Research: Infographics

omygraphics
Jan 18, 2022
2 min read

Since I'm going to create an infographic of the most popular socks in my class, I researched the designs of existing infographics to get layout and design inspiration for my own.

I always start my projects by researching existing work, otherwise, when you just think from your head with no design influence, it's rare you'll produce something that looks the best it could be.

On the odd occasion, you have a thought and you think 'this is exactly what I want to design', but most of the time, that doesn't happen.

When anyone in my class asks me for design help, I always tell them to look up work online first. I'm not a pro graphic designer with years in the industry of course, so I don't believe for one second that every piece of graphics advice I give is going to be the best or helpful, but this is something that really helped me in my Graphics GCSE, personal projects, and my last few projects on Level 3 Graphics.

After Google searching 'infographics', this design caught my eye. It's a cover for an article about the benefits of using infographics.

I love the flat, 60s, retro, pop art design. The dots remind me of Roy Lichtenstein, one of my favourite artists. As a HUGE pop art fan, I really love this design. You can see they've used about four main colours and no more, and its a really nice pallet too.

https://www.frontporchsolutions.com/benefits-to-using-infographics-in-content-marketing/

After scrolling through that Google search page for a while and finding nothing else too inspiring, I searched 'illustrated infographics', with the idea that I love illustration, and it might give me some ideas. I found a few images that really stuck out to me.

Avocado Infographic

Although this image isn't illustrated as such, I really like the flat vectorised appearance. The textures add a bit more interest to the infographic, which I really like.

The designer has used the avocado to display their data. So, instead of using random bar charts and pie charts, they have presented their data stylistically through an avocado. It all helps to make the infographic more appealing and digestible. It's a good idea to take into my socks infographic.

I think this infographic is easy on the eye, because of the colour pallet and simple vectors.

Soup Infographic

Here's a step-by-step infographic for parents to teach their children using soup! I like the parody of the Heinz can. The designer has found/drawn a Heinz-like typeface. It's clever because you can immediately tell what the infographic might be about. Speaking of, there are lots of visual clues in this infographic, from the red 'tomato soup' background, the orange splash emerging from the soup can, and of course, the soup can itself.

Messaging Apps Infographic

The take on the blue iMessage bubble is used here, which gives an immediate visual clue. This infographic only goes up to 2014, and things have changed since then (it doesn't feel 8 years ago) but the layout is something I can learn from.

The colours and the typeface aren't very imaginative, and for my design, I'd like to have more colour, but all in all, it's a good infographic.