Insider tips — three ways to improve your infographics.

By Kate Hayden, Designer.

The infographic — get it right and it’s a stylish way to get a message across; get it wrong and you’ll be left with a dog’s dinner on your website.

Turning the information into graphics.

I love an infographic — and that’s lucky because creating them makes up a fairly hefty chunk of my job as a designer here at asabell. I’ve worked on infographics about everything from cybersecurity, to breakfast… to the history of infographics themselves. So I think it’s fair to say that I know a thing or two about what makes (or breaks) a successful infographic.

Working on such a variety of infographics has really highlighted to me why these punchy little visuals are so popular nowadays. Because they’re a simple, quick and fun way to get a message across, they’re great at cutting through the ‘noise’ on the internet and helping you to connect with your customers.

Use them, but use them right.

So yes, you’ll definitely want to use infographics in your B2B communications, that much is clear. But you can’t just pull a great infographic out of a hat. You need to get it right; because your information deserves the best representation you can provide, and because sticking a failed-attempt-at-an-infographic up on your website will reflect badly on you.

To help you create an infographic that earns pride of place among your content, rather than becoming an unsightly waste of space, here are my three top tips for a crafting an infographic that works:

1. Be consistent.
   When it comes to the design of your infographic, consistency is important. Remember: infographics are about clarity — getting your message across clearly and simply. If your design is messy — with photos here, logos there, and vector graphics all over the place — then you’ll only take away from your message. If you’re working for a big brand, it’s likely that you have brand guidelines — sticking to these is essential and an easy way for your infographic to maintain a consistent style.
   
2. Typography is your friend.
   It’s all too easy to let your infographic get bogged down in text, but that’s something you should fight. Boil the infographic’s copy down to as few words as possible, and then use whatever typographical tricks you have up your sleeve to make that copy more visual. For consistency, stick with one font (changing the weight or colour if you want to add some flair).
   
3. Chuck charts in the bin.
   When you’ve got some data that needs visualising, the first thing that comes to mind is probably creating some kind of chart or graph. My advice is to do what all responsible designers do — take your first idea and throw it in the bin. You want your infographic to be compelling, unique and memorable — not the equivalent of what a 13-year-old could do with Microsoft Excel. Take your information and get creative with how you represent it; make it fun, clear, memorable and, importantly, something that’ll resonate with your target audience.

Where to go from here.

Following these three tips will give you a good place to start, and get you well on the way to creating an awesome infographic. But it’s not the whole story. I could waffle on about how you should make sure your infographic is designed so that you can chop it into bits, for use on social media. Or why you need to focus on quantitative information, not qualitative. But I don’t have time for that here.

Get in touch though, and I’d be more than happy to talk your ear off about infographics. Or I could even create them for you (with the help of our lovely copywriters). Either way, I’d love to hear from you.