Today’s non-designers are equipped to create beautiful infographics without breaking a sweat. If you’re a Piktochart user, you know that you can easily drop your content and data into a myriad of professionally-designed templates and produce stunning visuals in no time. Beautiful visuals aside, you’ll also want your infographics to be effective and engaging.
1. Pick the Right Set of Colors
At the heart of basic design principles is learning what to do with colors. It may not seem obvious from the get-go, but picking the right scheme is possibly the single most important design decision you’ll make. We’ve written about picking the right color schemes in the past if you’re looking for a reference.
Picking your color scheme is tougher than you think, but Jacqueline says that the “Rule of 3 Colors” will lead the way.
It’s a two-step process:
Pick one primary color → Then pick two other complementary colors
The goal of the rule is just to simplify things for you and the recipient of your infographics. This way, colors are not fighting for attention so readers can focus on what really matters — your content.
You should also ask yourself three questions when picking your colors:
Any preset brand colors to keep in mind? Brand identity should be kept as consistent as possible, which is important to keep in mind if you are creating visuals for a client. This helps the audience quickly identify brand presence in the vast ocean of social media posts. A preset combination will also save you the time of picking colors.
Is your visual for seasonal marketing? Get inspired by your season’s color palette! Whether it’s a holiday (think Easter) or a festive season (Halloween is our personal favorite), it’s important to keep in mind the colors associated with certain special dates which can evoke certain moods.
What is your content trying to say? If you’re stumped, your content can actually help dictate the colors that you’ll use. For example, if your infographic is about the great outdoors, then you can use shades of green and blue – just like the forests and ocean.
pexels-photo-489800-7840125
2. Manage Your White Space
We ran a blog post about white space management a little while ago. Otherwise known as the “space between” screen elements or the “negative space,” the white space is a zone in an infographic that is free of any info or graphics!
Proper use of white space can spruce up your infographic in a number of ways including:
Improving the readability of your content. White space literally makes your infographic “easy on the eyes” for readers. It helps them focus on one section of content at a time, without being distracted by a nearby block. Without much white space, an infographic can appear to be cluttered and purposeless.
Improving consumption and comprehension. White space can be considered the unsung hero of a visual, silently guiding eyeballs through your infographic. The right use of white space helps readers consume content in the intended order and helps with prioritizing what’s meant to be read first.
See the below visual for an example of white space guiding your eyeballs (and yes, this visual includes plenty of intentional white space).
Knowing how to leverage white space is a fundamental design principle, and one of the first lessons every novice designer goes through.
[clickToTweet tweet=”A key part of what drives good white space use is an obsessive approach to alignment.” quote=”A key part of what drives good white space use is an obsessive approach to alignment.”]
An infographic with proper alignment makes all the difference, and we’re talking every bit of text, your images, logos, blocks. After all, an infographic’s life purpose is to present information in a beautiful way – so why make it look cluttered and confusing?
The below image tells all and you can immediately see the difference good alignment makes.
3. Choose the Right Typeface
To you, it might just be a matter of choosing a font that strikes your fancy, but there’s so much more to it.
Answers & Comments
Today’s non-designers are equipped to create beautiful infographics without breaking a sweat. If you’re a Piktochart user, you know that you can easily drop your content and data into a myriad of professionally-designed templates and produce stunning visuals in no time. Beautiful visuals aside, you’ll also want your infographics to be effective and engaging.
1. Pick the Right Set of Colors
At the heart of basic design principles is learning what to do with colors. It may not seem obvious from the get-go, but picking the right scheme is possibly the single most important design decision you’ll make. We’ve written about picking the right color schemes in the past if you’re looking for a reference.
Picking your color scheme is tougher than you think, but Jacqueline says that the “Rule of 3 Colors” will lead the way.
It’s a two-step process:
Pick one primary color → Then pick two other complementary colors
The goal of the rule is just to simplify things for you and the recipient of your infographics. This way, colors are not fighting for attention so readers can focus on what really matters — your content.
You should also ask yourself three questions when picking your colors:
Any preset brand colors to keep in mind? Brand identity should be kept as consistent as possible, which is important to keep in mind if you are creating visuals for a client. This helps the audience quickly identify brand presence in the vast ocean of social media posts. A preset combination will also save you the time of picking colors.
Is your visual for seasonal marketing? Get inspired by your season’s color palette! Whether it’s a holiday (think Easter) or a festive season (Halloween is our personal favorite), it’s important to keep in mind the colors associated with certain special dates which can evoke certain moods.
What is your content trying to say? If you’re stumped, your content can actually help dictate the colors that you’ll use. For example, if your infographic is about the great outdoors, then you can use shades of green and blue – just like the forests and ocean.
pexels-photo-489800-7840125
2. Manage Your White Space
We ran a blog post about white space management a little while ago. Otherwise known as the “space between” screen elements or the “negative space,” the white space is a zone in an infographic that is free of any info or graphics!
Proper use of white space can spruce up your infographic in a number of ways including:
Improving the readability of your content. White space literally makes your infographic “easy on the eyes” for readers. It helps them focus on one section of content at a time, without being distracted by a nearby block. Without much white space, an infographic can appear to be cluttered and purposeless.
Improving consumption and comprehension. White space can be considered the unsung hero of a visual, silently guiding eyeballs through your infographic. The right use of white space helps readers consume content in the intended order and helps with prioritizing what’s meant to be read first.
See the below visual for an example of white space guiding your eyeballs (and yes, this visual includes plenty of intentional white space).
Knowing how to leverage white space is a fundamental design principle, and one of the first lessons every novice designer goes through.
[clickToTweet tweet=”A key part of what drives good white space use is an obsessive approach to alignment.” quote=”A key part of what drives good white space use is an obsessive approach to alignment.”]
An infographic with proper alignment makes all the difference, and we’re talking every bit of text, your images, logos, blocks. After all, an infographic’s life purpose is to present information in a beautiful way – so why make it look cluttered and confusing?
The below image tells all and you can immediately see the difference good alignment makes.
3. Choose the Right Typeface
To you, it might just be a matter of choosing a font that strikes your fancy, but there’s so much more to it.
So choose wisely!