Be honest: have you ever rolled your eyes when you saw or heard about yet another infographic?
“Infographic” has been a buzzword in digital marketing for the past five years or so. A few years ago, the internet hit a saturation point. Every social platform was chock-full of infographics — good, bad and yes, ugly. But that doesn’t mean you should abandon this powerful tool for audience engagement. Instead, learn how to create infographics that are useful and beautiful, infographics that make their point better and more efficiently than any white paper or blog post could.
When choosing what format to use to present your information, first consider what you have to work with. Infographics are best suited to data-heavy information that can be conveyed visually, with minimal use of text.
A strong infographic tells a story, and leads a viewer through the information in a clear and purposeful way. It’s not simply a collection of graphs. Rather, it builds to a point and often makes an argument about what these data points mean when taken together.
Avoid cramming too much content too close together, which is a sure sign of a poorly-planned and poorly-designed infographic. Your content should be displayed in a way that a viewer can easily scan. On the other hand, if you find you have too little content for a full infographic that tells a compelling story — only one or two meaningful data points, say — consider other visual ways to convey your data and make a bigger impact.
An infographic should be visually stunning, not overwhelming. While it’s okay to be a little more playful than you might be in other brand materials, and to even stray slightly from your brand guidelines in your use of fonts, color and stylistic elements, your infographic must still feel in line with your overall brand. Don’t forget to include your logo!
You may be familiar with interactive infographics — one of the most exciting current trends in infographic design. These creative choices stretch the definition of what an infographic can be, and challenge other marketers to get even more creative.
These include the data visualizations that allow viewers to focus in on their specific areas of interest, which have played a central role in the growth of interactive storytelling. With these types of infographics, members of your audience are invited to engage deeply with your content, fostering an emotional connection.
Other interactive infographics, like the often-praised “115 Years of American Homes,” are actually less about hard data, but still all about engaging audience members. In this example, viewers can scroll to “drive” an illustrated car through the decades, encountering the changing home designs of the twentieth century through the visual and text elements as they go. As with data visualizations, the experience is self-directed: the user can choose to drive forward in time or backward, and pause at any point.
Whether the hard data approach of interactive charts or something less numbers-focused is a fit for your organization will depend on your audience and the information that impacts them. Either way, a marketing partner with experience in infographic design can help craft interactive infographics that will engage your audience. Talk to an expert: contact us today.
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