One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is thinking that a strong graphic design will compensate for a weak infographic structure. They often hire a designer and give them responsibility for research and planning. The result is a beautiful infographic that is deeply boring and practically useless.
Of course, if the design is so bad that you can not bear to see it, then it’s a bad sign. Therefore, it is worth investing in a quality design, but this is of secondary importance to plan the piece well.
A well-planned infographic with great design is almost guaranteed to succeed, so let’s see how you should describe your new infographic.
This is a summary of the process:
1. Write a short powerful title
When writing infographic headlines, you need to forget what you know about writing headlines and article headlines. For infographics, the title should look more like the title of a novel or movie.
Movies and novels have short titles full of emotions. They create a sense of intrigue and mystery. When they are well written, they tell you exactly what kind of story you will read, often in 4 words or less.
Here are some examples of extremely well written movie titles:
Star Wars
taxi driver
Kung Fu Panda
Around the world in Eighty Days
When you read these headlines, you have a good idea of what the story will cover. If you like animals and martial arts, you know that you will enjoy Kung Fu Panda. If you hate science fiction, you won’t like Star.
Books and films are sold by the strength of their titles. Sometimes, people take the time to read reviews or watch trailers, but most of the time, it’s the title that sells the show.
You need to apply the same thought to your title. You only have a small space to write your title, so make it count!
Fortunately, since your infographic tells a story, it will be very easy to find a suitable title.
2. Solve the structure of the story
A story is made up of pieces that go together one after another, and form one whole. Every story is a journey from the beginning to the end.
When it comes to an infographic, your story will consist of a series of points that lead to a conclusion. And if you want to attract the attention of your readers and motivate them to take action, there is a very specific formula that you must fulfill.
I’m talking about AIDA’s formula. AIDA means:
3. Choose between 6 and 10 data points to back up your story
4. Now the visual theme for the infographic
Finally, you need to decide on a visual theme that will unite the infographic and unify it. The last thing you need is a jarring collection of unrelated images. Instead, you want graphics that complement each other and convey the story. At the same time, choosing the visual theme can increase the emotional impact of your story.
Start by identifying the general mood of your infographic.
Then, choose images that represent the ideas you want to convey, evoking mood and emotional points.
For example, let’s imagine that our site is about cloud computing. We want to create an infographic about how large organizations are wasting money when building expensive server rooms. They only need the computing power at peak times, but they have to pay for the equipment all the time.
Our reader profile tells us that our target audience cares about reducing costs. But they also worry that they can not cut their IT expenses without losing the ability to deal with busy times.
We focus on reducing costs, but we also try to trigger emotions of anxiety. We want to move from anxiety to a feeling of calm and hope at the end of the article.
As for the images, the idea that comes to mind is that of a ferocious monster that eats money. So why not turn a server into a monstrous, money-devouring oven? He may have a mouth full of flames instead of teeth. This works well for me, because people have to do everything they can to keep the servers cool and ventilated. So it’s not an exaggerated imagination to imagine yourself as an oven.
This would be the dominant image. Now the other images used throughout the infographic would be chosen to support the metaphor. And, as the story unfolds, the terrifying monster would eventually be defeated and replaced by a quiet scene with clouds (because the solution is cloud computing).
Now, just by taking a look at these images, you get the overall arc of the story, you understand the point we are trying to make, without supporting words or graphics. And you get the emotional triggers right from the start. With the rest of the infographic, we will support these points with visual facts of impact.
After planning the infographic in this grade, you are ready to hand it to your designer with precise instructions. This allows them to focus on their skill set and produce a powerful and effective infographic.
