The visual depiction of any data, information or knowledge is known as infographics. Anybody can instantly understand even the complicated matter very easily in a visually pleasing way. These graphics can be used in those mediums where the complex information is desired to be explained quickly and at the same time easily. Such mediums include maps, journalism, technical writing and many more. This shows that the infographics have now been filled in almost all aspects of the modern world. Also, Infographics is the most important and unavoidable tool for mathematicians, scientists and statisticians to communicate their theoretical information. And they can be assured that this information will reach out to people even after thousands of years in future.
Infographics can be used for more than one reason like discovering cause-effect relations, to communicate a message, to reveal the data, to present large amount of information in an easy and compact way for easy understanding, to periodically monitor the progress of certain parameters, etc. To create an effective infographics, keep in mind the following points: be simple, make sure that you use different eye catching colors to make it more attractive and keep your text to a minimum and try to present the data more creatively.
Don’t be in a misconception that only professional designers can create impressive infographics. Now-a-days nothing is impossible with internet. There are several online tools and resources to help you in making your own infographics. But before you begin using any of these online tools, there are certain basic things which you have to do. The first and foremost thing is to carry out a research in the particular subject and do some reading to understand them completely. Once you have some data to work on, think about the design. The selected design must reflect your subject of data. Then try out several concepts to bring your ideas together in a best understandable way. On finalizing your concept, start giving some finishing touches like adding highlights and textures to make the graphics really impressive.
With these basic steps, start making your own infographics using any of the online tools available. Below is given a list of some of the best online tools which can help you.
1. Hohli
This is the most user friendly tool for creating different types of charts as per your requirement. The Hohli tool provides you a wide range of infographic options to choose, like line graphs, bar graphs, Venn diagrams, pie charts, radar charts and scatter plots. With few steps like selecting the type and size of display, and providing the information that you want to display, your chart will be generated automatically. You can also see how each set of data affects your chart’s display. Once it is done, save it to your PC or grab the embedded code on your website or blog. Visit this exciting Hohli software and create impressive charts on your own.
Hohli Chart Builder video from youtube:
2. Stat Planet
Create interactive visualizations in the form of simple flash maps or other advanced infographics using this free software of Stat Planet. You can explore even large sets of data very easily and quickly. This application enables you to create fully customized and highly interactive maps and at the same time it also provides you the option of including interactive charts and graphs to build feature-rich infographics. There are many useful tools available to fill in your details in the map. By using the user’s manual, you can also input your own data.
The most useful and interesting feature is of controlling the view of your map. You can choose to view the entire planet or a single country with a single click. You can input your data in spreadsheet and Stat Planet will upload it to your map and accordingly color codes each and every country. The application supports different map types like qualitative or descriptive maps, quantitative maps and proportional symbol maps. So, try to make some interactive maps with this Stat Planet software.
How to create an Interactive Map in 5 minutes video from youtube:
3. Google Public Data
This great free tool by Google enables you to either choose from numerous and neatly categorized existing data sets or create your own. To create your own infographics, just upload your information and the tool will create it for you. And only if you want, you can make your creation public. To view the image in its full size, click on the image. You can also embed your graph in a website or blog. Google Public Data provides you wonderful platform to create line charts and map type charts.
Google’s Public Data Explorer: A New Tool for Visualizing Information video from youtube:
4. Many Eyes
This data visualization site gives you two options: one is to browse through already existing infographics and another is to create your own. To create your own infographics, just upload it to Many Eyes and design your own visualization as you like to present it. The tool provides you many different useful options to give your final product a professional look. It has a wide range of choices to design your infographics, from creating a world map to a network diagram. The only drawback of this tool is that anyone in public can see the data that you have uploaded.
How to use Many Eyes video from youtube:
5. Creately
Use this powerful tool to create designs and draw diagrams very easily and quickly. For this, Creately provides hundreds of diagram templates and a large number of objects. With many powerful features present, this tool has come out to be a very useful application which gives you the perfect professional output. It can be used to create flowcharts, informational diagrams, website wireframes, organizational charts, mind maps, UML designs, doodle art, circuit board designs and lots more diagram types. The drag-and-drop WYSIWYG interface and easy to use collaboration capabilities makes the application very easy, collaborative and smart.
Project Collaboration the Visual way with Creately video from youtube:
6. Wordle
Image Source: paulhami.edublogs.org
Create different word clouds using this interesting tool. Wordle would generate word clouds using the text that you have provided. You can make your clouds as per your likings by giving different layouts, fonts and color schemes. The word cloud is the best option to show the key words in a document or speech. The size of each word is dependent on how many times it appears in that particular document thus giving a clear hint of how much weight is given for the particular issue. If almost all your data is word-based information, then choosing the old graphical solution is a bad idea, instead opt this tool and create more interactive and understandable word clouds.
Introduction to Using “Wordle” video from youtube:
7. Gapminder
Gapminder is a great tool for creating data visualizations. Gapminder provides you wonderful platform to create numerous and different types of graphs. There is a page specially made for teachers in which they can find graphs, thematic animations, model lessons, PDF guide and lots of quizzes. This tool is one of the best options for visual learners to understand the data sets in a better way as it provides the data in very different and at the same time in an understandable way compared to standard data sets.
How to use Gapminder Desktop video from youtube:
8. Tableau Public
Create great visualizations using this Windows based application. Recently, a free version of Tableau has been released named as Tableau Public especially for non analyst to create outstanding interactive charts without having any programming skills. You can create dashboards, interactive graphs, maps and tables from any virtual data and even embed them on your blog or website in few minutes. No doubt that this software is loved by many as it is designed for non professionals.
Tableau Public video from youtube:
