Design Tips

In case you do want to start from scratch or go beyond the templates, here are some tips at the end to improve your design skills.

White space is your friend in all things graphic design-related. Less is more.

Limit the number of words—the focus is on the graphical elements telling the story of the numbers or facts. Think in keywords, phrases, or single short sentences at most.

Stick to a few fonts or typefaces. Too many is just a mess, the wrong ones can make text harder to read, and then your point is lost to the reader. Pick a font that reflects your library’s own font selections, or at least its brand personality. Choose fonts that fit the theme, topic, and tone of the graph ic you are creating (e.g., friendly, round-edges vs. strong; geometrics vs. elegant, light scripts).

Pay attention to color—it creates harmony, sets a mood, and gives your work a foundation. Use your library or organization’s brand colors or palette. Check which tools allow you to add your own brand colors or to customize templates to change the set colors.

Contrast is key—not just between colors, but of weights, heights, textures, patterns, and sizes.

Symmetry is powerful and calming—the human eye and brain are attuned to symmetry.

Repetition can help tie elements together, as well as emphasize areas of focus.

Use lines, colors, shapes, repetition, and scale to empha size points or draw the eye through the graphic. These are just good design principles—and are baked into most of the premade templates of the infographic tools online. But it still helps to remember them!

Give citations or footnotes in small text (and with hyper links) for sources of data and information.

Make sure your URL is clear and present on all infograph ics—you want to make sure your library is credited when your fantastic design is shared everywhere on social media!

Add hyperlinks to more than just the footnotes of your graphic and make the entire design more interactive.

STAYING POWER

Infographics are here to stay, but styles change, so there will always be new, popular, trendy designs you can jump on. The web or cloud-based options presented in this article are easy to use wherever you are, offer collaboration with library teammates, lower cost, are constantly updated, and have no need for enterprise-level systems. You don’t have to download on multiple computers across multiple branches or offices.

As attention spans shorten and more raw data becomes available, both from within our organizations and through external sources, incorporating infographics into your communication efforts becomes evermore important.