Beginner's Guide to Creating Shareable Infographics (Part 3)

Introduction

• Recap of previous episodes:
  • Part 1: What makes a good infographic.
  • Part 2: Types of infographics.
• Focus of Part 3: Steps to follow before creating an infographic.

Steps to Follow Before Creating an Infographic

1. Define Your Target Audience

• Establish who you are communicating to:
  • Sales, marketing, corporate community, academics.
• Tone and presentation depend on the audience.

2. Define Your Goals

• Determine what you want to achieve with the infographic:
  • Reveal hidden trends, break down complex data, provide guidelines, raise awareness, compare products, tell a story.

3. Define the Medium

• Determine the platform (web or print):
  • Affects size, height, and resolution.
  • Web: Longer formats, lower resolution.
  • Print: Standard sizes, higher resolution.

4. Choose Your Topic

• Organize ideas, establish a thesis statement supported by data.
• Conduct research to back up the thesis.

5. Find the Right Information

• Repurpose existing content or conduct new research.
• Use Google, surveys, polls, press releases, interviews.

6. Process Your Data

• Format the data into an easy-to-use format like CSV.
• Tools like VisMe can import and manipulate the data.

7. Find Your Story in the Data

• "Interview" your data to find a story worth telling.
• Look for patterns and trends.
• Examples include changes over time, comparisons, compositions, and relationships.

8. Analyze Trends

• Use visuals like bar charts, line charts to identify trends:
  • Line graphs for changes over time.
  • Comparisons should be consistent (apples to apples).
  • Pie charts for 100% compositions, bar charts for other compositions.
  • Use scatter plots and bubble charts for relationships.

9. Write Copy for Your Infographic

• Define tone based on the audience.
• Focus on one big idea, use data to tell the story.
• Craft a narrative with a climax and resolution.
• Use maps and figures to create a cohesive visual story.
• Structure: Title, introduction, body, and footer.
  • Catchy title, concise text, visual support, and source credits in the footer.

Conclusion

• Summary of nine steps to follow before creating an infographic.
• Next episode: Design process of the infographic.