There’s no denying that infographics are a great way to spread your message. The mingling of rich visuals, typography, and large amounts of data give content marketers a way to reach audiences in a way that isn’t at all overwhelming—which is often the challenge with any stat or data-heavy content.
According to Danny DeMichele, CEO of Elevated, “Infographics make data accessible to the masses. They’re a fantastic compromise that allow you to use vast amounts of data in a way that doesn’t feel intrusive or overly dry.”
He’s right. The challenge, however, lies in how to churn these out quickly. This is especially difficult if you don’t have the budget—or turnaround time—needed for a designer, and you aren’t very artistic yourself.
I want to help. Here are a few ways you can build your own infographics with breakneck speed, some of which don’t require an ounce of artistic ability.
Use PowerPoint Instead of Photoshop or Illustrator
HubSpot, Slideloot, and others all offer rich data visualization tools (infographics) that you can edit and re-design in PowerPoint, where a lot of marketers feel more comfortable. These assets were once intended for slide decks, but can just as easily be modified into beautiful infographics. Bonus: Since they started as PowerPoint slides, you can just as easily work them into your next presentation.
Purchase a Kit
Sites like Creative Market and Graphic River offer hundreds of templates designed to help you put together your own infographic. These similarly-styled graphical assets feature PSD or vector images that allow you to mix and match pieces until you find the layout that works for you. Rather than designing the pieces, you simply have to put them together.
Take It to the Web
There are a handful of really great editors that you can use on the web without having any knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator, or even PowerPoint.
Canva and Piktochart are two of my favorites. Both of these services allow you to start with a pre-defined roadmap and then edit, add, and drop new elements into place, including different fonts, colors, shapes, and images—all from a pre-existing library. You can tweak to your heart’s content by easily changing sizes, fonts, and spacing until you download or share your infographic right from their platform.
An Infographic Worth Sharing
No matter which way you decide to create your infographic, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure it’s worth sharing.
- Use high-quality graphics and imagery. Don’t settle for dated or tired designs that you’ve seen floating around on the web for months. Many non-designers are using the same templates, so do your best to ensure that you’re using one that hasn’t been copied ad nauseam.
- Form a logical timeline for data presentation. This often starts with an outline. Moving graphical elements around and ensuring proper spacing, balance, and whitespace is time-consuming. You can save yourself a bundle of time by having an idea of a top-to-bottom approach for how you’d like to present your data. From there, you can set about moving pieces into the proper spots.
- Always get a second set of eyes. You should never publish an infographic until at least one other person has seen it. After working on something like this, we have a tendency to get blind to certain elements. For example, while working on the design, we might get blind to typos or unclear text. Once you send these out in the world, it could be difficult to make changes. Errors make you look unprofessional. Fix them before shipping.
From there, it’s all about getting to work. With the tools we have at our disposal, you don’t have to be a designer in order to provide beautiful visualizations of complex data—though if you have the budget and time, a designer is always the best bet. Good luck!
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