3 of 3 

If I’m not willing to to go through all that, but still want to use an infographic to garner interest in my website/products what do I do?

The Solution

What you need, is a graphic designer who has already created some infographics and is good at what they do.  If you need medical care, you go the doctor, you don’t go to medical school to perform your own surgery.  

Similar concept, if someone already has gained the skills necessary to create what you need, you are saving time and money by hiring them and the results are much likely to stand out from the crowd.  

Don't forget about collaboration too.  If you love research and don't have an artistic bone in your body, or the opposite, you can team up with someone who is good at what you dislike.

How do I promote my infographic for free?

1.  While there is no guarantee that your infographic or data visualization will ever reach viral status, if you have a design that is actually answering a popular Google search term you are on the right track. 

2.  The next step, as I have been trying to convey throughout the posts, is to have a

clear design that integrates the data, keeps to a theme and works aesthetically.

3.  Make sure you have website or blog set up where people can click-through to if they

are interested in your design once you post your design on other sites.

4.  Post your design in full size quality on any or many of the infographics directories

available online.  My favourites are visual.ly and visualoop.com.

5.  Share with everyone you know.  Post the news to your friends and family.

6.  Tweet it, but don’t spam.  Don’t keep posting a link to your website or post every 5

minutes. Instead try and get people there by peaking their interest.

7.  Research which hashtags are garnering the attention of your target market and tweet

your design link with tidbits of info and relevant hashtags (#Ilovetelescopes).

8.  Try and enrich your website or blog with useful posts and answers to people’s questions in related topics.  Being helpful and open pays off big time.  We see examples of this everywhere online.  It’s actually quite nice to see that people respond so well to honesty and generosity.  It’s a good incentive to share and create friendships, not just business relationships.

The Tools of the Trade

Part 2 of 3

Gathering Information

First you need to find a subject that your target market will be interested in and that will also tie in with whatever the subject matter of your blog/website/store is.  I start by looking for common Google search terms and questions and identify a subject and a particular question to answer.

Then there is research to find the answer to this question and probably wrapping your head around a whole lot of things you hadn't even considered before.  Once you have the information, you need to come up with a design principle that will unify the findings of your research in a visual and clear way.

Next, you will draft out the infographic and type out your text.  Summarize everything as much as possible.

Finally and most time-consumingly, you will open up your graphic application and make this into a cohesive and beautiful design.

Have you ever been frustrated by instructions in a manual to assemble something?  Perhaps re-imagine how you, as a person who is not a HVAC technician would have liked those Air Conditioner installation instructions to have looked so that you could have understood them without having to Google HVAC terms.

When gathering images for any graphics project, remember it’s not only unethical, but also just cheap (nobody likes to buy from a vendor who appears cheap) to copy other people’s photos and designs without their permission/proper credit (to create your own design).  You must either buy stock photos and vectors or make your images yourself.  

I make every little vector item on my graphics myself or use symbols and brushes from the Adobe Illustrator toolbox, which brings me to what we vector illustrators use to create useful and scalable vector art.

Adobe Creative Suite (Now CS6)

Adobe Creative Suite is the standard for graphic design industry professionals and there is good reason for it.  It’s intuitive and effective.  That being said, when I first saw the menus and the tools I wanted to run for the hills. It can take years to master the capabilities of Adobe Illustrator and that’s what one should expect if they’ve never used vector design software.  

There are other tools to create designs, but again you will need to put together elements that either you purchased or created, so in the end you have to able to use a vector software or at least Photoshop.

Online tools can be useful for layout such as Visual.ly, as with other tools, you will still need to gather content to use these tools effectively.

Working Knowledge of Graphic Design Principles

In the end, being able to make something in Illustrator isn’t enough either.  One needs to learn about file formats, pixel counts, geometry, composition, colour theory, preparing files properly for print or web, etc. etc.  

Talent

Like with any skill, talent too will help with making graphics that stand out.

Infographics, as mentioned before require research too.  In fact the Periodic Circle alone was at least 16 hours of research and development before attempting to fill in the elements.  Then to my surprise I had to do a whole lot of math (my high school math teacher would be so pleased) to figure out how to slice and dice the circle and centre the text while rotating it. Oh my, there wasn’t an easy button for any of this.  It was all hard work.

So, that being said; infographics are hard work, but, if you have an artistic inclination and and lots of dedication, there's no reason you couldn't put together a decent infographic design.

What if you don't have any artistic inclination or the time to put towards making your own infographics?

Coming tomorrow:

I would like to start with a special thanks to two of my friends from the amazing boarding school I attended ( my Hogwarts: Tevitol):

Serkan Kulaksiz and Sirin Caliskan, you're so awesome.

Now onto what the Periodic Circle is all about...

It’s just another aesthetic representation of the Periodic table, you may think, but take another look.  It is the only clear and true-to-rules representation of the periodic table that won’t confuse the heck out of you.  I have always hated how a part of the table sat right underneath it and not in its rightful place due to design issues. I took on the challenge to make a Periodic table that was fun to look at and easy to use. The periods, groups and blocks are appropriately laid out, so that you can use it as a scientific tool, but you can also admire it from afar.  

OK.  Call me biased.  I spent a total of about 70 hours designing this now, but come on, it’s pretty-or maybe I’m just biased.  If you Google Periodic Table and imagine it wrapped around a half sphere (a hemisphere) you’ll get the design principle.   Just start with Hydrogen, move to Helium and moving clockwise (and up a step at 12 o’clock, as that’s the seam) you can find our way around the circle.  It seems so simple, but to be honest, if anyone has created a circle version like this before (without convoluting the original useful design), I haven’t been able to locate it on Google. It may seem simple to think of, but it wasn’t as easy to convey.

In the Lab Edition, the groups and blocks are marked with corresponding numbers/letters.  The colours represent the types of elements, while the circular rings are the periods.  Additionally, there are now well placed arrows around the circle to show some of the trends and a legend on the bottom explaining things further in a visual nutshell.

Click on the image to have a closer look on Visual.ly.  Wouldn’t it brighten up your lab and make a great replacement for that old and ugly Periodic Table poster you’ve been looking at for years?  

Maybe you can study with it and spare yourself the unaesthetically*-induced nausea** kicking in every time you look at the Periodic table in your Chemistry book?

Enjoy!

* Totally made-up word 

** And condition, but I swear I experience this all the time.

 Part 1 of 3

They are not graphs, they are not charts, the good ones are almost like art.  Web surfers everywhere right now are experiencing an influx of infographics good and bad and I've noticed that even though there are many sources on how to use infographics or how they are effecting e-commerce, traffic, etc., there are hardly any good posts about how one goes about making an infographic that actually may go viral if they put their back into it.

Why do I keep seeing infographics everywhere?

The Hype -  A Viral Infection of the Infographical Type

As I launched my designs into the world of infographics a few weeks ago, I noticed something that seemed to be a blessing at first - perhaps a sign from the universe: Infographics were extremely fashionable at this moment in time.  I’m a graphic designer with a knack for transforming information into art while preserving the usefulness, hence I can create infographics that will tickle your aesthetic bone (no it’s not a naughty part).  The fashionability of this communication tool therefore should be a great way to gain some exposure online and convert to business, right? 

Well... This apparently also happens is a curse in disguise as well as being a blessing. A double edged-sword, so-to-speak. There are just way too many people attempting create what they call infographics and the internet is jam-packed with meaningless and-not well-designed debaucheries, which makes it hard for the good ones to stand out as easily.

The problem is that there seems to be a mystery about how great infographics are created among crowds outside the graphic design world. Many people are attempting their own projects or using online tools, when in fact if one doesn’t already own professional vector software or have access to it as a student, they probably should save their time as their infographic is as likely to get viral as I’m to become an Olympic athlete by using the elliptical twice a week.  

What are infographics anyway?

Infographics are exactly what they are called.  They are informational graphics that take data and represent it in away that conveys meaning, emotion and aesthetic pleasure.  They are graphics and therefore people who are experts graphic design and the software used in that industry are the ones who would have the best resources to create these designs, but it doesn’t end at that.  One also need to be (or have) a good researcher, being able to effectively find information on the internet and must be able fuse that information into a design that flows and remains clear.

3 great infographics from the online data visualization directory Visual.ly:

Pulp Fiction in Chronological Order by Noah Smith

Should I Date This Guy? by Joanna Chao

Storytelling One Frame at a Time by M Booth

Well designed information is easy to follow and fun to look at, if it's just a haphazard collection of images and data without theme, composition, flow and focus, that's just a page layout. 

One can always collaborate with people with different skills than their own: 

Don't like design, but love data? Partner in with a designer. 

You're a designer who hates doing research?  Get your data compiled by someone who enjoys research (and preferably excels at it).

Coming tomorrow:

How does one go about making infographics?