Infographics

 I have seen some impressive infographics but have never considered myself skilled enough to create one. That has changed. Now, I don't expect to find riches as a graphic designer by any means but I am confident that I can come up with some helpful infographics for my own little corner of the world. On this test run I used a small portion of information from the article The Internet and the Pandemic from Pew Research (linked at the end of this post) and created an infographic in each of three webapps.

Piktochart

I started with piktochart which proved to be my favorite. I thought that there were several good templates to choose from for the data I planned to represent. I found the template easy to edit and responded to commands that I use everyday within Microsoft apps. I was disappointed that the graphics available left much to be desired but fortunately the template I chose came with images that were appropriate enough for the information represented. My finished product from piktochart looks like this: 


https://create.piktochart.com/output/56233101-pandemic-connectedness 

Easel.ly

Having built a little confidence I moved on to easel.ly which I found to not be so easily used. Perhaps it was that my first go had been fairly seamless but this webapp caused me no shortage of frustration. Finding a free template that seemed to fit the data I wanted to visualize was more difficult. Unfortunately that was only the beginning of the difficulties. As I worked to manipulate the template into what I needed it by adjusting the size and placement of shapes and text boxes I regularly found myself moving something different than what I was trying to move. I admit, this was probably mostly due to user error but I did not have the same trouble ultimately with either of the others that I used. I found the graphics available in this program to be disappointing as well. The final blow against this program was that I was unable to change the font color of the article citation, all efforts to do so resulted in a shadow effect of the same information in the original color and the one I was trying to change it to. If you zoom in you can just make out the citation at the bottom of the page. My finished product from easel.ly looks like this: 


https://www.easel.ly/infographic/yzsmoa 

Infogram

Finally I tried infogram. This one did not have many free templates and even fewer that seemed appropriate to the data I was trying to convey. Even though I would have preferred better template options I found this one easy to use and edit. Having said that, this program does not allow you to download your infographic without a paid account. With this program I found the graphics much more suitable and easily searched although I did have to get a little creative in their application to the information represented. My finished product from infogram can be accessed at this link: https://infogram.com/connectedness-during-the-pandemic-1h7j4dvodyopv4n?live I tried all of of the tricks I could think of to include an image but was unsuccessful.

When I try my hand at creating an infographic in the future I will surely be using piktogram. It was the most seamless to use. Do you have experience with other infographic webapps? Share you experiences in the comments.

Pew Research article: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/09/01/the-internet-and-the-pandemic/

Comments

  1. Iltis The LibrarianNovember 26, 2021 at 7:05 PM

    I also chose Piktochart to develop my infographic. Both of the infographics you made are great. Not only would these programs be great for using to engage students and sharing with teachers, students can use them as well to synthesize and demonstrate their understanding. I'm hoping to practice with them more so that I can be a resource for my library community.

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  2. Ms. ShattuckDecember 4, 2021 at 9:14 AM

    I like how clean your infographic looks. I enjoyed this lesson, however, I felt like my use of Canva filled all the infographic needs compared to that of the other websites in this assignment. I'm going to incorporate infographics in my lessons this unit (informational text) and most likely next unit (argumentative). I think they're great!

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