Drafting an Infographic

What I commonly see from students...

I'm only going to tackle design, not content (words) for the following example. The examples in the following drafts of a mock infographic contain some of the most common traits I see in student work.

To see larger versions of the below examples right click the image and click "open in new tab".

Also, the following is meant for advice and guidance. While I think many could agree that draft 4 looks better than 1, the advice given throughout does not always hold true and is open for scrutiny.

Using Photos on Infographics

I was hesitant to even suggest that you can indeed use photographs on an infographic rather than icons, which you'll see in our last draft. However, these design principles can also be applied to slideshows and other similar design pieces.

Using photographs on a design project is tricky business. Photographs are meant to be, and generally are, examined thoroughly. If a picture is worth 1000 words expect your audience to focus heavily on the images, which in this case detracts from your textual information.

In this first draft we have a couple issues going on. The relationship between the photos and the background and document as a whole isn't pleasing — they don't match. Also, there's too much text on the page. The viewer isn't sure how to scan this document.

Draft 2

Here we placed the photo on the background in a more "realistic" manner and reduced the amount of text. While there's room to grow in terms of design, this is an improvement.

Here's the mindset you should have when creating a digital with photographs....

Think of the photo as something tactile — meaning something you can touch. If you were to place these photos on a piece of blue cardboard how would you get them to "pop" off the page. Think 3 dimensional in this case. Naturally shadows could form on your real life example, and this gives your document more life.

Draft 3 — Giving Space

In draft 2 we gave the photos proper placement on the background. In draft 3 we focused on organizing the document to give proper placement.

For an infographic, and most piece of graphic design, you want to control your audience's focal points. Your design is meant to guide them through a document.

Proper spacing and placement helps accomplish this. Notice how we give attention to the title? The audience gets a clear indication to what the infographic is about with simple text and an image. We use boxes to organize the text vs. the images, and if we were talking content the title of the text should correlate to the image beside it.

Draft 4 — Going Flat

For draft 4 we removed the photographs and inserted icons. This is what we call a "flat" design, minus the shadows at the top of the document. Some people prefer this in comparison to something like draft 3.

Arguably both draft 3 and 4 are meant to convey the same information to the reader. Draft 4 does so in a simpler manner.

There are still improvements that can be made for both drafts 3 and 4. The text in the upper right green box runs close to the edge of the page, which is also true for the bottom right icon. removing the drop shadow from the icons in the header may also be more effective.

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