If you are trying to provide information to your audience or want a way to get creative with it, then making an infographic could be your solution. There is proof that infographics are a better way to provide information than normal text. Since people are attracted to colors, animations, and other visually appealing aspects, they will be more willing to focus and will easily comprehend the content within the infographic. So, to help you create a good one, we are going to cover 10 great tips.
Do Your Research
You should always make sure to research the topic you are creating the content for. The last thing you want to do is to provide your audience with wrong or inaccurate information. Not only will it ruin the infographic, but it will also ruin your creditability and your audience might not trust your future work. Before placing the information within the graphic, just verify everything is correct before you finalize it. There are so many ways to research topics nowadays since we have full access to the internet, so use those resources.
Keep it Simple
The simpler you can get your point across, the better. Everyone learns and processes information differently, so making it simple to understand will provide more people with information they are able to understand and digest. Some topics might be highly confusing, but there are always ways to make it easier to understand.
Stay on 1 Topic
A big mistake people make when creating a graphic is they try and implement multiple topics within one graphic. This could be one of the worst thing you can do because it can easily confuse your audience. If you want to provide information about 2 separate topics you are should be creating a whole separate graphic for that other topic. If your topic includes multiple different aspects, you are going to need to make the graphic clear on how they are all different aspects that all have to do with the topic. It will take some extra work, but will be worth it in the end.
Keep Your Designs Original
Your infographic shouldn’t seem like it was stolen from another graphic or anything else. Everyone likes an original design. They will be much more attracted to your content if they are looking at something they have never seen before. You can always look at graphics that other people have made to give you some ideas or to inspire a theme, but never try and steal anything.
Keep Your Text as Short as Possible
If you can express your topic without using as much text, then that will be much more effective. Since people consume other types of media much easier, then having as little text as possible will make them more interested and able to understand it better. You just need to make sure that your other forms of explaining the topic are well done and easy to understand. A good example that we have all probably seen is when you are going to the bathroom in a restaurant, there will sometimes be a inforgraphic that shows how to properly wash your hands. A lot of restaurants require a full infographic to ensure their employees wash their hands.
Use a Good Color Scheme
You should pick colors that match well with each other. While you might like to have a few colors that are you favorite, they might not be attractive when they are put together. You should use a color scheme tool to come up with effective colors that match your topic. If you know what type of demographic your audience will be, then you can also use colors that they are more attracted to.
Don’t Include History if You Don’t Need it
If you are trying to explain something, you shouldn’t provide the full history behind it if you don’t need to. You may want to provide the information to your audience, but will it actually help you explain the topic you are creating the graphic for? If it is a requirement that the history is there, then it makes sense to have it… But if there is no extra value or doesn’t help prove your point, then it is just a distraction and useless.
Optimize the Infographic to keep the file a Small Size
When you are finished with your graphic, you will probably end up posting it on the Internet or sharing it with other people that you know. You will want to make sure that the size of the file is as small as possible. There are a couple reasons for this. First is loading times. You will never know if someone is trying to view your graphic from a slow connection, so a graphic that isn’t optimized will take a very long time to load. They might end up just giving up.
The second reason is because if you upload it to your website you will have higher bounce rates and could end up hurting your SEO efforts. search engines use load times in their algorithms which means the faster you load, the higher you rank.
Don’t Be Like Every Other Infographic
Using line graphs, pie charts, and other commonly seen things won’t give your infographic a unique feel. You should do everything in your power to try and create something that doesn’t seem similar to other graphics. Like I stated before, keeping your content original is extremely important. There have been plenty of successful graphics that that use unique ways to provide statistical information without using the traditional ways of providing them.
Keep Everything Legal
You should always keep in mind anything that could legally hurt you in the future. Providing misinformation, stealing content, and plenty of other things could be pursued if your infographic wasn’t made properly.
There are plenty of other tips to help out with infographics, but following these 10 will greatly increase your chances of creating a successful one that will be remembered.
By Guest Author – Ness writes articles on behalf of MakeAWebsite. If you are undecided on which host to consider for your website, go visit their site to read reviews on the top hosting companies in the industry today and find out how each of them performs.
