Final week Canva made waves on social media with all of their bulletins about their new AI-powered design instruments. Whereas these instruments look nice and I plan to make use of them, I feel it is nonetheless essential for college students to be taught some primary design ideas as an alternative of simply counting on no matter an algorithm spits out. To that finish, here is an excerpt from a evaluation that I wrote of Randy Krum’s guide, Cool Infographics revealed again in 2013.
1. Be correct. It appears apparent, however you’ll find infographics aren’t correct. For instance, make sure that your pie charts add as much as 100%.
2. Inform one story rather well. An infographic that tries to do an excessive amount of finally ends up not telling a narrative in any respect.
3. The 5 second rule. Krum shares that a lot of the web page view length instances are 5-10 seconds for infographics featured on his weblog. Create infographics that inform a narrative shortly.
4. Massive fonts aren’t information visualizations. Krum states, “displaying the quantity in a big font does not make it any simpler for the viewers to know.”
5. Decrease textual content. Alongside the traces of #4 above. That is one other tip that appears apparent, but we see text-heavy infographics all around the net.
6. Remove chart legends. If the viewer wants a legend, your infographic’s story may not be as clear correctly.
7. Decide subject. Some matters aren’t as appropriate for infographic show as others.
Disclosure: I obtained a free press copy of the Cool Infographics guide.
