Bring your magazine to life with infographics

Simple, eye-catching and informative, infographics can convey complex ideas quickly and effectively. As a result, they’ve became increasingly popular in the past few years with everyone from large multinational corporations to small start-ups utilising the technique.

Infographics can be especially beneficial when designing a magazine or brochure. A great way to break up text, add colour to a page and boost visual interest, infographics can enhance both the aesthetics and the content of your design. To help you make the most of this powerful design tool, and side step common infographic mistakes, we’ve created a short guide on how you can bring your magazine to life with them.

Getting started

Though infographics can make an eye-catching addition to a magazine, it’s important that they’re not used just for the sake of boosting visual interest. When planning your layout, think about areas where an infographic could add genuine value to the page and to the content. If you’re going to use more than one infographic, ensure they’re spread relatively evenly throughout the layout to give the magazine a unified aesthetic.

Look for inspiration

Every day more and more infographics hit the web. When looking for inspiration on how you’re going to display your information, the internet is a great place to start so why not spend a few hours surfing good quality sites for ideas.

Choosing a style

When it comes to infographics, there are a lot of styles to choose from. Depending on the type of data you’re describing, you can choose from graphs, illustrations, maps, pie charts and a range of other illustrative techniques. If you’re including photos, images or graphics in your design, these may help to inform your choice of infographic style. If not, simply choose the aesthetic that best fits with your design. Once you’ve chosen a style, stick with it. Using the same visual language throughout your magazine will help to make your layout look professional and read more easily.

Highlighting important information

Colour is a fantastic tool for highlighting important information. When designing your infographic, select a colour scheme that will quickly convey the importance of the information you’re displaying. This will make your infographics easy to understand even for casual viewers. It’s also important to think about proximity when laying out your magazine. Placing infographics opposite important headlines or close to subheadings will emphasise their content and help to get your message across.

Don’t overdo it

Though infographics can look fantastic in a layout, it’s important you don’t overdo it. Too many will make your magazine look messy and will make it difficult for readers to pick out important information.