A solid idea is the essential foundation of a great infographic. While this may sound obvious, it is the most common mistake made by companies developing infographics today, leading to a slew of poorly thought-out visual disasters. I aim to spotlight a few of these pitfalls, to help you first recognize what you are trying to do, then identify the types of ideas that will help you achieve it.
Your primary consideration in choosing a topic should be your intended results. If you have a specific data set to visualize, or a concrete concept that needs to be explained visually, this will shape the direction immediately. However, if you are looking to utilize an infographic for marketing purposes and want to get as much mileage out of the piece as possible, you must choose your topic wisely. Do you want to provide an understanding of your product or service? Materials to support sales efforts? Brand exposure? Traffic and backlinks? Thought-leadership?
Want all of the above? Too bad. They all sound oh-so nice, but you can’t have them all at the same time. In fact, you can have very few of them if you want your graphic to be effective. Some of these can coexist with the right idea. Others are polar opposites, and will negate each other’s positive effects when combined. The way we think about graphics for the purpose of marketing is simple. There are two general directions you can take.
Brand Infographics
The first is the brand-centric infographic, which is based on a specific company or product. It explains the features of a product, unique processes, or company milestones or accomplishments. This is useful in presentations, sales materials, marketing collateral, or press releases. The target audiences are typically customers or potential customers, employees, or those in your specific industry who are aware of your company.
This graphic is incredibly useful for presenting a specific message to a very targeted audience. This also comes at a cost. By discussing something specific about your company, mass appeal is lost. This type of graphic is not going to get picked up by major news sites or go viral across the Web. As much as we would all like to think otherwise, when someone is looking for news online, they don’t want to read about your product. That is what advertising was for.
That is not to say that these graphics don’t provide a very real value. A visual depiction can often take information that is difficult to communicate verbally or in text and make it easily understood. This type of messaging is not only efficient, but also engages the target audience more than a traditional sales presentation, press release, or white paper.
I should also mention that there are exceptions to this. When a company has a passionate mainstream following, or has discovered something remarkable in their proprietary data, the stars can sometimes align to have this kind of content spread. Notable examples would be our recent piece for StumbleUpon, Mint’s data pieces, or this nostalgic timeline of Playstation’s history. Just know that the line here is very subtle, and instances of mainstream success are rare.
Editorial Infographics
The second type is the editorial infographic. This graphic is designed to have mass appeal, positioning the creator as an interesting source of information within an industry or on a specific topic. These infographics have the potential to be shared frequently online, bringing traffic, links, and brand exposure with it. These graphics should not include any references to your company in the content, but can include a company logo at the bottom to let people know the source of the information as it is shared online.
These infographics should cover interesting topics loosely related to your general industry. For example, a financial services company could display a breakdown of how the Federal Reserve Bank works, or a location-based service could cover a brief history of cartography. The broader and more interesting the topic, the better the graphic will perform. In order to be effective, brands must think of themselves as publishers. It may be difficult to resist the urge to promote the brand directly, but it is essential to an editorial infographic’s success.
How to Ruin Your Infographic
One of these options is not inherently better than the other. They serve very different purposes. It is essential that your marketing priorities are established before you choose your topic. The simplest way to ensure that you don’t achieve any of your objectives is to try to bridge the gap between the two. That is, choosing a somewhat broad editorial topic, then slipping in brand-mentions to try to derive as much branding value as possible. The audience is not stupid, and they know when they are being marketed to. This will create skepticism toward your content, which will quickly ruin any good vibes you had going with the audience.
For someone who eats, sleeps, and breathes the work of their company, it can be difficult to understand that even if the company is innovative, ambitious, and about to change the world, people don’t always want to hear about it. Rest assured that with a steady flow of engaging content, they will soon discover it on their own, as they become aware of the source of these informational graphics.
Let me know your thoughts on the matter @rtcrooks, @columnfive
Great post guys, thanks waiting for the infographic now
Well said Ross. You effectively yet simply explained the two types and the purposes they serve. Important things to remember. Curious what the secret sauce is to getting the brand infographic that gains mass appeal? Apple seems to be the silver bullet.
Interesting post, Ross, but unsettling. While the infographics gold rush continues in the online marketing world, the fundamental purpose of infographics unfortunately remains quite murky. You may mean well to provide guidance for when and how to use infographics, but I think a bigger, more important issue is left untouched here.
Information design, as the broader area of practice, has a very rich history and legacy, but it’s most important lessons get overshadowed — even ignored — because there is so much stuff masquerading as effective information design and “best practices.” Specifically, the notion that infographics should be used to “create mass appeal” and drive traffic is a particularly troubling phenomenon, as it makes luring attention (and generating revenue) the priority over promoting genuine understanding and enabling people to live better lives — what I and many other professional information designers believe is its true purpose. There has been far too much bickering over how to make infographics, as the recent “do’s and don’ts” debate on Smashing magazine illustrated (http://bit.ly/r9qDJ7), but what’s needed is an honest exploration of the real “why” behind this work.
To be clear: there’s nothing wrong with explaining things with infographics, whether they’re about products, services, or general subjects. But there is something very wrong when they become decoys or content “lite” for companies who really don’t have anything of substance to offer, or more likely, no imagination. Perhaps the most important part of an infographic is questioning the very need for one (GASP!). Ask yourself: “What’s my real goal? Am I looking to use an infographic to help people, or am I just out to capitalize on a hot trend?” Whatever you do, just make certain you’re not deceiving your audience by playing the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
@Michael – Thank you for your thoughtful reply, you present some very interesting points.
I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment that information design should never be used as deceptive device to mislead an audience in order to garner attention and appeal. In fact, the purpose behind this post was to posit that a very real value must be provided to the viewer in order for a graphic to benefit both parties. If no valuable information is provided, then as you state, there is absolutely no reason for a graphic.
Where our opinions seem to differ is that when it comes to information design, I don’t believe that there is a sacred tradition that must be observed across the myriad mediums available today as it has been in the print pieces of the past. Technological advancement has afforded us not only the evolution of visualization methods, but also the evolution of application for information design. While I love the history and purpose of journalistic infographics and believe it should continue in this form, I also recognize that the combination of information and graphic design has infinite potential beyond this use alone.
While the non-altruistic nature of marketing infographics may sour the purist’s perception, I think that a correlation can be drawn to the evolution of advertising. If a beer commercial during the Super Bowl makes you laugh, but doesn’t talk about the beer, is this deceiving the viewer? No, it is providing value to the viewer in the form of humor. Informational visual content is doing just that. Providing value to the viewer in the form of knowledge, without force feeding brand messaging in the process. I, for one, would prefer this to traditional advertising any day.
I appreciate your response, Ross, and I acknowledge there is some overlap in our points of view. Value must exist in whatever we create, not just for our clients or ourselves, but for our audience. But what we each consider real “value” may differ somewhat, since we each hold distinct notions of “means” and “ends,” and the altitudes at which they operate. Ultimately, we may politely agree to disagree on the right and wrong of information design, but I would like to offer these thoughts:
Information design really has very little to do with tools, technology and application. Those will continue to evolve throughout history, as you note, and present new technical constraints and opportunities. What remains central, from the ancient map makers to the modern data visualization professionals, is the purpose: to inform, to illuminate, and to demystify complexity for the sake of human advancement. Every great example of information design I can think of meets these criteria, however grand or humble, high-tech or low-tech. Call it a “sacred tradition,” “purist,” or “altruistic,” but it’s a very basic and very real motivation for many of us working in this space, the raison d’être. And to your point about its potential, there is enormous untapped potential for information design to improve the rather dismal state of affairs in the world today. More energy and talent could certainly be focused towards making sense of it.
Finally, I’m not sure I agree with the comparison to the evolution of advertising. Maybe I’m biased in this regard, but delivering the same essential value proposition in a snazzier, more entertaining form does not validate it or make it any better — it just makes it more different. “Modern” advertising has to work harder to stick (not necessarily to deliver much real content), so it resorts to gimmicks that stray further from the universal core message: buy this. Does that mean infographics should follow suit to be effective today? I don’t think so. Indeed, the audience is not stupid, but they should come to expect more from the communications professionals that serve them.
Glad to engage in civil discourse online.
Curious to see how this unfolds!
Nice work O,
@Michael – You must have had a good comment, it only took me about a year to respond. I am sure each of our thinking has evolved in that time. At the root of my perspective is the idea that graphic design, and its ability to display and communicate information, is a versatile medium. Similar to video or the written word, it can be used to carry many different types of messages.
Should the medium be used for good and not evil? I would hope so. However, the medium is irrelevant, as it is really a philosophical question of the highest use of one’s time, regardless of the tools being used. There is a full spectrum of opportunity for its use. Transparency vs. propaganda? Social good vs. commerce? Education vs. science? Which takes highest priority in each case? Some are obvious, some are not. Each application has different value, unique to the individuals creating or consuming the content.