Infographics are such a fun and effective visual way to display information. We at Buffer have certainly used them quite a few times to share information.
I always enjoy looking at them, but always feel like there is no way I could ever create one myself. Or is there?
There are so many tools being released every day allowing us to easily create better and better images— including infographics—to share and use in our marketing efforts.
Even folks (like me!) who never thought it possible to create one ourselves!
1. Canva
Canva is a powerful online design tool (and infographic maker) that allows you to create a variety of designs even if you do not have any design knowledge.
Canva provides a huge range of templates for you to pick from based on your exact design needs. A lot of the templates themselves are free, and some include elements like icons and pictures that you can purchase or replace with your own elements).
Price: Freemium; paid plans start at $12.99 per month
Noteworthy feature: The free plan will take you pretty far!
Ease of use: Easy
Time required to create an infographic: 30 minutes
Here’s a video tutorial to help you make the best use of Canva’s infographics templates.
2. Venngage
Similar to Canva, Venngage offers you a few different options to pick from in terms of what it is you want to create. You will find templates for things like reports, posters, promotions, and of course, infographics.
Within the infographic section, you will also find additional options to pick from that tend to deal with particular topics and categories of infographics, like:
- Statistical
- Informational
- Process
- Comparison
- Timeline
- Geographic
- Charts
- Tutorial
Once you find a template you like, it’s time to customize it! Venngage allows you to insert what they call “Widgets,” which can include things like maps and charts based on the specific info and data you have for your infographic.
Price: Free plan; paid plans start at $19 per month, per user
Noteworthy feature: A great gallery of ideas for design inspiration, updated almost daily
Ease of use: Easy
Time required to create an infographic: 30 minutes
Quick video tutorial:
3. Piktochart
Piktochart is another good option to create different types of infographics. You can pick from a few different formats, including a traditional infographic size (tall and skinny), presentation size (for slide decks), poster, and report.
You can then either create your own infographic from scratch or select one of their templates (some are free and others require you to either have a paid plan).
Once you have selected your template, you can simply drag and drop to add any graphic elements and text to your canvas. You can also upload your own images.
Price: Free; paid plans start at $29 per member, per month
Noteworthy feature: Great step-by-step tutorials
Ease of Use: Easy
Time required to create an infographic: 30 minutes
Quick video tutorial:
4. Easel.ly
easel.ly makes it really easy for you to create infographics. When you arrive on their main page, all you need to do is pick one of the many templates they offer. They also offer a way for you to search their template library by category.
Once you have found a template you like (or even when you start from scratch), you will be directed to a new window where you will be able to customize your infographic however you want. easel.ly provides a variety of tools such as backgrounds, shapes, text, charts, and more.
Price: Free account; Paid plans starting at $2 per month for students
Noteworthy feature: Free design sandbox you can play in without even registering for the service
Ease of use: Easy
Time required to create an infographic: 30 minutes
Quick video tutorial:
5. Visme
Visme is a multi-faceted design tool that’s developed specifically with the marketer in mind. It allows you to create presentations, animations, mock-ups, banners, and of course, infographics.
Once you login with your account, you will be greeted with a visual of all your projects (the space will be empty if you haven’t created any projects yet). You can click on the Create button to get started.
Then it’s time to pick the type of project you would like to create — in our case, an infographic. You will notice that some of the templates are free to use and others require a premium account.
You will then be able to customize your infographic however you like with a variety of tools. Visme even allows you to add effects or animate objects inside the infographic.
Price: Free; Paid plans start at $29 per month
Noteworthy feature: Make interactive infographics with links, animations, and pop-ups
Ease of use: Easy
Time required to create an infographic: 30 minutes
Quick video tutorial:
6. Infogram
Infogram is a design tool for those who love numbers and data. Its strong data visualization chops help you create simple infographics from complex data sets. But from an artistic perspective, its templates feel somewhat limited. If you’re a free user, you’ll have even fewer choices.
Once you have picked the template, you can edit the elements on the page. Infogram is a good option when dealing with statistics. When you need to assign numbers to graphs and maps, this is your go-to tool.
Price: Free; Paid plans start at $25 per month
Noteworthy feature: Paid versions of the tool offer SQL connectors, data analytics, link tracking and engagement analytics – nearly no other competitor offers such in-depth metrics.
Ease of use: Intermediate
Time required to create an infographic: 45 minutes
Quick video tutorial:
7. Adobe Creative Cloud Express (formerly known as Adobe Spark)
Adobe Creative Cloud Express is a quick and easy way to create an infographic. It has over 10,000 templates to choose from and thousands of free license-free assets to smarten up your design. Even though the free templates go a long way, you might need to pay for the Premium plan to access many of the features.
Creative Cloud Express uses a drag-and-drop editor which is super simple to use. Search through the templates to get the one you want, and then start editing.
Price: Free; Paid plans start at $9.99 per month
Noteworthy feature: Specializes in building visual resumes
Ease of use: Easy
Time required to create an infographic: 10 minutes
Quick video tutorial:
8. Snappa
Snappa is a versatile little design tool that was a pleasant discovery for me. Most design tools offer bare-bones functionality for their free accounts. Not Snappa. You get nearly all the features of paid accounts with the free plan, with the only exception being limited downloads per month for free users.
The tool lets novice designers create everything from social media content to infographics to custom designs, with plenty of built-in templates to choose from.
Combined with its vast, free library of images, fonts, and icons (black and white as well as color), this tool packs a big punch in a small package.
Price: Free; Paid plans start at $15 per month
Noteworthy feature: Surprisingly feature-rich, even for free accounts
Ease of use: Easy
Time required to create an infographic: 15 minutes
Quick video tutorial:
9. Animaker
Primarily an animated video development tool, Animaker also offers the option of building animated infographics. With a built-in library of animated characters, scenes, icons and images, users can pick and choose their story elements to build an animated infographic step by step.
As with other tools, Animaker offers a variety of animated templates to use as the foundation for your infographic. Each template is essentially a video that is then dropped into their graphic editor to be customized for your needs.
Building the infographic itself is straightforward, though a little time-consuming. However, that’s probably to be expected for a fully animated, video infographic.
For someone who’s never created a video before, there’s a slight learning curve that non-animated infographic tools don’t typically have. Also, note that you do need to have Flash Player enabled to use the tool.
Price: Free; Paid plans start at $20 per month
Noteworthy feature: Build richly animated infographics without a digital video professional
Ease of use: Intermediate
Time required to create an infographic: 45 minutes
Quick video tutorial:
10. BeFunky
BeFunky is a tool to help non-designers create professional-looking designs and edit photographs like trained pros. The infographic maker is a part of their design package and uses the same drag and drop interface as the rest of the tool.
With just one free infographic template, the tool can be a tad limiting for free users, but it does offer a much wider variety of templates with the BeFunky Plus plan.
The tool has a built-in connection with free image libraries Pixabay and Unsplash, saving you the trouble of getting out of the tool to look for the perfect images for your infographic. The photo editing options available here are far more advanced than in a typical infographic maker.
Helpfully, BeFunky also has an extensive tutorial section that explains step by step how to give professional effects to each image.
Price: Free; BeFunky Plus is available at $9.99 per month.
Noteworthy feature: Superb photo editing capabilities with a free library of images and expert-level vector graphics
Ease of use: Easy
Time required to create an infographic: 30 minutes
Quick tutorial
11. Biteable
Biteable is a powerful video creator that lets you create HD-quality videos for free. And since we’re all about infographics here today, let me assure you that you can definitely build convincing-looking video infographics with this tool.
It has a number of infographic video templates that you can pick from and edit to your heart’s content. With tons of stock footage, icons, fonts, and more, designing your own video infographic on Biteable is quick and simple for even a novice.
Free users can publish their custom infographic videos directly to YouTube and Facebook, while the paid plan lets you download them, store them inside your Biteable account, or publish them to the social channel of your choice.
Price: Free; Biteable Premium is available from $99 per month
Noteworthy feature: A video infographic maker that’s easy to use
Ease of use: Easy
Time required to create an infographic: 30 minutes
Quick video tutorial:
12. Mind the Graph
Mind the Graph was created with the research community in mind, though it’s open to all to use. It provides over 3,000 awesome scientific illustrations and customizable infographic layouts.
(Which other infographic maker gives you such detailed graphics of bacteria, amoeba, and molecules?)
Starting with a basic free plan (no free templates!), this rather affordable tool offers progressively greater levels of customization and design options with paid plans.
Price: Free and paid plans starting at $14 per month
Noteworthy feature: A one-of-a-kind scientific infographic maker
Ease of use: Easy
Time required to create an infographic: 30 minutes
Quick video tutorial:
Watch me build an infographic in an afternoon (in 3 minutes)
The key to working fast on an infographic? Finding a solid template! I’m really grateful for the amazing infographic makers out there that make it as easy as can be. Here's a quick video of how I tried my hand at creating my own infographic!
A couple highlights:
- 0:09 – Found a great template!
- 0:40 – Drag-and-drop design parts
And here is my finished infographic. Total time to create: 15 minutes!
One of the amazing benefits of infographics is that they’re a wonderful visual asset for sharing on social media. The only catch: They’re not quite the ideal-sized image for sharing.
Twitter and Facebook tend to favor horizontal or square images, and infographics are extremely vertical! (Great for Pinterest, btw.)
One thing we’ve done to work around this:
Take screenshots of different parts of the graphic (and upload through Buffer ;)
For instance, with the infographic I built above, I could share this smaller-sized image as a teaser for the infographic.
Over to you
I find it incredible how easy it is to create beautiful infographics nowadays. I hope these tools will help you with creating your own. Good luck!
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