Making an Infographic

Infographics are a great way of getting a lot of information across to a wide variety of people. By combining images and text, you can cater to both visual and literary learners.

The first step is to decide what you actually want your infographic to say. Once you have that, you can start to decide how the information will be arranged. Most commonly, you'll have multiple columns, and you can arrange compatible information into rows, or offset it slightly. For this example, I'm addressing how to work with a person exhibiting certain personality types, so I'll be explaining the traits on one side and what that means for the workplace for the other.

This is best done in desktop publishing software, such as InDesign or Microsoft Publisher. However, there are free alternatives such as Scribus. Word processors can be used for this, but have more limitations in return for being easier to pick up and use.

In this image, I've laid out the copy from the previous page into two columns and adjusted the background and text color. I've left myself about 1/3 of the infographic to add in some more visually accessible information, and added in some vector graphics I made on the left hand column.

Grouping information effectively is important for an infographic. I used color to separate the rows from each other to help indicate that information should be read left to right in each row.

However, a poster full of text is hard to read and boring. Pictures and charts should be used to convey information such as statistics or concepts that aren't as striking when they are simply read.