Infographics are the most indispensable marketing tool today. Various complex idea and concepts are conveyed through an Infographic in an easy way. Complex ideas are broken into small nuggets to make them easier to grasp. But how? How these attractive piece of eye candies are created?
There are a number of software and tools that are required to create professional Infographics of the best quality. Some of them are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, PowerPoint, Prezi, etc. Some free tools can be cited as well, like Hohli Charts, Piktochart, infogr.am, etc.
Creating Infographics in Adobe Photoshop is a comfortable task, however a lot of manual work has to be done. Such as for a line chart drawing in Photoshop, line segments has to be drawn manually, which is time consuming. Nevertheless, Photoshop is a treat to create anything unique. It lets you play with images, modify them from the scratch, altering them, design the layout with vast array of tools, and what not.
Next software that comes in handy is Adobe Illustrator. You can easily opt it as your graphical tool of choice. It is a great vector based drawing tool best for line arts, custom shapes, etc. Besides it has built-in graphical data tools that produce fancy looking graphs after inputting data from a spreadsheet. Adobe Illustrator gives you the most control over the design process, besides making it go faster…
Adobe InDesign can be as well cited as an efficient Infographic making software. It has a fast performance, auto-save recovery options, dark color schemes that reduce eye fatigue, non-destructive crop tool, and other custom tools for perfectly balanced and enthralling Infographics. You can place the graphics, rotate and scale them as per your discretion, create layouts, objects and groups, create and format tables, work with excellent color and gradients, and all these in one package.
PowerPoint and recently Prezi have been widely accepted as steadfast Infographics designing software. You just need to know a handful of PowerPoint tools to make good use of them. Text, Picture and Shape, are the most important elements in PowerPoint for easy and fast creation of Infographics. To insert any image simply drag any PNG or JPEG file into your slide. Four essential tools are the Fill, Line, Effects and Style.
Fill determines the primary color of that object or text. The Line of an object determines the color of the outline surrounding the object. Effects tool enables you to add some design elements to the graphics. You can work with a variety of features that includes shadows, bezels, outer glows, and 3D effects. Finally, the Style option enables you to choose from a number of pre-designed colors, lines and effects that can be applied to your graphics. This can be used for objects, lines and texts.
As Prezi has 3D templates, you can give your users a truly spatial journey. You can zoom out and zoom in to show the overview and minute details of the Infographic, respectively. Your Infographic becomes even more cinematic and claims unshared attention.
These were some of the most common and efficient software to create Infographics in a smooth and simple way. Now let’s quickly take a look at some free tools for creating Infographics.
Firstly, Hohli Charts. It is based on the Google Chart API and is an excellent tool to create charts as you prefer. You are able to create lines, Venn diagrams, bar and pie charts, radar charts and scatter plots.
Then comes Infogr.am, a free web-based tool with great interface and nice themes. You can create charts using real data and add your own image and videos with ease. The finished Infographic can be instantly shared on social media or embedded on a website.
Finally Piktochart. This free tool offers you a number of decent free themes to create simple visualizations. Its customizable editor allows you to change color schemes, fonts, add different shapes, pre-loaded graphics and your own images.
So these were the list of the main software and tools used to create Infographics. However, it must be remembered, Infographics created by high quality designer software like the Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop are usually of a better quality than the ones created in the free tools and templates. It happens because there is a chance to show creativity in Illustrator or Photoshop, but in case of the free tools or PowerPoint and Prezi, you have to use already made clip arts that are trite and unoriginal. After all Infographics are something unique and creative, that demands originality and creativity. Make good use of them and awe your viewers. All the best!!!
