data, links to other resources.“The full picture of a story is usually  not in isolated charts alone, but  have to collect it from different sorces, multiple materials”.
Case study, Facts, Client data: There are many places from where you can find data.  Be sure that your data is clear, and from trustworthy sources. If your supporters are captivated, they might want to explore the topic and your data further.
Google offers  Google Trends is a good way to find out  public interest for the item searched on Google’s search engine.
You can use Google’s public data crawler to find out  the data  realted to your topic.
The another option is Chartsbin.com. You can access statistics filled tables and charts from around the world, such as hunger, marriage, crime and disease numbers.
If you want  more worldwide statistics you can find on StatPlanet.
Read trade journals and scientific studies to get other types of study-based data.
Make sure to source your statistics at the bottom of each graphic section. Use the most trustworthy sources that you can find.

• Google News: Google News is good source for  data seeker’s. Here you find  most up-to-date information on the internet in one place. And there are many strict  guidelines ensure that the data which you got is real and reliable.
• Google Scholar: Google Scholar is another important source for infographic data.
• Twitter searches: The main feature is it mostly reveals content that is useful but doesn’t show  in the first few pages on Google or Google News.

 

 # Step 3

Be an Architect

The uniqueness feature  of  infograpic is  you can either reads from top to bottom or left to right, right?
Not so. The much less obvious, much more critical aspect is the hierarchy of information.
At very  first step, provide important information to viewer  and, as they going down, granularity levels of information should be presented. This presentation of information is similar to a well-designed website or a newspaper layout in that it’s designed to guide viewers through the material, subconsciously reinforcing and differentiating primary information from secondary and tertiary information.
you might start by simply drawing out an idea on a piece of paper. Or you may use multiple Post-it notes with an idea on each so you can move things around. No matter what method you use, getting started by drawing out your pieces of information will help you dramatically.
 

# Step 4

Select a platform

The good news about tools is you don’t need to be a designer to create an amazing-looking infographic. There are three tools in particular that are worth considering when it comes to making your own infographics: Infogram, Piktochart and Visual.ly (the first two are free to start; the third starts at $999).
Each offers a way for you to experiment with what you can create, so the best way to see which one will work best for your needs is to create an account and try them out.
 

# Step 5

Let the Design Speak

Once you’ve chosen a platform, you can create your infographic. The key thing to consider at this point, apart from the length of it, is what you want people to do next. You should assume that it will be shared beyond the places that you post it, so make sure your branding and call to action are included as part of the graphic itself.
The colors may also be important for you to help establish your ownership over the infographic. The point is, when you create it, you need to focus on more than having strong, engaging content. You need to focus on your branding as well.
Social media sites made it very easy for users to share infographics to people all over the world.   e.g  Pinterest is most common and famous platforms for sharing this type of content. If you love social media infographics. Then vertical layouts at 600 pixels are best.
Graphics: Graphics are divided into two parts. Theme graphics and Reference graphics.

• Theme graphic is the explaining how the visual of the design is, theme graphics are not included only when the infographic is very statisticaly based, but usually always included in the infographic. Choosing the right theme graphic will tell you reader at a glance what knowledge you wish to share.

 

• Reference graphics are not compulsary in the design. They are mostly icons. To prevent cluttering up the design, we use icons as visual pointers when a lot of content needs to be represented. They are impressively able for making large number of  references using the same instance. Sometimes words are not even necessary, if we use inpressive refeerence icons,  a practice is best tool for designers to makes their infographics as word-free as possible.

 
Come up with a Headline:- This is most important part of infographic.without headline its like car without an engine. Thats not a matter how good your data or infographic is, when the title of your infographic sucks, no one will read it. So you must include a headline in your infographic.
Font  Choices:- Font choices need to suit your topic. However, there are some font  to avoid doen’t matter what  the topic is – just say no to Comic Sans and Papyrus and other designer fonts! Make sure the fonts you choose are simple and easy to read and understand. If your final result is web, sans serif fonts are easier to read, and serif fonts are best if you want to print that.
Color  Choices:- Similar like fonts color choices also need to suit your topic. This is important phase to convey a wide array of messages while keeping the reader confined inside the infographic. Colors and different types of  color combinations can easily affect people’s moods and behaviors.
Note that color palette that you using for your infograhic should be  simple, attractive but don’t attack the sense. Keep them eye-friendly and eye catcher. When we talking about the color resources Kuler by Adobe  is good resource.
Illustrate:- By using pie charts and flow charts we makes numbers more attractive and easily understandable. Charts are your friends. it helps to illustratestatistics and other information Use thought bubbles to show opinions. Put together a skeleton of words and arrows, grouping relevant data together and visualizing the flow of information using flowcharts.
Infographics is to share information visually, so you want to use more graphical images and very less text as less as possible.
There are some examples of visualization, Gareth Cook’s The Best American Infographics 2013. If you want inspiration infographic, see Peter Orntoft’s designs. Popular infographics typically use multiple numbers of  colors, large number of curved lines and less number of straight lines, and are busy instead of minimalist.
The research does not explain why exactly these features are Popular, but the results are still valuable for infographic designers.
 

# Step 6

Releasing it into the World
The last and arguably most important step is to understand where to share your infographic. You clearly should share and post it to your own website and other platforms you own. Most infographics are shared online–even printed illustrations appear online in some fashion.
This is the litmus test of your work. Data has the interesting characteristic of being read in many ways by different audiences. All of the fact-checking and expertise imaginable doesn’t mean you’ve discovered every aspect to the story. Beyond that, embedding infographics into blog posts to add more commentary is usually a good idea.
You might also consider sharing the visual on a site like Pinterest where more and more content curators are finding interesting images from across the web and featuring them So even once your piece is published, online discussion can expand (or tear apart) your argument in new ways. This collective review means the project is never end done. Improvement always happen as new data comes to light.
 

Points to Remember

• Don’t pack in too much info and less graphic:- Information is important part but Some of the data visualizations add large number of statistical data  and information with their less popular cousins, charts and tables. So if we using less graphic in infographic it beacomes an image rather then a infographic. It don’t justice with the infographic.
• Don’t pack in too much graphics and leave out the info:- Everyone loves pictures! But Sometimes many infographics creates infographics using mutiple colors, designs, cartoons different types of fonts and pictures putting but are very short on info. They fail to express an information that they have to provide.
• Fake information does not belong in an infographic:- Fake information does not use while  creating infographics.Infographics should  based on real information, surveys, research or data.
• Avoid messages that are too sales-focused:- Promoting infographics are good, but don’t use messages that are too sales focused. E.g if we asking someone to buy our product, thats not a good message. We can say that how can our product helps you.

 

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