Ever wanted to create infographics to boost your data presentation skills but found yourself relying on designers to save the day? 

Nothing against them, but wouldn’t it be great to know how to do it yourself? 

Imagine hitting those deadlines with confidence and no one to hold you back! 🙌

If that sounds like you, you’re in the right place. In this post, you’ll discover:

• How to create an infographic from scratch
• Tips to enhance its appearance and make it pop
• Tools to kickstart your infographic journey

Keep reading for all the juicy insights! 🥤

What is an infographic?

An infographic is all about blending data, text, graphs, charts, and graphics to convey information in a clear and engaging way. 

But here’s the kicker—not every infographic includes all these elements at once. Some might focus solely on information and graphic design, while others pack in complex charts alongside eye-catching visuals. 

As one clever Reddit user put it, an infographic is essentially a diagram, graphic, or chart that visually represents information.

Here’s one example:

It’s content showing six ways to reduce construction costs but what you see is a tagline for each step and an icon representing it. 

And because it's interactive content, you can click on the steps for more information. 

Now, one thing you’ll notice with this interactive infographic is that it’s exciting, engaging, and helps people remember the information in the graphic. 

That’s how an infographic should be.

But presenting information in an easy-to-understand way is just one benefit of using this content type. Let’s go over other ways these infographics are helpful.

What are the benefits of using infographics?

Infographics are powerful tools for enhancing your information-sharing game. As one savvy Reddit user put it, “The purpose of an infographic is to easily communicate information quickly.” 

This definition really nails what makes infographics so valuable. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg—there are plenty more reasons to include them in your content strategy:

• They help you tell stories more effectively: Infographics in their simplest form are images with information on them. And as you know, images are appealing and more memorable than text. That’s why people love memes and other visuals nowadays. 

Add a good meme to a paragraph and people will be tempted to read the text. The same thing happens when you use infographics — it makes whatever information or text you’ve written more appealing to engage with. 

See how Fabricio Pamplona, co-founder of online graphic maker, Mind the Graph puts it, “The picture superiority effect tells us that images are also more memorable than text. Three days after reading text, we can remember 10% of information but when combined with an image, we are likely to remember 65% of that information.”

• They support information retention: With all the distractions in the content world, it’s easy for people to forget what they just read sometimes. But that’s usually not the case when you use infographics. 

A journal article on creating infographics and visual abstracts to share research on social media noted that one of the reasons infographics are important aside from providing an overview of a topic is to help people retain information. 

And this retention includes people who are just skimming through. By just scanning the content, there’s a good chance the info is stored in their memory because of the appealing graphic.

• They can be used across multiple channels: Most brands would like to have a digital presence across multiple digital channels. But sometimes, not all content types can be used across the board. For instance, while videos are a good fit for most social media channels, embedding them in emails isn’t always straightforward. 

Enter infographics. This content type is for all kinds of marketing campaigns, digital (emails, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) or traditional (printed materials such as flyers or posters). 

• They help display research findings or complex data: Research findings typically look like this:

Image source: Research Gate

Boring and less appealing to viewers. If you want to share research findings with a broad audience and it’s displayed that way, there’s a good chance you won’t get their attention. 

However, if you use infographics to make it captivating, you’ll get their attention and help them make decisions quickly. 

In a nutshell, creating infographics will help you communicate more effectively. And we’re pretty sure you’d like that, especially when you’re doing a presentation. So let’s show you how to create one in the next section.

How to make an infographic in 6 easy steps

Want to create infographics that can offer you the benefits we just discussed?

Follow these steps:

1. Determine your goals

Your goals — *not the kind that Messi scores* — are what you aim to achieve with the infographic. So it’s important to be clear about them before going any further. 

Sure, you want to simplify complex information like we’ve been preaching. 

But that has to be done with an actionable goal in mind so you can get an appropriate response from viewers. 

To do that, you need to ask and answer an important burning question… What will the audience gain from engaging with the infographic?

The answer to that is the specific goal of your infographic.

It doesn’t stop there though — take it a step further with follow-up questions to answer in the infographic.

Let’s use our infographic above as an example to help you understand better. 

The main goal we wanted you (our audience) to gain is to know what steps are involved in creating an infographic fast. 

And the follow-up questions here included: 

• What steps are needed in creating an infographic?
• Do they follow a particular order?

By answering these questions, our goal was defined and that gave us clear direction on how to create the infographic. 

2. Identify your target audience

Do you know who needs the infographic you’re creating?

You see, beyond the alluring graphics, the information to be delivered is typically for a specific audience. 

So it’s important to identify them to know how simple or complex the info should be and get an idea of the kind of design they’d like. 

A good place to start is to have a sit-down with your existing audience. Think of it like a first date where you learn about their interests, motivations, what kind of information they’re looking for, and preferred channels or colors.

This way, when you take them on the second date (infographics) all of what they see will be based on what they like.

If you’re shy… want to skip the first date/interview and move straight to the second, there’s the Google option. 

Here, you use Google Analytics to monitor people who’ve been checking you out. 

It’ll show you their gender, location, age, and other details to help you know them better. 

To find this data, go to Google Analytics and visit Report on the dashboard. Then, select User > User Attributes > Overview… et voila. 

Now after identifying your audience persona, classify them based on their level of information. According to Harvard Business Review, that means categorizing them into: 

• Novice, has some knowledge but needs data with more clear meaning.
• Generalist, needs a general insight into the topic and other subtopics.  
• Managerial, requires a detailed understanding of how different data sets or groups relate.  
• Expert, prefers more numbers and graphs but less storytelling. 
• Executive, prefers simple but essential information to help them make decisions.  

Classifying it this way will help you determine what level of information should be included in the infographic going forward.

3. Collect your data

You’ll need data for this content format — it’s the ‘info’ in ‘infographic.’

If you’ve got a research team, you’ll just need them to send it over. 

But if you haven’t, there are databases of public data to leverage. 

Here are some of them:

• Statista. Of course, you know this platform. It's got tons of market research data you can leverage. 
• Google Trends Datastore: Need data for different industries, e.g. entertainment, sports, etc.? This database is the guy for that. 
• Pew Research: Your hub for finding research on public opinions, demographics, etc. 
• U.S. Open Data: The U.S. government’s research across different fields from agriculture to education, climate, health, and more. 

You could also use Google’s search engine to search for data by refining search terms to include ‘data’ or data file formats like CSV or XLSX. 

4. Choose an infographic template

Next, pick an infographic template that’s a good fit for your data and audience. 

There are different platforms out there with templates to help you get started like Ceros for interactive infographics. 

This platform has a specialized library filled with all kinds of templates you can use. Find one using the search bar or navigation menu and start editing

Aside from simplifying the creation process for you, using a template can give you ideas on better ways to craft the data story. Overall, it gives you a headstart, especially if you don’t have a dedicated design team or need to put something out ASAP. 

5. Make data visualizations

Don’t worry, it’s nothing complicated. This step is simply about determining how the data will be presented to people. 

While you can do a little brainstorming with the team, we’ve got some ideas to guide you through picking the right visualization charts for the data. 

It all depends on your goals…

So let’s get to it.

• If your goal is to inform people with a simple data point that doesn’t require a lot of context, you can go with simple colored numerical stats with text, icons, or a pictograph. 
• Let’s say the goal is to compare pieces of data. The ideal way to present your data is using charts like the bar, bubble, stacked bar, or column chart.
• You want to show changes or trends with data? Use timelines to display historical events in time. Line or area charts will show continuous changes over a period. 
• Ranking data in order of importance? Or identifying patterns or orders with the data? Tables, flowcharts, or mind maps are good options here.
• Want to reveal complex relationships between data? Scatter plots are ideal when displaying two variables for a data set. Multi-series plots when comparing multiple data sets.

6. Customize your infographic

Remember the infographic template you picked earlier?

Now’s the time to start modifying it. You want to replace placeholders in the template with your data, text, images, icons, logos, and graphics. 

And make it yours. 

You might also want to change the colors and font style to suit the brand. 

Our advice?

Store all reusable design elements in an asset library for easy reuse and to ensure brand consistency.

***

Like taking someone on a date, just picking a good destination isn’t enough. Other side attractions can make you (the infographic) more appealing to them (your audience).

Keep reading to find some of these attractions.

What are some best practices for infographic design?

If you want to make really great infographics, here are some factors to help with that:

Stick to one main point

Infographics are known for being short, sweet, and precise. It’s not the place to describe concepts in detail and go all Albert Einstein on the audience. 

Here, you want to stick to displaying a main data point and its supporting questions. 

For instance, our infographic on six ways to reduce construction costs a little further up only focused on listing the steps involved. No more, no less. 

That’s how it should be. Including any other information will be too distracting. 

Use negative space wisely

Negative space, aka white space, refers to those areas that don’t contain text on a design visual. 

Mads Soegaard, the founder of Interaction Design Foundation, calls such space “a great tool to balance design elements and better organize content to improve the visual communication experience.” 

When designing an infographic, it’s always a good idea to leave space around different design elements. 

That means: 

• Margins around the infographic edges. 
• Spaces between unrelated elements. 
• Gaps between colors.

Avoid clutter

When you’ve got lots of information to share on the infographic, you can be tempted to include everything in it. Word art, huge data, icons, and all. 

However, don’t be too quick to fall for the temptation because it can be distracting for readers.

Your best bet is to keep things simple so viewers don’t have to struggle hard to uncover the information. 

Try to tone down the info as much as you can to further simplify it. 

You can do that by asking people (teammates or stakeholders) for their input. 

Use interactivity

Interactivity is like ketchup (at least for those who like it) — it makes everything better including infographics. 

When you add it to infographics, it attracts people’s attention better than traditional, static infographics. 

Viewers are encouraged to engage the content by clicking, scrolling, or tapping. They see it and think woah, this is such premium content, and are even motivated to share it with others.  

Overall, using interactivity will help you achieve other marketing goals such as boosting awareness, engagement, SEO potential, and more.

Streamline the creation process

The traditional way of creating infographics is usually time-consuming as it involves a lot of back-and-forths with a graphic designer. 

But with a content creation tool like Ceros, you can streamline the process with customizable templates and real-time editing. Simply pick a template to modify and you’ll get a ready-to-use infographic in half the time. 

This content creation tool can also help: 

• Generate, reword, or proofread texts.
• Edit images to enhance the visual impact of the infographic.

Overall, you’ll spend less time in an endless email cycle with designers or thinking of how it’d turn out and more time creating and publishing the infographic. 

Test and measure for effectiveness

Quick question — what’s next after all the hard work put into creating infographics?

If you thought ‘publishing,’ you’re almost right.

However, our advice is to test it before publishing. You need to ensure it’s legible across different devices and browsers. And more accessible to a wide range of users. 

Once you’ve confirmed it’s accessible to different people on different devices, you’re clear for takeoff ✈️…publishing. 

The next step then is to measure its performance. How are people engaging with the content? Are they having a good experience or do you need to optimize it?

Ceros Analytics is one feature that can help you monitor the content’s performance when you use it. 

You get to track sections viewers interact with the most, what devices they use, time spent, click rates, interaction paths, and more. 

***

After a first and second date, you know what to do to make the other party (viewers) happy. You’ll also know what to avoid if you want to stay on their good side. 

Let’s touch on that in the next section.

What are common mistakes to avoid when creating an infographic?

Infographics should help you communicate better with the audience. As such, you need to avoid the following:

• Information overload: We know you have so much to share with the audience. But truth be told, infographics aren't the place for that. 

Sharing lots of info would cause people to have a hard time understanding the central message. Here, you want to stick with key information, make it scannable, and ensure readers get the main points. 

• Incoherent story: Your infographic’s narrative can’t afford to be all over the place or the main idea will fly over the audience’s heads. If you are sharing information about reducing construction costs, don’t include why it’s important in the infographic. 

Of course, knowing why people should reduce the cost is important but the infographic isn’t the place. Pick a single storyline and stick with it from start to finish.

• Looking too generic: Infographics are all over the internet so if yours is looking too generic, it could be ignored. Your infographic should look mwah 🤌 with great visuals, colors, font styles, and all. 

If you really want to be exceptional, we recommend making it interactive. It’ll capture people’s attention and encourage them to engage with it by clicking, scrolling, and hovering over design elements.

• Poorly crafted charts: If you’re using charts, you can’t afford to have them looking drab or showing insufficient data. 

Collaborate with other professionals so they can share feedback and point out mistakes. Another important step is to test the infographics before publishing them. Invite users to interact with the content so they can identify areas for improvement. 

• Bad information sourcing: The source of data used is almost as important as the infographic itself. You can’t afford to get data from a questionable source. 

Stick to reputable sources and ensure they’re well-cited in the infographic. Don’t include sources you didn’t collect information from as viewers may want to visit them.

***

Your dates (creating infographic) seem to be going pretty well. Now, let’s chat about systems that can help streamline planning future dates so you’re not overwhelmed.

What are the best tools for creating infographics?

A research team, data sources, a writer, and a design team are typically needed to create infographics. 

However, the process could be much easier with the tools listed below.

1. Ceros

Ceros is a no-code content creation platform that allows marketers, designers, and other professionals to create premium interactive content. 

You can start from scratch with Studio’s drag-and-drop interface or leverage customizable templates. But not only does this tool let you create infographics, it also allows you to produce interactive landing pages, presentations, reports, and a variety of interactive content. 

Overall, Ceros’ forte is making content that captures and sustains people’s attention. 

2. Venngage

Image source: Venngage

Venngage is a design tool that provides a library of templates people can pick from to execute their designs. 

For infographics, it breaks down templates into different categories from geographics to timelines, processes, tutorials, comparisons, and more that you can customize.  

It also has a gallery idea database to draw inspiration from before designing the infographic.

3. Piktochart

Image source: Piktochart

This visual storytelling solution gives you two choices when it comes to creating infographics… build from scratch or pick a template. 

Here, you can select different presentation formats depending on what you want, the long sizes, or the presentation slide format.

Piktochart also has an artificial intelligence (AI) tool you could leverage to build infographics from prompts or uploaded documents, which it will transform into infographics. 

4. Infogram

Image source: Infogram

If your infographics are centered on data visualizations, assigning numbers to maps, or designing statistics, Infogram is the tool of choice. 

It allows you to produce infographics from data sets in collaboration with your team.

Plus, you can track user engagement with the content to know how it's performing.

***

And so ladies and gentlemen, there you have it.

Over to you!

As you’ve seen, creating infographics isn’t so difficult.

And if you’ve got an effective easy-to-use tool like Ceros, your creation process can be as smooth as waving a magical wand. 

With its intuitive interface, your role will be to find infographic templates, modify them with your data and text, and the content is good to go.

See for yourself, book a demo with Ceros, and see how easy it is to get started.