I took an unexplained two-week hiatus from Terminology Tuesday (and most other blogging) to enjoy a bit of a holiday vacation. Sorry, folks! Don’t sweat though – this week I’m back!
I recently took a mini-course on Infographics and vowed to get a lot friendlier with Adobe Illustrator in 2015; we’ll see how that goes…check in with me in about 6-12 months. In any event, infographics are taking the world by storm it seems, so I thought it fitting to have a little chat about them.
Infographics
Infographics consist of two pieces: information and graphics. When those two concepts are sandwiched together, you get infographics, which are designed to display information (e.g. data/trends/ideas) in a visually appealing way that also facilitates information synthesis. They are especially beneficial for people who are more visual learners. Just think back to all of the textbooks you read in school…how much of that information did you really retain? Likely quite a bit if you studied it, but you might learn more seeing certain information displayed meaningfully in a graphic. Even if you’re not a visual learner, an infographic might be handy supplementary material to accompany text-based materials. Additionally, infographics allow the user to experience the concept versus interpreting the concept, and passively retaining the information.
I developed an interactive infographic awhile back, and while it’s not the prettiest (hence my goal of learning illustrator in 2015), it effectively shows information when you hover over the visual elements. You can check it out by clicking the image below:
Resources
Maybe you’re well-versed at creating your own graphics or manipulating existing graphics. Great! Get your infographic on! But if you’re like me, you might need some help. Luckily, there are tons of free resources to help build your own infographics – all you need is the data!
You can also download many fantastic infographic icons and images for reasonable prices (and supporting local designers) from Creative Market, which is where I obtained the infographic elements used in the above sample.
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