Infographics - The Way to Show Information or Data

What is a way to display information or a lot of data? Well, one way would for sure be using an infographic. What is an infographic you may ask? Well according to the Oxford English Dictionary, an infographic (or information graphic) is "a visual representation of information or data." However, in easier terms, it is simply a collection of imagery and data visualizations such as pie charts or bar graphs with minimal text to give an overview of a topic. Infographics are engaging visuals that communicate information quickly and easily. 

For this blog, I will be sharing three websites that offer the help of making infographics.  You can click on the image and it will take you directly to each site.

      

Piktochart

When you first log in, you come to your Dashboard where you can filter by creating a Piktochart Visual or Piktochart Video. For the purposes of this review, I focused on the Piktochart Visual; however, the Piktochart Video is a neat added feature not to be forgotten. Also on this dashboard or your home location, is any work that you have already created in the "Workspace" area. It does provide ease of access to be able to find something you've been working on quickly and easily. 

If you have not created an infographic on this site, the first step is to scroll down on the dashboard page to where the center states "Create New." This is where the fun begins! You have the option of starting with a completely blank canvas or using one of their pre-made templates and just inputting your own information. I am one of those "don't recreate the wheel" people, so I love the option of choosing templates to go through.

Once you find the template you want, you are able to choose from things such as icons, text, charts, maps, and styles. Each of those main categories breaks down even further giving you options for tons of illustrations and graphics of your choice. You are even allowed to upload your own images, so have fun putting those Bitmojis on your infographic and make it, even more, your own!

After you finish creating your infographic, then you are able to preview it before you share or print it. This particular site, Piktograph, was very user-friendly. Here is one that I created based on information gathered from an article on the Pew Research Center site.

Pros

• Can sign up for free using an email address or logging in through Google
• You can download the final project as a PNG, PDF, or Powerpoint
• User friendly
• A large bank of icons, graphics, charts, maps, and styles to choose from for free
• Clean-looking dashboard (easily find projects)

Cons

• A free account only allows 2 downloads
• A paid account is required for some higher graphics
• The Pro version for educators and students is $39.99

Easelly

Now for this one, I did not create a final infographic but did play around enough on the website to fill you in a bit. When you first open this site, you are able to set up a free account just like you could on Piktograph. You can use your email or be able to sign in by linking your Google account. 

There are a few options once you log in and are redirected to the nice clean dashboard. You can create a design, search their templates, create folders, or work on a project you have already started on. There are three different pricing levels based on your status and what you are needing. Each one adds a bit more to the price increase. Rates as of right now are Student $2 per month; Individual $4 per month; or Business $5 per month.

I do like that when you click "new design" the first thing to pop up is a sizing chart for you to select what size you want for the final project. This is great for making flyers or even posters! The graphics they offer for free are pretty generic but they are still colorful and would work well on items. They have a great selection of premade templates for the user to be able to go in and edit the information and graphics. This is super helpful for those like me that do not want to "reinvent the wheel" and start from scratch.

Overall, Easelly is very user-friendly and would be great to use with students and teachers for a fair cost. 

Infogram

For our final glance at a site to help build and create infographics, we will look at Infogram. My first impression of this site was not great compared to the sites above. I felt like the dashboard wasn't as clean and nice as the first view. There was a bit much going on and I had to really focus on what I was wanting to do.

I decided to go through the basic steps and start by clicking "create a project." After an overwhelming experience on the dashboard, I was pleasantly surprised that it immediately takes you to the templates. There are only twenty-five templates that fall under the free plan on Infogram. 

A huge downside to this site is that after you select your template, you are immediately prompted with whether or not you are making this infographic public or private. I prefer the use of private; however, only the paid version will allow for the selection of private. This is an issue if you were to use this with students in a classroom. After making it public just so I could play with more features, I became overwhelmed again. There is just too much on the screen to be able to figure out without clicking around too much which button you need. While this site had a lot of what was offered on the previous two, it was just not laid out comfortably for me personally. However, I would love to hear from anyone that has a different experience on this site.

Conclusion

In conclusion, infographics are a great resource and tool to use with students, teachers, and even community members. For example, maybe you are trying to highlight which genre of books are being checked out the most or the number of times students are visiting the library; you could use an infographic to get this information across versus a boring excel sheet or an article to read. Infographics are appealing to the eye and will help grab a reader's attention.

**Please note, to view images more clearly, please click on the image itself.**

Sources:

https://www.lexico.com/definition/infographic

https://piktochart.com/

https://www.easel.ly/dashboard

https://infogram.com/app/#/library

Anderson, M., Faverio, M., & McClain, C. (2022, June 2). How teens navigate school during covid-19. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. Retrieved June 26, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/06/02/how-teens-navigate-school-during-covid-19/