The deal with Infographics is pretty simple. If you are up to boosting your brand visibility, tell stories on social media, and drive more traffic to your website, you choose Infographics. And most online marketers happen to be in search of bonafide Infographic design tips for better design creation. Because the more structured the information is, the higher the traction.
There have been endless debates on the effectiveness of Infographics and whether they are still a trend or not. But honestly, these visual nuggets still rule the digital realm. Let me share a stat in support of my claim. Humans follow directions 323% better with visuals and illustrations, than with plain texts. That’s a whopping stat! So if your target audience is savvier with visuals, why not visual marketing be your primary content marketing tool?
The Competition is Fierce!
Conveying complex data had never been so easy before we had Infographics in our digital marketing arsenal. But, there’s a challenge. As we speak, most of the marketers have realized the effectiveness of Infographics. As a result, everyone is creating these. You can see millions of Infographics lurking all around the Internet.
Evidently, there’s fierce competition. If your design doesn’t stand out, you don’t stand a chance of making heads turn. Your design must be enticing and unique enough to get shared more and more. That’s the secret sauce of online business success. There might be mistakes in the first attempt, but with practice and following a few fundamental tips, you can create stunning Infographics!
Tried and Tested Tips that Surpass Time
To start on with, always remember that just putting some bunches of images and illustrations together, isn’t going to help you. You need to have that aesthetic and artistic eye to get your design right. We have compiled together quite a few tried and tested tips for creating enticing Infographic designs that genuinely captivate your audience. And these tips and tricks are never going to be old and trite. These are to be followed forever until the web world sees Infographics. Let’s dig in!
Tip #1. Gauge your Target Audience and Consider their Preference
Often we find ourselves at a loss while coming up with an Infographics idea. This is all the more true when you have to maintain regular publication. Well, there’s a small yet smart trick to overcome this writer’s block.
First and foremost, consider your target audience and what do they expect from you. The Infographics that go viral, meet the expectations of the target audience. If your design doesn’t please your audience, no matter how fantastic the design really is, you are quite far from going viral. Your design must resonate with the viewers.
For e.g., if your audience prefers quick information, give them bullet points, short and sweet statements, icons, engaging headers. If you want to tap onto a slightly older audience, opt for easy-going typesets, larger font size, contrasting and soothing color scheme.
If your audience comprises the CXOs and people from finance backgrounds, focus on numbers and figures, statistics, percentages, etc. You see, coming up with a great idea is no rocket science. You just need to understand your audience’s tune.
Tip #2. Craft a Killer Title for your Infographic
What would you have done if your name didn’t sound right? Or it sounded funny? That would have been depressing, right? All of us want some kind of a cool name that creates the desired impact. The same goes for your Infographic. A compelling title is another secret tip of crafting a great masterpiece. The title will give your readers the sense of the information, what they can expect from it, and will also engage them to read further.
This one of the major Infographic design tips is similar to the rules of a Blog post. Just as a killer title creates a magnificent Blog, your Infographic too deserves a catchy title or headline. Else, you will fail to gain the attention of your viewers.
Along with titles, make sure you have big, bold headlines and sub-headers that give a clear idea of what’s going on in the design. However, don’t make them too long. Not only is it a bad habit to stretch your title to a point when the readers get demotivated. But it is also bad for the SEO perspective.
Search engines hate long permalinks and do not show them in the SERPs. So put your primary keyword across in the title and be done with it. The character limit of your title should be within 59 to 70. That’s the ideal title structure. A lot of preliminary brainwork must be done to ensure you get a powerful and explosive title for your Infographic. To ease your work a bit, here are a few free title Generator tools that you can leverage and get inspiration from.
Klock.Work
Title-Generator.com
The HOTH.com
Tip #3. Settle upon the Ideal Color Tone (Consistent with your Brand)
This is a no brainer. Color is the most intrinsic element for a great Infographic design. And it holds a bigger value than just merely being a decoration. The color scheme contributes to the overall tone or the look and feel of a design. Choose a color scheme that tailors the mood of your Infographic and fits with the theme. This is a simple tip with far-reaching significance that ultimately brings in the aesthetic factor into your design.
By simply tweaking the color scheme, you can set the tone of your Infographic from professional to playful, from somber to joyful, from traditional to modern, futuristic. In short, just by changing your color choice, you can play between different styles and feelings. However, keep in mind the psychology of the color palette while you target your audience. This is one of the major Infographic design principles you know until now.
Tip #4. Strike a Perfect Balance between Symmetry and Asymmetry
Usually, long-form Infographics tend to lose their balance half-way through the content. Either the visuals become too loud, or the content/copy becomes heavier to the eyes. One must strike a perfect balance of symmetry and asymmetry in these kinds of designs.
In the case of product comparison Infographics, try to keep the impactful visuals at the top and work your way down. Try to keep the content length the same on both sides. This is important because it works as an equalizer to the eyes. An effective layout must keep the weight the same on both sides.
As far as asymmetrical designs are required, here things are more informal and you can play with the composition. Asymmetrical layouts work mostly for timeline Infographics, where each date or year signifies a milestone or an event. In these designs, keep alternate texts on both sides of the timeline differentiator. That will strike a perfect balance for the Infographic presentation.
Tip #5. Enrich your Infographic with Negative Space
Embrace Negativity!
I know this may sound contradictory to the real-life advice, in graphic designs, negative is the new positive! Negative spaces or white spaces give your readers a breather while they read the content. Without a balanced white space, your design may look crowded and can overwhelm the readers.
A pro tip for the novices, if the font size is 16pt, then the line height must be within 1.2pt. These spaces between the texts help the readers assimilate the information.
Tip #6. Keep a Close Eye on the Typography
Among all the other graphic design tips every designer should know, this is most significant. As much as the concept, the content, color scheme are crucial for a great Infographic, fonts play a pivotal role in the whole process.
Every typeset and font has a distinct personality that yields a massive impact on the overall design. The typography you choose for your Infographic helps you explain an idea when words and images fall flat. Hence, it is highly paramount that you make a wise decision. Choosing the right font can be the trickiest part. Fonts that may look beautiful on some designs may look overwhelming or clunky in others. Hence the choice must be made meticulously.
A safe tip here is to stick to minimal san serif typefaces that are super-easy to read and has a modern approach. Serif fonts are better left alone because they seem to be little fussy and distracting. Avoid decorative or script type for your designs as they can disturb its tone of voice.
To keep the font psychology intact, limit yourself to using three kinds of fonts maximum. The aesthetic blend of two or more than two fonts creates a diversified layout with a hierarchy in the content. Use them wisely for the header, sub-header and the body.
Once again, for the convenience of the readers, let me give some examples –
- If you want to bring elegance to your design, go for Rochester, GreatVibes, or PetitFormal fonts.
- If timelessness is what you want, then Old Standard TT or Playfair Display will do the trick.
- To instill a playful feel into your design, opt for Knewave, Yellowtail, or Chewy.
- Lato, Roboto, Calibri, or Open Sans are best for a modern look and feel.
- Display fonts like Ultra, PaytoneOne, AbrilFatface are great if you want to make your statements stand out.
Tip #7. Follow a Vertical Flow
In this list of ultimate Infographic design guide, this point is a salient feature of great-looking designs. Generally, Infographics are long, detailed and vertical. Owing to this, it is of supremely essential to guide your readers through the content. An Infographic becomes excellent when it conveys the idea from one phase to the other sequentially. But, this is where several designs fail, as they simply throw a bunch of information onto the viewers.
Focus on how you can subtly guide the readers using arrows, icons, directional lines, diagonally divided backgrounds that overlap between two sections. This is the trick here. Follow a vertical movement or a vertical flow that will hook the viewer and take them from one point to the other. Ensure that each of the visual elements used in the design, creates a powerful vertical flow. This will take time to get it perfect, but with proper practice, you will get the hang of it.
Also, one thing must always be kept in mind. That Infographics can also be made in landscape/horizontal mode. But the reason the vertical orientation is more pressed on is, the mobile viewership. Most of the Infographics, Blog posts, Videos, or any other digital contents are viewed through Smartphones. To facilitate a smooth user experience, vertical designs are the first preference while creating an Infographic.
Tip #8. Ensure Simplicity and Clarity
Too many bells and whistles become an annoyance. Most of the designers strive to make their designs look visually great by adding graphical elements in abundance. In pursuit of creating eye-catching Infographic design, they keep on adding visual embellishments. This is a strict no-no. Infographics are better off when they are simple and straightforward. Too many embellishments can make the information difficult to decode by your audience.
Keep your design simple and subtle, with realistic designs. Your audience simply requires the information, clarity on the subject. Anything beyond it is a waste of resources. So don’t get carried away while creating an Infographic, instead distill ideas into simple visual nuggets.
Tip #9. Never Forget to Make the Design Easy to View
Ensure the resizing is perfect. Often, much useful information gets lost due to imperfect resizing. For e.g., an Infographic is created in a large size- but the developer has to reduce it for easy viewing. Thus, in the process, the design loses its readability and contents become illegible.
Ensure the fonts or typeset you choose can be adequately viewed even if the size gets reduced. Allow your readers to read the vital crux of the content, even if they don’t enlarge it. Because most audiences don’t bother to go deep into the design and read things inside. They would instead prefer to grasp the main points without clicking. Only when your content hooks them, they would prefer to click and enlarge the Infographic.
Along with all the other Infographic design tips, ensure this one is followed accurately.
Tip #10. Optimize the Infographic for the Social Media Platforms
Everyone wants the world to take notice of what they have created. Be it an apple pie or perfect makeup in Hollywood-style – everyone wants to show! Why would your Infographic miss the fun? Though this is not a tip, as by now everybody knows to press the share button. But, do you know how can your design work the best for your brand? Or are you missing out on the fact that your design is not optimized for the social media platform you have chosen? Yes, now we are talking!
Whether you share your Infographic on Facebook, or Twitter, or Pinterest, it is vital to follow their rule book of optimal sizes. Because, each of these platforms displays images in different sizes. Since each channel automatically adjusts an image, it is truly important to ensure your designs don’t get warped or become illegible. So before you press the share button from now onwards, keep in mind to gauge the sizes of your selected online platforms.
For our readers’ convenience, we have laid out the sizes for some leading social media channels. Thank us later, folks! 🙂
Facebook – This social media giant allows posting an Infographic as a shared post image with the pixel size of 1200×628 pixels.
For Facebook Stories, 1080×1920 pixels
Twitter – If your Infographic will be posted as a single image – 1200×675 pixels.
If you are posting as a part of multiple images, then – 1200×675 pixels.
Instagram – Sharing as a square image – 1080×1080 pixels.
As a horizontal image – 1080×566 pixels.
As a vertical image – 1080×1350 pixels.
As InstagramStories – 1080×1920 pixels.
Pinterest – 600×900 pixels.
Pro Tip: Don’t make your design too long if you solely focus on pinning it on this platform. Pinterest cuts off the extra height to fit the images within their organized columns.
LinkedIn – 1200×628 pixels.
Bonus Point:
As Standard Blog Posts – 663×2000 pixels.
(However, this is a standard recommendation. For Blog posts, you should test what works best. Also, please do keep in mind that your Blog post will be read on various devices. So which size works best for your Infographic is up to you.)
Wrapping Up
The Infographic design tips mentioned above are few that never get old with time. There has been a lot of change and evolution in the trends of Infographics and undoubtedly, these graphic designs have come a long way.
Started with simple pie charts and graphs, with monochromatic colors and plain typography, the Infographics we now see have evolved a lot. Their ability to convey complex data has increased manifold and the visual power these designs have now, can definitely take a business to the next level. All it takes is to make your effort worthwhile by keeping your content understandable, unique and engaging.
Although there are innumerable tips to improve your Infographic design, you can always follow the ones mentioned in this Blog to create shareable designs. And if you ever need professional help, don’t shy away. A professional graphic design agency can channelize your creative thoughts and brand message into a stunning Infographic design. Keep creating designs that speak for you!
