Over the years, we’ve become quite a resource for readers to find and learn from infographics. Infographics are, perhaps, one of the best tools of the trade right now because they have a number of advantages:
- They’re easily shared, making the best of social media – getting your content shared and read in relevant networks.
- They’re easily published, making the best of organic search – producing rich, relevant backlinks that increase your ranking.
- They’re easily consumed, taking complex content topics and making them easy to digest by readers. While video may be easier, it’s much more difficult to produce (for now).
There are some resources that pitch us on sharing their infographics. Some are pretty much a bunch of stats puked into a beautiful chart or two. While that technically may be an infographic, I don’t think it’s worth sharing so we don’t. Other infographic resources produce consistent, comprehensive infographics that do an amazing job at communicating their purpose. Brian Downard is one of those resources and we absolutely love sharing all the work that he produces. As a result, Brian reached out and we decided to co-produce an infographic to help marketers produce better infographics.
Brian designed this amazing infographic, 16 Infographic Layout Ideas You Can Copy that we collaborated on. The end result is absolutely stunning and should be useful as you move forward with your next infographic project. The infographic breaks down each infographic into your story – opening with a header and introduction, then providing the main argument, followed by a conclusion (which often has the call-to-action). The infographic reveals several styles of visualizing your data – including:
- General – mix and match layouts and charts.
- Step-by-step – provide your readers with a how-to or list of your steps.
- Data-driven – visualize any data that are key to proving your story.
- Timeline – highlight a series of events in chronological order.
- Flowchart – help people discover their own solution with a series of decisions and conclusive paths.
- Versus – provide a head-to-head comparison between two things.
- Story – walk the reader through a story to engage them
- Roadmap – illustrate a stream of information in sequence and arrive at a destination.
Here’s the amazing infographic:
