What the Heck are... Infographics? And Why You Should Use Them!

Infographics are a big buzz word at the moment, but what really are they? A picture paints a thousand words they say – which is precisely why infographics have become such a popular tool for communicating facts and insights.

An Infographic is basically an artistic representation of data and information using different elements such as graphs, pictures, diagrams, narrative, timelines, check lists, etc. Infographics allow us to tell a more complete story of the data and are more engaging than most traditional ways of communicating data and information in our organizations, such as management reports or dashboards.

Here is a conceptual exaple of what an Infographic might look like and further down I provide some examples of graphic elements you can find on many Infographics:

The idea of visually representing data is not new, of course. For example, nurse Florence Nightingale has used data visualisations, to make statistics more easily digestible by representing them graphically. She convinced Queen Victoria in 1857 that vastly improved medical facilities for dealing with casualties of the Crimean War were needed urgently – by creating graphics like this one: Nightingale Infographic

If we really want to get into a history lesson, we could talk about Egyptian hieroglyphics and the cave paintings of the stone age – but hopefully you get the idea – conveying information in more visual form comes very natural to humans and we understand it more easily.

With the ever-increasing amounts of data and information floating around our companies, informational graphics have become invaluable. Never before has there been so much information to report – as well as such competition for audience’s attention. In most of our daily work lives we get bombarded with reports, dashboards and spreadsheets full of data.

When I work with clients I am often faced with the challenge of turning vast tables of dry statistics and reports into something which can be digested, analyzed and acted on – without anyone becoming confused or bored – and a set of well composed infographics is hard to beat.

On a psychological level it’s been shown that we remember images far more readily than words or numbers. So choosing to communicate data in this way is a sure-fire way of getting your message into your audience’s minds and making sure it stays there.

I believe that instead of providing data to decision-makers in form of dashboards, which they have to then use to dig for the information they need, we should package the key insights and conclusions in easy to understand visuals, and Infographics fit that bill perfectly.

Just to be clear, there is a place for data exploration and visual analysis using data visualization tools and dashboards, but delivering the key business insights to time-poor decision-makers is not one of them.

Creating Infographics does require bit more time and effort. It means that we have to translate the data into headlines and summary text and create the best possible visuals to tell the story of insights rather than presenting raw data. But trust me, the extra efforts are worth every minute.

There are now a large number of fantastic (and often free) tools available that can help you create Infographics. They vary in the complexity of the images they can create, and in ease of use – some examples include

• Infogr.am,
• Easel.ly,
• Pictochart,
• IBM'sMany Eyes,
• Venngage,
• Creatly and
• Wordle.

If you want to have a go at creating your own – go ahead! With most of these tools it will only take a short amount of time to learn how to use them – and working out the best way to get your information across as clearly and simply as possible is a skill that is worth investing in!

Here are a few tips I have picked up along the way:

5 Tips on creating infographics:

1. Keep it simple! Don’t go overboard on flashy graphics and 3D effects on your graphs – it has to be easy to understand, and the message of every element of the graphic should be immediately obvious.
2. Make sure the message (information you want to convey) is what jumps out – not the methodology, or quality of the graphic design.
3. Make the best use of space – brevity is key when you are trying to keep hold of an audience’s attention.
4. Tell a story – intelligently order the information contained in your infographic, in a way that will engage the audience. Often you can have a beginning, middle and end – or start with a question, and end when you have presented evidence of your answer.
5. Juxtapose - give careful thought to how elements relate to each other. The audience should see how each element fits together to form a bigger picture.

Check out this slide deck for many great examples of infographics as well as a summary of the practical tips:

I hope this was useful? So why not give it a go? If you come up with something you are proud of, don’t forget to post a link here so we can all admire it. Also, please share any good examples of Infographics you have seen or stories of how they have helped you understand or communicate information.

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Here are some other related posts I have written:

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About : Bernard Marr is a globally recognized expert in strategy, performance management, analytics, KPIs and big data. He helps companies manage, measure and improve performance.

Images: Fotolia