When you are designing your infographic, you’ll want to take a step-by-step approach if you want it to be effective.
Step 1: Gather The Relevant Data
Your first step is to gather and arrange the data in a way that makes sense and tells your story. If the data isn’t right, you may have to conduct a survey to get more data and information that helps you get to your point for the infographic. But gathering and finding the data and collecting it into a cohesive database is imperative, it’s also the most time-consuming step in this process.
Step 2: Verify All Data Sources
When you find data, don’t assume it’s accurate. Always verify the data before you put it on your infographic. Also, some of the data you find online might be out of date. Check for the most recent source of data so that you have the most up-to-date information on your infographic. Remember, you must include your sources in your infographic so people know that you’ve researched it properly and can be trusted.
Step 3: Create Your Mock-Up
Once you have the data, create what is known as a wireframe. This is how you organize the data before you add images so that you can see how the information flows. This will also provide ideas for images and for how you might want to display the data. Remember, your images must be highly relevant to the specific data.
Step 4: Know Your Why
You won’t be able to arrange the information into an effective infographic if you don’t know why you’re doing it. The information must be arranged with great purpose. For example, if your why is to get your audience to agree with you on a topic (or to engage with you or buy from you), that should be clear from the way you’ve arranged the infographic.
Step 5: Tell a Story
When you create the infographic, think about what story you want to tell your audience. If you can tell a story with the data, you’ll help them understand the presented information and even how to act on it.
Step 6: Know Your Voice
Don’t try to be someone else for your infographic. You want people to see the infographic and know it’s you right away. Know your voice and the tone you want to take in the infographic before you start designing it.
Step 7: Be More Visual
When creating an infographic, it is supposed to be visual first. The colors, the images, and the text should all combine to give your audience a clear picture of what you want them to think about when they look at your infographic. Put a lot of thought into your visuals because that’s what will primarily attract your audience.
Step 8: Use Text Creatively
Infographics still have text, of course, but you can be very creative with the text so that it simply highlights and drives a point home that the visual information sets the tone for.
Step 9: Use the Right Colors
Most infographics will be read on a computer screen or mobile device, which means that just like websites, you want to avoid using colors that are too bright and make it hard to look at. Dull the colors some so that the infographic is easy to read and understand.
Step 10: Get Feedback
Before letting your infographic out into the wild, ask your closest audience to look at it and give you feedback about it – including how it makes them feel when they look at it. Then, if necessary, make changes.
Infographics are great ways to give your audience information, encapsulated in a form that helps them understand the issues and information that you are offering them – more easily than if they just read it in a paragraph.
Now that you have your infographic planned, compiled and designed, it’s time to consider how it will be viewed on mobile devices.
Optimizing Infographics on Mobile
The fact is that mobile devices are what people are using. So if you want people to consume your content, you need to ensure that it works on mobile as well as it works on a PC. This is especially true if you want your infographics to be shared on social media.
Limit the Length – Instead of making your infographics super-long, make them a little shorter and compact so that they fit on one average mobile device screen in the first place. That way, everyone can look at it on their screens.
Create Thumbnails – Thumbnails of the infographic will help with mobile, because it shows a smaller version of the infographic that can be clicked on to go to the landing page where the infographic resides.
Create Smaller Infographics – Instead of making super-big and long infographics, consider making “meme-sized” infographics that explain one point at a glance. These are perfect for sharing on social media.
Create Simple Layouts – Don’t try to be too elaborate with your infographics that you want to be shared on social media. Instead, make them simple, converting just one topic so that it’s easier to create without a lot of space.
Give Your File an SEO-Rich Name – Name the file something that tells the search engines and users what it is. Don’t give it a generic name. If the infographic is about how to make ten outfits from the same three pieces of clothing, then say so.
Put Your Infographic on a Landing Page – One way to ensure that your infographic not only is shared across all social networks but also brings links to your website, is to create a landing page just for the infographic so that it has a home on your site.
Create Interactive Infographics – Use HTML, CSS3, media queries, and any other friendly interactive coding to help the design display according to device correctly. If you create a dynamic infographic, it’ll work anyplace.
Know the Most Frequent Resolution for Platforms – That way you can design the responsive design to display the right resolution for various platforms, in the way that your audience wants to look at them.
Use Flexible Layout – You can use flexible grids to organize content so that it can be changed and displayed differently but still understandably on mobile. If you use relative width instead of fixed width, your infographics will look better on mobile.
Understand and Define Breakpoints – If you understand the breakpoints most systems have, you can design with that in mind, which will help your images look better. Target smartphone portrait mode, and use the right code to display the right size of the devices.
Infographics are an amazing way to give your audience information in bite-sized pieces that are easier to understand, due to the visual nature of an infographic. But, they will be shared most often on social media, and you therefore need to understand how each platform will view your infographic and how your audience likes to access your content. You can then design a responsive infographic that gets shared more and is understood well by your audience.
