What Makes an Amazing Infographic?

We process tons of information every day and only a fraction of that information is remembered, something like 80% of what we see and only 20% of what we read. A great way for a brand cut through all this information and leave a lasting impression is to turn content heavy information into strong data visualization or, more specifically: Infographics. Graphic Designers provide a great opportunity to turn data into something engaging and educational for their clients. For example, a standout statistic that could quite possibly get lost in a 500 page report can grab attention from the viewer as an infographic. The infographic should tell a story in an interesting and visually engaging way to a targeted audience, keeping in mind the flow of information as well as how it is designed.

Successful Infographics are:

  • Interesting, meaningful and relevant
  • Accurate and with consistent information
  • Designed with a clear structure in mind
  • Easy to understand.

When creating an infographic it’s important to think of the following:

  1. What topics do you want to cover. What questions are important to your target audience?  What surprising, useful or informative information can you provide? Also, select a topic that has high-quality research and data that can be used for the creation of visuals.
  2. Your infographic topic should be clear enough to be communicated in a short sentence. If for example your infographic topic is clothing, you should narrow it down to something like how women’s work outfits have changed over time.
  3. Be selective when choosing which information to feature. Delete any information that does not add value to your message. Most people won’t spend too much time looking at your infographic. The data needs to standout.
  4. Infographic designs should be inspired by the topic and data.

In the Secrets of a Memorable Infographic, researchers discovered some visual formulas to consider for infographic success,

Color was key; visualizations with more than six colors were much more memorable than those with only a few colors or a black-and-white gradient. Visual density—what some of us might call “clutter”—wasn’t a bad thing either. In fact, images with a lot going on were significantly more memorable than minimalist approaches. Roundness was another hallmark of memorability (after all, our brains do love curves).

On the contrary, basic bar graphs and charts were easy to forget. That surprised Borkin at first, who thought these visualizations might be memorable because people become familiar with them at an early age. Instead, they proved too similar to distinguish, eliciting a high false-alarm rate—meaning study participants thought they’d seen already them when they had not. As Borkin and her collaborators put it: “all the bar charts look alike.”

For some great examples of infographic designs, check out Hubspot’s 11 of the best infographic designs of 2015. Two of our favorites below:

routines-of-creative-people-infographic

 

dinner-table-customs-infographic

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