Infographic design tips

According to futurologist Alvin Toffler, information overload can be counterproductive when informing people. The human mind just isn’t designed to hold too much information at once — we’re only meant to process one thing at a time. With that in mind, you should layout your deck like an infographic to avoid visually overwhelming viewers. Here’s how to do that:

Use white space. If you want to highlight the right information, don’t shy away from white space. This helps relax people’s eyes and focus their attention on the more important visuals in your presentation. According to Piktochart head of design See Mei Chow’s infographic layout cheat sheet, it also lets you arrange content according to your intended goals.

Visualize as much as possible. While graphs and charts are good visual representations in your presentation deck, it’s highly encouraged to get more creative with your visuals. Design Shack’s Joshua Johnson suggests that you establish a visual metaphor to focus on when you’re visualizing data.

One of the examples Johnson shows is a Grant Thornton infographic on various nations’ race to economic growth, featuring a literal race track serving as the bar graph. Similarly, reinvent conventional diagrams and incorporate them into metaphors relevant to your topic.

Make it readable. Although you’ll want to make appealing visuals, make sure your data is readable at a glance. Avoid over-embellishments by keeping your visuals simple enough to read. Use the appropriate font size and style for your typography. It’s the calculated use of visuals that makes infographics so appealing. Apply the same tactical reduction of clutter to your deck as you start designing and formatting its overall layout..

Make your contents as specific and concise as possible with these tips:

Label the info. One of the easiest ways to distinguish the objects on your deck is to label them. This works if you’re presenting statistics, which can be very technical. For example, when labelling your diagram, specify if the item is the percent of market share increase, the amount of new lead conversions, or something else.

Explain connections. Dropping information at random can be confusing. Your presentation needs a narrative hierarchy that connects each of your points. Show how Point A gets to Point B in your visualized data. Is it through a comparison of these points, or a progressive timeline? This gives your deck a smoother flow that complements your pitch.

Differentiate images. Establishing a pattern makes your design look more consistent. Just leave enough room to differentiate between similar objects to avoid any confusion. Aside from labels, give your images some variety in order to make each point distinct. Data on this year’s sales might be visualized differently from, say, the age range of your customers.

Be careful not to oversimplify your visuals. The mind may be designed to avoid processing exaggerated images, but making your visual presentation clear to the viewer is just as important to get your message across clearly.