Infographics are one of the best ways to get your message out to your target audience and work on your branding. They speak volumes to your customers and potential customers without having to ask them to sort through miles of text.
They use compelling images combined with facts and figures to allow busy business people and individuals to get the relevant information almost “in a glance.” They address the problem of the short attention span of the average adult (which is around 2 minutes or less). The well-designed infographic, in a nutshell, is the living embodiment of the cliche: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
But how can you use infographics? What types of information can you include? To quote from a popular children’s show of another decade: “To infinity and beyond!”
You can use infographics for a wide variety of reasons including but not limited to:
- Timelines of information
- Biographical statistics and facts
- Sales trends and benchmarks
- Analytics of your website or traffic
- Scientific illustrations
- How To’s and informational graphics
This is just the beginning of the types of infographics that you might want to create. The limits are only your imagination and the material that you want to include. The main work for an infographic is at the beginning when you have to gather all of the facts and figures to pull it together.
But you also need an attractive design. You need also to determine which type of infographic would work the best with your business. Know the purpose of your infographic before you begin.
To help you along with this, we have come up with seven great infographic ideas that you could apply to any niche market to get your brand out there.
History of Your Company Timeline
One of the best ways to maximize the potential of an infographic is to create a timeline of the history of your company. You can start with the year you founded the company and included some notes about what was accomplished during the onset of your company. Include important factoids and dates so that people will have an image of the important beginning of your company. Then put the exact dates that specific landmark events took place. Build up through the timeline, noting important events with dates as you proceed. The last visual and factoids should include where your company is today.
Labeling Timeline
Infographics can also be used to label pictures and diagrams to illustrate specific facts or functions. Explainer videos can even be used as an inspiration to create an infographic to explain the same things covered in the video. This way, you could have both a video and an infographic that will illustrate the concepts you wish to get across.
Top 10 Lists
One way to use an infographic is to create a Top 10 list with pictures. Infographics offer the perfect opportunity to illustrate lists with attractive graphics or photos that appeal to your target audience. You can start with the 10th item in the list at the top and go down in descending order to number one like a countdown for music, or start at number one and go down to 10. Whatever works best for you is fine.
Charts and Graphs
Infographics are perfect for illustrating charts or graphs of information. You can include valid statistics and facts and figures that your customers will want to know. Include pictures of the topic that you are talking about within the graph or create a diagram to illustrate facts. Some of the different types of graphs you can include are:
- Pie graphs– Pie graphs are circular in shape and break up the statistics and percentages into proportionate amounts on the graph. It is easy to read and doesn’t take as long for viewers to absorb the information as line graphs or bar graphs. It is simple to create, too. Here is a sample pie graph.
- Line graphs– Line graphs tend to be composed of numerical information and they are predominantly used to illustrate change over time. They can be either simple or complex. The simple type of line graph features only one behavior or data group that you are tracking over time. A more complex graph might track several pieces of information at the same time.
- Bar graphs– Bar graphs are solidly colored bars that can be either vertical or horizontal. They employ the use of both an “x” and “y” axis. The information on the left is usually numerical data and the information on the bottom is usually non-numerical. Where the two intersect illustrates the fact that you want to convey. View this sample bar graph.
- Pictographs– Pictographs rely on pictures to tell the story while using some limited data to complete the picture. For example, you could show how many people work at home in their careers by showing pictures of people working in a home office and then illustrate this with a pictorial representation of the number data. For larger numbers, you can use one picture or symbol to illustrate a hundred or a thousand.
Themed Infographics
One unique type of infographic is a picture graph that uses the theme of the information to illustrate the information. This unique and creative infographic by National Geographic uses a tree for the numerical bar graph information rather than a traditional bar graph design, coupled with seeds from popular crops for the non-numerical data. It’s just another bar graph, but it is more attractive and interesting to viewers due to its uniquely-themed design.
Colorization with Maps
To illustrate simple trends in numbers, such as geographical population-type information, try using maps that are colored specific colors to represent growth and change. You would just have to create a key such as:
- Green=1,000+
- Blue=2,500+
- Red=5,000+
You could also use this method to illustrate crime rates in certain areas, natural disaster-prone areas, and much more.
Honeycomb Graphic with Percentages
This uniquely-shaped honeycomb infographic has the central information in the middle and the corresponding reasons around the outer edges. In this infographic, the creator is illustrating the various reasons people abandon their shopping cart before a purchase. In this example, they have also included other graphics to explain the whole shopping process as well.
How you do your infographic is limited only to your imagination. The only problem with trying to create your own is that it take some time to get the information together. You have plenty to do without trying to create this yourself.
Infographicdesignteam.com can help. We have professional infographic designers who are willing to help you with any infographic you want.
Our services include:
- Static infographics
- Presentations
- Social media graphics
- Video infographics
Talk to us and brainstorm which one will work best for your business and then we can get to work on your infographic immediately.
Whether you have basic information, want to create a timeline documenting your business development, or create a dynamic infographic that will be compatible with social media, let us know.
We also create stunning video infographics from your static images and make your message come alive. See some samples here.
Contact us to learn more about what we can do to get your message out there using the medium of custom-designed infographics.
