I first heard the term infographic last year, and I wasn’t entirely sure what made them so interesting or special. They’re just a chart of information with graphics added to make it all pretty, right? Well, turns out I was wrong. Infographics are an awesome way to create eye-catching reports, charts, and even posters that can be shared digitally or printed out. They give a visual representation to the key points, and if done right, can be quite engaging.
For this assignment, I perused three different infographic creation sites: easel.ly, infogr.am, and piktochart.com. Each of these three options offers a free subscription with the opportunity to upgrade for greater access to content. After that point of similarity, they quickly set themselves apart. Easel.ly was my first to check out, and I must admit that I found myself immediately confused as to how to begin. There was no “Start Here!” button, and I was overwhelmed by all the infographics on the front page. As I scrolled down, they just kept adding and adding. With no idea of where to go or even how to begin aside from outside tutorials I’d viewed, I decided to move on and find something more to my liking.
Next I looked at Infogr.am. The clean look to the site with an obvious “Learn” tab at the top of the page was immediately appealing to me. The price to upgrade if I chose to was a complete turn-off, though. $19 a month didn’t feel like the special educator pricing I had been promised. So, cool tutorials or not, this one was going to be a no. I wanted to land at a site I would enjoy so much that upgrading would be an obvious next step in the future.
Piktochart felt like a nice balance between the two other sites. There was a short video to watch to get myself going, the educator pricing was $39 a year, and there were several templates right up front to help me begin. After selecting a template, I found myself moving things around and adjusting the template to my needs within moments. It wasn’t that different than using something like Glogster, and in many ways, it was actually easier. The most difficult thing left for me to do was decide what data to include.
The following infographic was created using data from Pew Research Center. Enjoy!
https://magic.piktochart.com/output/11838496-internet-usage
Helpful. Thanks!
I like your use of visuals to give the information. I used infogr.am. I didn’t notice before I completed the page that you had to upgrade to download the page. I agree it is too expensive for me to want to use. Nice job!
Great overview! Thanks!
Hi,
I chose Piktochart as well. I think you did a great job on the layout of your Infographic and made the information you were presenting very clear in your title. I find, critiquing mine now, I still put too many words and did not rely on the pictures as much as I should have. I like how you utilized unique chart features like the triangular columns instead of just the traditional rectangles. It is eye-catching and emphasizes the data showing the rise in ownership.
I’m not sure there is just one way of doing these right, but letting the pictures do most of the talking does seem like a good direction. I have seen some that used few pictures and more words, but they were careful with the layout to draw the eye to the next item of information.
Nice work! Very informative and also great intel on the different kinds of webapps.
Great infographic! I think the hardest part of creating an infographic is choosing and organizing the information. I think this is why using an infographic in classrooms would call on higher order thinking because it definitely requires one to synthesize the information. I didn’t use piktochart this time around, but it is one that I said I’d be interested in trying out, in the future. Great job!
Thanks, Whitney! Choosing the information to use was definitely the hardest part. I know what I thought I was going to present, and what I ended up creating in the end, were vastly different.