My Advice? Pay a Designer for Most Infographics If You Can
I’m a fan of is paying designers to do what they do.
My motto in general is pay people for things you’re not good at, or things that can be safely delegated, as soon as you can afford to do so. I’m no good at cleaning my house, and if I did, I don’t have the time. Maids In Black here I come.
And so, if I was going to make a full-fledged infographic, meant to convey information, promote me or my company, and share relevant data, I’d write a check to a designer to make one for me. It’s just a no-brainer.
We’ll come back to how to find an infographic creator within your budget soon.
However, this week, I’m making what I call an “Egographic”.
You Read Right. That Says Egographic
An egographic just a visual representation of an idea I’m trying to convey. An egographic, while definitely about conveying information to others, and part of a quest to serve others, is formed of data that’s all about me.
- My research,
- My interpretation of someone else’s research
- Specially created for my favorite folks
- That sort of me thing
While my observations are based in science, I don’t care to share that part of it. When I make an egographic, half the time I’m actually just thinking through how to convey concepts that make sense in my head, but don’t translate as well when I attempt to put them into words.
Then I happen to share the graphic, however rough, instead of typing out a 1500 word dissertation, because frankly, the picture is better than my jumbled tangented meanderings.
Egographics aren’t worth the investment of hiring a designer to me, if they’re only to be shared with a few folks I know or on my blog.
My other motto is that if you’ve got a good reason to do it yourself, use the best tools you can for the job.
Since I’m not a visual person, visual things I attempt to create are, about half of the time, crap. My typical rescue in situations like creating a Powerpoint deck, is to work from a template.
The question then became, how do I create a quick and dirty infographic (especially if it’s really an egographic)?
There are tons of options out there. These are my top three for tools that have templates incorporated. Each one has at least a free version, but in truth I’d pay for access to any of them.
Infographic Creation Tools – For the Exception to the Rule
First, props to any company that can incorporate more than one pun into their name. With Easel.ly, I am EASILY able to create an infographic from a template on a board that is, yes, much like an easel. It also allows me to upload elements to incorporate.
I try not to overdo this, as it kind of misses the point of starting with a template, but it sure is handy if you want to include a company logo, or some universal symbol that conveys meaning without extra words.
I also like that you can play with each element separately – change just the background, or the size, color, shape or transparency of an object.
I first learned about infogr,am from a post in Duct Tape Marketing. Research on it led to discovery of the other two tools. It wasn’t the right tool for what I was trying to do but I’ll be using it for future projects.
The chief reason is that while it only has 6 themes to easel.ly’s 13, and a lot less customization, its chart tool is uber-sexy.
You can pick anything from a word cloud to a pie chart and upload your data into it. Then it draws it for you. Really great for those of us who don’t want to learn to use YET ANOTHER tool just so we can render a chart outside of Excel.
Not that I can render a chart INside of Excel.
You could also argue that with less ability to customize the infographic templates, there’s less of a chance for you to screw up. But I’d love to see the ability to apply a different color theme to the templates that exist, just so that my work wouldn’t look exactly like someone else’s.
There’s an upcoming store option on the site, maybe that’s what’ll be in it? Who knows.
Though I have yet to use this tool, this is the clear winner in the category of coming as close as you can to a professionally designed infographic. It does a little too much for me – after looking at their feature set, I needed a short nap and a phone to call someone else to do this for me.
But remember what I just said about being able to change the color theme of a template?
Picktochart does this. They also have the best tutorial page ever, designed to reach those of us who would rather read instructions, as well as cats who like a bit of video or images in their howto.
(That does not count as ending a sentence with a preposition because howto is a noun. So there.)
Some of the tutorials ARE infographics, which I thought was just really smart from a marketing perspective.
There are 7 free themes, then if you pay to upgrade, there are dozens of paid themes. Which is exponentially enhanced by the fact that you can change color families.
Those are my top picks, but I have the mindset of finding infographic creation tools with templates or that are otherwise difficult to eff up. If you have favorites, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
Next time: More Infographic Creation Wish-List Features, Tools, and Lists
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