People sometimes find graphs difficult to understand due to the large amount of numbers and information. It is also difficult to get a feel for a topic when you are shown 10 different graphs, one after another, without zoning out. Infographics are a good tool to visualize your data.
What are Infographics?
Infographics are visual representations of figures, data, information, behaviours, and events. They have the advantage to present complex data like statistics or mathematical functions in a more intuitive and understandable way. They can highlight visually relationships between different items or variables that otherwise would be difficult to grasp if expressed only in words or in figures.
Infographics present contents combining in a creative words, numbers, photos, illustrations, graphics, and videos. They can enhance communication and for this reason are often used for marketing and commercial purposes.
At school and university Infographics can be used to add value to research presentations in any subject.
Examples of Infographics
Effective and meaningful Infographics are the combination of quality content based on sound analysis and interesting data, with graphic design not only to highlight statistics but also to make them easy to understand.
If you want to get an idea of what Infographics are, just have a look in the Internet; you can find there hundreds of examples that could inspire you to represent numbers, data and concepts in a creative way.
Daily Infographic collects excellent Infographics. In the education section you can find interesting Infographics about History, Languages, Science and other school and academic subjects. Fix.com is a lifestyle blog with hundreds of excellent Infographics about food, cooking, landscaping, gardening, outdoor activities, health, home maintenance and repairs.Website providing Infographics for companies.
Here you find excellent examples of awarded Infographics.
Some meaningful examples:
Get inspired
Infographics awarded
Philosophic graphics
What tools can I use to create an infographic?
Everyone can create some simple Infographics for presentations at school or university.
You can use common tools like spreadsheets and PowerPoint. They are included in most software packages and are fairly easy to use.
Bearing in mind that you as student might not want to pay a lot of money to download an infographic tool, we recommend using Powerpoint.
- It is included in most software packages such as Microsoft Office
- It is fairly easy to use.
- As you might need it for presentations sooner or later, you might as well try it out.
There are also effective tools in the Internet. For most of these online applications you have to pay a fee, but there are also some free or limited applications. Use a search engine, for example google to look for “Infographic tools” to see which are available at the moment and most suitable for your needs.
Here below we have collected some websites where you can find some useful Infographic tools.
Easel.ly is a website that features thousands of free infographic templates and design objects which users can customize to create and share their visual ideas online. Using the site is as easy as dragging and dropping design elements, and users can either choose a template from an extensive library, or they can upload their own background image and start from scratch. Infogr.am is useful if you have to represent graphs starting from figures available in spreadsheets or tables. Piktochart is an easy infographic design application that requires very little effort to produce beautiful and high quality graphics. Daytum is an online tool that help collect and communicate personal statistics.
