Make your own infographic
Are you sitting comfortably? Then let us begin. Before you start making your infographic you should have a think about whether or not it is the right thing to do to support the communication of your idea, policy, data or whatever.
This post is a work in progress so please feel free to suggest changes, additions or corrections. I’ve written it because people often ask for help when they are working up an annual review, a new policy idea, some results or some other kind of strategic review and, if I’m honest, I think people like the idea of making an infographic as its a bit faddy. Truth be told what they have in their head is probably more graphic less info. So this post is to support people to think through whether investing time in making one is the right thing to do but also to guide you toward making sure that investment pays off….which it really can…in spades.
You may also find it useful to take a moment and a blank sheet of paper to sketch out how the design looks in your head and draw it first.
We are going to this really simple infographic above to put into practice some of the principles that are needed to make a great info graphic. It isn’t meant to be and example of best practice. It is super basic, but in no time you will be able to apply these principles to your own and the only thing that will hold you back is imagination. We aren’t going to start by using any fancy software. The default basic applications you already have installed on your machine are more powerful than you think and they have everything you need to start thinking about some of the design principles which make a good infographic and can help you to tell you story.
Download this file so we can get started:
This might sound strange but try to think about this as a canvas or a sandpit and not as a Power Point Presentation. Using Power Point is better than using MS Word because Word has lots of formatting that you cannot see that governs how the content sits on the page. This means that your content will end up being stubborn and move around and generally do things that you don’t want it to. Power Point doesn’t have this problem. You can move your content around and it will be well behaved and stay in place.
Layers — Flow — Transparency
Colour
There are lots of styles that you can go for. You may be a fan of flat design, photographic etc. But it is important to think about what the colours you have decided to go with imply, whether there are any rules about which colours to use if there is specific branding guidance you need to comply with, an importantly what your colour choice will do for your overarching visual narrative and aesthetics. In very general terms I think it is good to have a fairly limited set of colours that can stop your design looking busy. Deciding on a small palate of colours which are sympathetic is helpful and you can decide if you want to use colours which are not sympathetic for dramatic effect. If you don’t know what colours will go well with each other there are lots of websites and apps which can help you. The below is one of many. It is called Kuler and it is from Adobe. The iPhone app version lets you pot your camera at something and then it shows you a range of colours which will compliment well. There is a web version available also here. You can create parameters for these suggestion too.
There is a plethora of colour codes used on the internet:
- Pantone
- HTML colour code
- HEX code
- RGB code
Knowing about these is helpful if you are complying with brand guidance but also you want to mimic the colour scheme in a document or a website you may find a colour where the code is in HTML but you may need the RBG equivalent. There are lots and lots of websites that will translate between these for you. Here is one for an illustrative example but there are lost of them so find the one you like and go with that.
Fonts as images and symbols
OK, so this is reasonably awesome if not a little bit old school. Font libraries are a great source of really interesting symbols. There are four fonts installed on our work machines by default that can also function as symbols:
- Windings
- Windings 2
- Windings 3
- Webdings
Maybe your asking why you would want to use them? Well, they are free, they can be scaled to any size without any reduction in quality or pixelation and because they are fonts they have all of the dexterity that comes with it so you can make the bold or change their colour to compliment the rest of your infographic. Each key on your keyboard will be a different symbol and will also have an alternate when you are using CAPS. So that you don’t have to work that all out yourself I have MASHED MY KEYBOARD FOR YOU.
If you are going to be using a computer other than your work one, where you can feel free to download new fonts to your hearts content, you can spend lots of time finding interesting ones and then trying to find an excuse to use them… I’ve used this website a fair amount. It has a really good search function.
Two cautionary caveats:
- Fonts, like any other content, can be subject to copyright. Respect that.
- Some font types are executable files. Basically this means that they are sort of like programmes or applications you would put on your computer…you’ve probably guessed whats coming next…yes this mean they can be riddled with viruses or other malicious code. Use your common sense and…in the event that you decide to disengage your common sense…
Fonts
Finding the right font can really make your infographic. The font library on our work machines is fairly limited but you can still create some good effects to create a hand sketched feeling, a clean modern look, etc. There are a few rules of to apply and things to think about in making your choice:
- Limit yourself to two fonts. Its a common compliant from design fanatics that people get font happy and the whole things quickly spirals out of control and becomes a hideous mess. Be disciplines and you will be rewarded.
- Broadly speaking fonts can be put in two families. Sans-serif and Serif. Serifs are just the curly bits that randomly protrude on fonts like Times New Roman. Sans-serif fonts are normally cleaner, more crisp… they are also significantly less likely to cause difficulties for people with dyslexia when they’re reading.
https://sidgreen.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/street1.png
I made this timeline infographic when I got back from Moscow. I wanted to show how gay rights in Russia had actually been going in a good direction from a legislative perspective before the more recent nose dive. It was surprisingly straightforward to make. The basic elements are:
- Made in Microsoft PowerPoint
- Background is just a page dipped in black tea and then dried on the heater
- Then just two fonts which are what brings it together. One typewriter style and the other Cyrillic
- The homage to communism vibe is a little over simplistic but I think it works and is supported with the colour association
- You can see the full graphic here
Common Visual Language
This sounds boring but its important so stick with it for a minute. So the clue is in the name. They are called INFOgraphics. So hopefully people with find them informative. So while you are sitting around pontificating what the best was is to symbolize a school, hospital or something slightly more obscure…say innovation…actually that’s obvious everyone knows light bulbs mean innovation…say staff management, they have a symbol for that.
They have symbols for lots of the concepts that we would want to communicate in our day-to-day work. This isn’t just important because it makes your life easier. Its important because the whole point of these infographics is to communicate. If people are sitting around second guessing what you actually wanted to communicate that is not a good start. We all have a fairly high level of visual literacy that we put ti use all the time without even realizing we are doing it. Its what stops you walking in to the wrong bathroom or what lets you know that you need to stop at the red light.
Shapes and colours can help us to covey meaning, help someone to understand your message even if they don’t know your language and loads of other stuff. One word of caution is that the value and meaning we attribute may not be universal. So for example the colour red may imply danger to some or luck to others.
“Clearly presenting and visualizing this information is the next step, and hopefully leads to more effective and timely humanitarian assistance,” — Akiko Harayama, Head of OCHA’s Advocacy and Visual Media Unit
OCHA’s icons are used throughout the range of information products it produces for the humanitarian community, including maps, reports, infographics and websites.
- Click here to download the very high resolution version of their symbols.
- They’re also interested in seeing what you come up with! You can send your wonderful creations using their symbols to them by email.
- All that they ask is that, whenever possible, you credit them as follows: “Source: OCHA”.
Global Goals Branding
The creative folks over at Getty worked on the on the branding for the Global Goals. they have some great resources available for download on their website. They also have some guidance on how to use the branding so have a look at that abide by it.
Staying on the right side of copyright, attribution and licencing when scavenging for content
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organisation that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. They use a series of simple symbols which you have probably seen on your travels around the internet but you may not have taken specific notice before. Now is the time to start taking notice! It is fairly self explanatory, but broadly speaking its a spectrum that ranges from don’t touch my stuff without asking all the way through to use it, change it, share it, I’m free and easy. You can find out more about it over here. So start paying attention. You will see this system of symbols used on loads of the big websites you visit on a day-to-day basis like Flickr and Wikipedia.
Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright. So look out for these symbols and respect the people’s choices about how they want their content to be used.
Open Government License
This is actually quite awesome. Very Government 2.0…well technically speaking 3.0. Under the Open Government License v3.0 you are you are granted a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive license to use the Information. You can:
- copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information;
- adapt the Information;
- exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application. Yawn…
If you do any of the above stuff to the content you need to acknowledge the source by including or linking to any attribution statement specified. If they haven’t provided a specific attribution statement, you have to say this: “Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government License v3.0.” There are loads of images, policies, speeches all manner of other thinks for your to feast your eyes on and build into your infographics. So skip on over to Flickr and have a look. Just remember though that not all content is under the Open Government License. You can read all the gory details over here.
The summary point here should really go without saying…don’t steal other people’s stuff! Its disrespectful, rude, lazy and…illegal. If in doubt you can follow my general rule on internet etiquette:
Tools and Further Bits & Pieces
- ONS overview data visualisation linked to via this blog post. This is interesting because they are our NSO but also because the have common colours which should be used consistently in maps and stuff.
- The Development Data Portal allows you to get access to lots of interesting data sets that you can think about integrating into your work.
- Open Aid Search is broadly similar
- Piktochart is an online tool for making infographics and we have a corporate account. Joseph can sign port you to the lg on details
- Many Eyes, which is was IBM’s data visualization site with lots of great tools and data sets is now sadly closed
- Google Code Playground — good site for visualizing data sets. Not intended for infographics. Can link to dynamic data sets
- Stats Planet and its sister applications are also intended for data visualization rather than infographics too. Can also link to dynamic data sets. Operates using Flash and good old Microsoft Excel
- Government Digital Services (GDS) are the crack team behind GOV.UK. In 2012 they produced guidance on how to use/make infographics. Download the guide.
- Have a look at the DFID infographics on our corporate Flickr account for inspirations.
