Become A Better Blogger - How I Created These Expensive-Looking Infographics

Published: Mon, 01/05/15

Have you ever wanted to create your own infographics but not known how?

In this edition of the "Become a Better Blogger" series, I'll show you how I created the two infographics in the posts...

And, I'll tell you what software bug caused me to lose hours of time and almost abandon the second project.

Outsource or DIY

I’ve always loved beautifully arranged, interesting infographics and wished I could create them myself. So when I was writing this post on ADHD in girls which included data that would lend itself well to an infographic, I decided to figure out how to get this job done.

First, I went on fiverr.com to see if I could find someone there to make it for me. (High end, expensive infographic designers from sites such as visual.ly are not an option when you're a blogger creating an infographic for a blog post.)

After spending a while browsing through projects and profiles on fiverr, I was discouraged. Most of the infographics shown were overly complex, messy and too distracting to actually consume the information.

Also, I still wasn’t even sure exactly what information I wanted in the infographic. How would I write the specs for the project when I didn’t know exactly what I wanted? And I wouldn’t know what I wanted until I started playing around with the information.

So I decided to check out the different options for creating infographics.

Online Tools to Create Infographics

I looked at the following three online tools to see which free version was most promising:

Piktochart seemed the easiest to get started, so I selected a free template and started adding my data.

It took me far longer than I expected, but I was reasonably happy with the results. And hey, it was free!

Here's the result of that first infographic using the free version of piktochart with the Minimalist template...

But it shouldn't have been THAT hard...

While I was rather pleased with my accomplishment of creating an infographic, I was very frustrated with how limited the piktochart tool seemed to be. I understood I was using the free version, but I couldn't see how to make the most simple edits to the template.

Still, I decided to try again with a second data-heavy post.

This time, I decided to invest the $29 membership fee to get access to better templates.

Again, I struggled with the usability of piktochart. Eventually, I decided to turn to their "help" section (yes, I'm one of those stubborn, just-figure-it-out-myself types). When watching one of their how-to videos, I realized that the version of piktochart I was seeing did NOT look like what was in the video.

SHOCK.

I opened the site in Safari - and it was completely different!!!

Piktochart basically was missing almost all the most important editing tools when I was using it in Chrome. (I'm on a Mac, and I'm using an up-to-date version of Chrome.)

I was frustrated over the time I'd wasted trying to change element colours and other basic tasks, but I was relieved to finally have the site working.

I still don’t know why the site doesn't work for me in Chrome and I haven't yet taken the time to submit a question to them. I just switched to Safari.

Now that my hands weren't tied behind my back, I could really get some work done.

Here's my second infographic using the premium version of piktochart with the Productivity template...

Since I've finally figured out how, I plan to make more infographics.

But I think I may also try the $19 per month version of venngage.com to see if I prefer it over piktochart.

Overall, I feel that for the time you will invest in designing and creating your infographic, the paid version is worthwhile. The premium templates are far more advanced than the free ones.

If you have created an infographic or if you create one in the future, please let me know and I'll pin it to our Infographics Pinterest Board.

Did You Miss Anything?

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What Do You Want To Know?

What would you like me to cover next week? Shoot me back a quick reply and let me know.

Talk soon,

Susan (and Janice)
5 Minutes For Mom

ps. To tell your friends about this "Become a Better Blogger" email series, you can send them here.