An Infographic
According to my memory infographics have been around a good little while – say at least 8 or 9 years. It seemed at one point, infographics were, in some strange way, what podcasts seem to have become now, everybody has, listens to, or knows about at least one podcast. In the case of the communication vehicle called infographics every business, every marketer, and every junior graphic designer back in the day was doin ‘em in what I thought was their heyday.
The design site venngage.com aptly offers that an infographic is a collection of imagery, charts, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic. The easy-to-understand part is where the rubber meets the road as I recently took an opportunity to create a potentially usable infographic for my company, Pepco. Pepco is part of a very large energy player in the U.S. called Exelon.
The information that I chose to lift up and highlight with my infographic at the end of this article is related to an engineering project at my job known as “The Capital Grid”. The Capital Grid is a long-term Pepco initiative to upgrade and modernize some aging electric infrastructure in our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.
How Infographics Facilitated The Understanding of The Data and Topic That I Chose to Highlight
The Challenge – Some of the source data that I obtained from the company, its regulator the DC Public Service Commission (DCPSC) and various project websites – was sometimes dated, dry, sometimes sprinkled with technical terms, but worst of all, was too often verbose.
My Audience and The Challenge – As I determined my audience to generally be a novice to the project (most likely one our electric utility customers whom the project might affect in some way) uncurated, raw source data and verbose white papers was exactly what I did not want to expose them to.
What I Did and How Infographics Helped – To present complex, engineering-related data to my customer audience I primarily leveraging several infographic website and other design sources, including my own sensibilities.
A few of my reflections, follow:
- As I researched a solution to presenting my potentially complex data and topic, I looked at least 15 or 20 templates. The fact that I finally landed on an infographic template at all that I liked, helped a lot. By definition, a template facilitates the design work and even narrative prompts are offered!
- Most of the several infographic sites, resources, and indeed the three or four “how-to or how not to” infographic source articles that I read also offered a process or tips for creating a good infographic. The marketing site, Hubspot, in particular, had at least two good infographic articles as I recall. One very good article was “How to Create an Infographic in Under an Hour”. Another good Hubspot article was “12 Infographic Tips That You Wish You Knew Years Ago”, Finally, there was Neil Patel’s solid “19 Warning Signs Your Infographic Stinks”.
Here’s more on how infographics, my learnings, and my resources helped my cause to explain and “sell” the complexity that is D.C.’s Capital Grid project:
— Simplicity and Audience — As I alluded to earlier, using an infographic template forced me to keep things simple and focus on my novice audience, This is why for, example, I bulleted some information and ensured that I defined terms or concepts in a simple way.
— Catchy Title — I was able to at least attempt a catchy infographic title for my audience due to Hubspot. This marketing site convinced me via an article and based on their experience and data to try some things. The first was to try alliteration (Photo Perfect) in my title, include the word “photo” itself there, and also put the word “infographic” itself in my title.
— Easy to Digest Pictures, Graphics, and Text — Are features of effective infographics. Here again, having a template to guide me and facilitate my natural infographic inclinations, was very helpful. The template helped enforce the Gestalt principles of simplicity and symmetry while I more consciously held to the Gestalt principles of proximity (placing like things with like things – such as the additional facts circle data – so they are perceived to be part of a group). I also held to the Gestalt principle of similarity (placing, for example, the two buildings together for comparison reasons). I also think the large, graphics-based numbers that I used, my green and orange colors (the intent of which were to be suggestive of being environmentally friendly) – all helped to facilitate my audience’s understanding and acceptance of my work-related engineering project that I chose to highlight.
References
Anderson, J. (2021, June 20). How to Create an Effective and Compelling Infographic. Julie Anderson. https://juliend.blog/2021/06/20/how-to-create-an-effective-and-compelling-infographic/.
Cox, L. K. (2021, May 14). How to Create an Infographic in Under an Hour . HubSpot Blog. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/create-infographics-with-free-powerpoint-templates.
Garcia, M. (2017, January 19). Digital storytelling, Part one: The fusion of writing/editing/design. https://garciamedia.com/blog/digital_storytelling_part_one_the_fusion_of_writing_editing_design/
Lien, J. (2020, December 8). Worth 1,000 words: The 4 principles of visual storytelling. amplifi. https://amplifinp.com/blog/4-principles-visual-storytelling/.
Nediger M. (2020, June 25). What is an Infographic? Examples, Templates, Design Tips. Venngage. https://venngage.com/blog/what-is-an-infographic/.
Patel, N. (2021, April 29). 12 Infographic Tips That You Wish You Knew Years Ago. Neil Patel. https://neilpatel.com/blog/12-infographic-tips/.
Patel, N. (2020, January 24). 19 Warning Signs Your Infographic Stinks. Neil Patel. https://neilpatel.com/blog/infographic-warning-signs/.
