Infographics For Visual Design

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SUMMARY

• Infographics are a powerful tool in e-learning as they reduce cognitive overload and increase engagement. They allow instructional designers to present information in a visually appealing way and make it easier for learners to understand and retain the information. An infographic is a visual image that represents data in an organized manner and its goal is to guide the learner through the information without overwhelming them. Infographics can be used in various types of content such as storytelling, processes, and procedures. They are 30 times more likely to be read than a purely textual article and are an effective way to hook a learner's attention.

Creating the perfect infographic is an important task for anyone who wants to convey information in a clear and visually appealing manner.

The following 12 tips will help you create an infographic that is simple, focused, and easy to understand:

1. Create your infographic for your target learners. This means you should choose an idea that is specifically relevant to your learners and not just generically popular.
2. Keep it simple. Infographics should distil complex ideas into a simple visual format.
3. Keep it focused. Don’t include too many facts and figures in your infographic. Focus on a single topic.
4. Make it easy to view. Make sure the font sizes in your infographic are large enough to read easily and that the infographic is not too big.
5. Make it a manageable length and size. Keep the length of your infographic to 8000 pixels and its size to 1.5 megabytes.
6. Add whitespace. Infographics need negative space to help guide the learner.
7. Create an attractive headline. Your infographic headline should describe the infographic and be short enough to understand at a glance.
8. Focus on the flow. Infographics should flow both cognitively and visually.
9. Check your facts and figures. Make sure the statistics you include in your infographic are true, the sources are reliable, and the graphical representation of the data is accurate.
10. Use research to back up your claims. This will make your infographic more credible.
11. Make sure your infographic is visually appealing. Use color, images, and icons to make your infographic more interesting.
12. Test your infographic with your target learners. Get feedback and make any necessary changes. 

By following these 12 tips, you can create an infographic that is simple, focused, and easy to understand. With the increasing popularity of infographics, it is important to create a high-quality infographic that will be well-received by your target learners.

• To create a successful infographic, instructional designers should keep in mind the goal of guiding the learner through the information in a logical sequence without overwhelming them. The design should be visually appealing and the visuals should be chosen to tell a specific story. Incorporating infographics into e-learning courses can greatly enhance the effectiveness of the course and increase its visual appeal.
• In conclusion, infographics are a valuable tool in e-learning as they allow instructional designers to present information in a visually appealing way, making it easier for learners to understand and retain the information. Designing the perfect infographic can be challenging, but it is well worth the effort in the long run. By following the tips outlined, instructional designers can create an attention-grabbing and motivating infographic that will make their e-learning courses stand out from the rest.

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

FULL TRANSCRIPT

As Instructional Designers, we aim to design eLearning courses that reduce cognitive overload and give a sense of accomplishment to the learner. Half of your battle is decluttering the screen with irrelevant graphics and heavy On screen text. Now incorporating infographics in eLearning can take your eLearning courses to the next level. Infographics have been growing in popularity over the years and they are typically educational, entertaining and useful tools. an infographic is a visual image such as a chart or diagram used to represent information or data. Their purpose is to collect and organize data, creating an easy to understand visual. 

The visuals within an infographic are chosen thoughtfully and systematically to tell a specific story. The goal of an infographic is to guide the learner through the information in a logical sequence, but not to overwhelm them with a ton of facts and figures. 

Why Does Using Infographics Make Sense?

• Infographics present well chunked content with relevant graphics to help learners understand the content and less time and retain for a longer duration. 
• Learners scan the infographics and interpret the meaning well, especially the complex data when compared to other visuals and eLearning and infographic has a major role to play. 

• It will not only enhance the effectiveness of an eLearning course, but also increase the visual appeal. 
• Based on a rough estimate, one infographic may convey the message of three to five eLearning pages loaded with text. 

The two greatest advantages of infographics and eLearning are: 

1. It motivates learners with its visual appeal and graphical representations. 
2. They significantly reduce the number of eLearning course pages. 

We can use infographics and almost all content types such as concepts, storytelling, comparative analysis, and processes and procedures. Infographics typically include the date which is sometimes cited, text, sources, images, different levels, robust content, themes, and characters. Within the visual story, the characters of the story are the content data and statistics.

Now I will discuss with you 12 tips to create the perfect infographics. 

1. create your infographics for your target learners. Coming up with an infographic idea is half the battle to creating the perfect infographic. And the way to come up with a great infographic idea is to figure out what your learners want. The infographics with the most traction and the most attention are the ones that meet your target learners where they want it the most. One mistake that I've seen people make when creating an infographic is that they try to choose something that is generically popular rather than specifically relevant to their learners. This infographic has target learners as a public school teacher as your goal is to create an infographic for your learners not necessarily for the whole world. Keep it specific, relevant and targeted. 
2. keep it simple one of the advantages of infographics is that they can distil advanced ideas into a simple visual format. But the inherent advantage of infographics is that they can become needlessly complex, creating a mind numbing cognitive overload rather than an oh I get to experience like everything else in life infographics are better when they are simple. This infographic would work better as four or five infographics. Simplicity always wins.
3. keeps it focused. Simplicity discussed in the previous slide is ultimately about focus. Don't just make your infographic a potpourri of facts and figures. Infographics are not attempts to randomly assemble all the data that you can compile, instead an infographic is intended to drive a single focus point of this infographic is focused on a single topic, backup practices and Mac users.
4. I've seen infographics that are short on the graphic and long on the info. The best infographics are ones that have a good balance of visual information with icons and an image element like it needs some more visual pizazz.
5. make it easy to view. Sometimes an infographic gets lost and it's resizing the designer makes it huge, then the developer has to downsize it in the process the readability gets lost. Many infographics have a variety of font sizes. Make sure that the smallest font on your infographic can be seen without too much difficulty. As you can see, the words in the infographic here have become too small to read easily. Infographics should be easy to read and view whether the user clicks to enlarge or not. 
6. make it a manageable length and size. Infographics are supposed to be big, we get that but go too big and you'll start losing people. I recommend a limit length of 8000 pixels, anything longer and you'll start to presume upon your learner's attention span. This infographic at 24,575 pixels is probably approaching too long. Along with a length limitation comes unnecessary size limitations. The learners might be on a slow connection, so be courteous and keep your infographic to 1.5 megabytes.
7. adds whitespace; an infographic is an exercise in graphic design best practices. Whitespace is important. There is not enough white space in this infographic, which might be the point good infographic design includes a balance of visual elements with the necessary negative space to help guide the learners as they look at the infographic
8. to create an attractive headline. Your infographics headline is extremely important. It won't get any attention if it doesn't have a great headline. Good headlines will have these features. They describe the infographic that grabbed the learners attention and they are short enough to understand at a glance 70 characters is a good length. If you don't have a powerful headline, your infographic simply gets overlooked. That's all there is to it. This infographic for example has a wordy title that might not get the level of attention at once. You need to put in the brain work on the front end to make sure that you have a really strong title. 
9. focus on the flow. The greatest strength of an infographic is that it can flow both cognitively and visually. An infographic is like a good story. It has the ability to convey an idea by taking you from one phase to another sequentially and seamlessly. The dots are all connected and the ideas are integrated. There's power and being able to move a viewer through a thought process. But some infographics falter on this viewpoint. Instead of moving the learner through your thought process they simply throw a bunch of information into graphical form. When you create an infographic do so by creating flow. The flow will help the learner pay attention and to be persuaded by the message that you are presenting. Even when this infographic is viewed from far away. It has obvious flow. Each section has a number, a headline and a different colored background. Its comic book style helps us better read each section. Every one of the visual elements serves to create a more powerful flow.
10. Check your facts and figures. Many infographics focus on presenting data. It's a smart idea. Our minds can process stats and percentages way better when we see them rather than just looking at a number with decimal points and percentage signs. 

But make sure that you're being accurate by focusing on these three often overlooked areas. 

• make sure that those statistics themselves are true. 
• make sure that your sources are reliable. 
• make sure that your graphical representation of the data lines up with the number. 

If your infographic relies heavily on numbers and data, it pays to give this area's special attention double checking and rechecking. 

Research has found that an infographic is 30 times more likely to be read than a purely textual article. Infographics are one of the best visual tools to hook learners attention and convey messages effectively. 

You can make a really good infographic just keep these tips in mind and you'll spare yourself a lot of wasted effort. Now designing the perfect infographic is amazingly tricky, but it's well worth it in the long run. Incorporating infographics and your online course will motivate the learners with the visually appealing graphical representations as well as significantly reduce the number of eLearning course pages that you have to create.

Applying these tips to building the perfect infographics definitely will make your online course stand out above the rest. I hear from members in the eLearning and instructional design for beginners community all the time. how valuable they find infographics to be. Now remember, following these suggestions will not only enhance the effectiveness of your online course, but increase its visual appeal.

The goal of an infographic is to guide the learner through the information in a logical sequence, but not to overwhelm them with tons of facts and figures. 

Your design structure must be the focus and the visuals within your infographics should be chosen thoughtfully and systematically to tell a specific story. So you can choose Are you going to create an attention grabbing and motivating infographic or a boring and ineffective one now if you have any questions at all about creating infographics for your online course, be sure to post it in the comments. I'd also like to know from you if you have any other suggestions to add about infographics. What are some infographic tips that you wish you knew a long time ago?