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5 steps to creating infographics
“Incorporate reputable sources, and confirm your facts with references to your data to establish credibility for your information. Quotes from industry leaders can also support your theme.”
There are many stages to creating your infographic - most of which happen before you actually start designing it. This page gives a useful summary of these stages.
5 Steps of making an infographic
There are many decisions to make before you start designing your infographic. Even accomplished designers spend a long time gathering their information before they start to create. When it comes to the creation part, leave yourself a substantial amount of time to do this - there will be an element of trial and error and things always take longer than you think!
Step 1: Know your goals
Know your overall goal and purpose. This isn't the only place we mention this as it is very important to decide if you are creating this infographic with the main purpose of informing, persuading or entertaining. Make sure you know your main message and focus on this so that it is obvious to the viewer too - if you want them to change their actions (often a purpose of persuasive infographics) then this needs to be obvious, not just implicit.
Be sure about what you wish to portray through your design.
Step 2: Make sure you have done enough research
Using your reading lists, the library catalogue and databases, as well as search engines such as Google and Bing have you collated enough data to ensure you can fill out the infographic. Is your data up to date and from reliable sources. You might find some very convincing data online, perhaps in another infographic, and want to use the data in your own - but one of the reasons infographics work so well is that images are very persuasive so always check where they got their information from too - you don't want to perpetuate falsehoods!
Remember you don't want to re-inforce or create “fake news.”
Step 3: Decide how you are going to visually communicate your data
If you are going to use graphics or charts, ensure you use the most effective ones to clearly visualise your data. Our pages on visualising data will help you choose from different ways of displaying numerical data visually.
You want to ensure viewers understand your data easily.
Step 4: Decide on your basic structure
Focus on structure before style. Think about what story you are telling and what arguments you will be making. Whilst a successful infographic will show information in the most effective way and also having an appealing style, to create a style, you must have an underlying structure. The style (colours, fonts) is much easier to change rather than the structure once the infographic is complete. Look at our structure pages for some ideas.
Look at your information and narrative - does it fit with a standard structure?
Step 5: Start creating and select your style
Now, you can work on the style. Experiment with the different elements, such as colours, fonts, icons etc. Have fun with being creative and making your creation stand out.
Use complimentary colours and contrasting fonts (makes sure these have good contrast against the background).
