Recently I was invited to complete an assessment that included 2 tests:
- Test 1: Write a 600–800 words blog article focusing on employee benefits, targeting HR professionals
- Test 2: Design an infographic based on the article from Test 1
There are many softwares & tools that can make awesome infographics. However, this is my way of designing infographics from scratch with Illustrator.
I’ll share my process from ideation to completion. I hope it can inspire others out there who’re just getting started in infographic design!
TLDR:
- Digesting the Content
- Sketching Low Fidelity Infographic Wireframe
- Designing Illustrations
- Designing High Fidelity Infographic Wireframe
- Finalising the Infographic
1. Digesting the Content
I was tasked to create an infographic based on the article I wrote. You can read the article here — Employee Benefits to Improve Work-Life Balance.
Since I am the author, I knew what the article was all about. But, if I were given a piece of content I knew nothing about, my process of digesting goes like this:
- read the content to understand its context
- read the content again to understand its structure
I would repeat these 2 steps again and again until I developed an understanding of the writing pattern. When ideas started floating around in my mind, I’m ready for the next step.
2. Sketching Low Fidelity Infographic Wireframe
I use my trusty iPad + Apple Pencil + Procreate to draw these visualisations. (A simple pencil & paper works too!)
It’s called a low fidelity wireframe because it is a rough sketch that provides structure and forms a base.
I started with writing the title at the top.
To signify the term “work-life balance”, I drew a weight balance holding up “work” and “life” on each ends.
Then, I simply drew lines as placeholders for subheadings and body texts, and circles as placeholders for illustrations.
Since another purpose of the infographic is to direct readers to the article, I included the call-to-action — “Read More” at the bottom of the wireframe.
3. Designing Illustrations
Sometimes I will use ready-made vectors in my infographics to save time; other times I like to design my own illustrations from scratch.
I listed concepts that needed to be illustrated:
- flexible working options
- compressed workweek
- parental & caregiver benefits
- vacation & paid leaves
- increased job satisfaction
- decreased recruitment costs
- reduced staff turnover
I created separate folders for each concepts to store reference images sourced from Google.
I set a 5-minute countdown timer to limit my time on sourcing reference images for each concepts.
With my references folders opened on my laptop, I fired up Procreate and started sketching. I know my sketches leave a lot to be desired but please bear with me. ;)
Once I have the base sketches ready, I further edit them in Illustrator on my laptop.
If you want to learn more about drawing illustrations from scratch, I highly recommend these 2 Skillshare courses by Tom Froese (I learned a lot from him!):
- ODD BODIES: Illustrating Expressive, Stylized People
- Sweet Spots: Expressing Big Ideas in Small Editorial Illustrations
[Full disclosure: By signing up via the links above, you’ll get 2 months of Premium Membership on Skillshare for free, while I’ll get 1 free month.]
4. Designing High Fidelity Infographic Wireframe
A high fidelity wireframe includes vector elements and looks cleaner when compared with a low fidelity wireframe.
The goal in this stage is to get all the basic elements in place to have a bird’s-eye view of the composition.
Always remember to hit that CMD+S/CTRL+S to save your file!
5. Finalising the Infographic
Now that I have an overview of how the whole design looks, I played around with the colors combination and font pairs.
I picked colors from the illustrations I made earlier, tweaking its shade with the Color Guide tool.
I used a combination of serif, sans serif and handwritten fonts to add some flair.
You can get the fonts below:
And voilà! The design is completed. Check out the project on Behance too!
Final Thoughts
- I didn’t had time to iterate my initial sketches of vector elements in Procreate. If I had more time I would have clean up my sketches with more confident outlines before importing them to Illustrator.
- I would probably try using Photoshop instead of Illustrator for future illustration projects, because I find it difficult to add textures using Illustrator, hence I avoided it altogether.
- When I was designing the vector elements, I used a combination of Blob Brush (Shift+B), Pen Tool (P), and Pencil (N). It sure gets the job done, but not without leaving a mess of anchor points that could be simplified. Anyone has a fast fix? ;)
I hope this post has been helpful, thank you for reading!
Have thoughts to share? I’d be happy to hear them —
Let’s chat:
liewjinyean(at)gmail(dot)com
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