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“Infographics are fundamentally the use of design principles to achieve effective communication.”
Infographics use visual communications to portray a message by incorporating it into the design. By combining several elements such as text, images, graphs, etc an infographic effectively presents data and complex issues in a way that can lead to insight and better understanding.
What is an infographic?
As the name suggests, an infographic is a way of communicating information graphically. It uses design principles to communicate that information quickly and clearly. It has standard components - usually a mixture of images, icons, data representations and text.
An infographic must be striking and engaging to get the viewer’s attention whilst using effective visual communication to provide them with memorable information. Read more about [Visual Communication] on the related page of this guide.
Infographics are not like traditional forms of academic assessments; like those in our [Public Communications Guide] they are created with non-specialist audiences in mind.
Dr Domino Joyce explains what an infographic is and what lecturers are looking for
Infographics vs other academic assessments
Infographics are an opportunity to be more liberal with the layout of your communication. You can create some very visually appealing infographics by incorporating the topic into the design. This freedom is what separates an infographic from an academic poster, where the poster is often about communicating a topic in more detail.
One could even think about three different types of assignment, infographics, posters and written reports, on a scale.
On one end is the report, which is very heavily structured and generally very dry, but contains the most information. Reports are not very efficient with either space or the reader’s attention because they assume that they are interested in the topic already. They are written for other academics who hopefully will have a longer attention-span.
In the middle is an academic poster, which often goes into a topic in quite a lot of detail but still needs to be very visual and draw the readers attention with good design. They generally follow a fairly standard format and are designed for other academics to look at rather than the general public.
One the other end is the infographic, which is about communicating a few key ideas in as much detail as possible but with a very limited amount of space and viewer attention. Infographics are just as much work as a report but a lot of that effort goes into condensing information and refining the delivery system (the design) so that it appeals to non-specialist audiences.
Note however, that even though an infographic is the least structured in terms of a structure being imposed upon you by academic convention, it should still have its own internal structure which gives it a clear read order. Check out the Structure pages on this guide for more information.
Fundamentally, good infographics are about finding harmony between too much and too little, whether that be content, colour, structure or graphics. A large part of a marking rubric could be about finding the balance between one extreme and the other.
Terrible Infographic from (https://www.easel.ly/blog/infographics-gone-bad-what-to-avoid-in-your-design) and poster from (https://www.makesigns.com/SciPosters_Templates.aspx).
