18 Infographic Design Tips Every Marketer Should Know (2024)

Creating infographics is a crucial skill for modern marketers.

Infographics allow us to communicate complex ideas in a visually engaging way, especially when there are a lot of numbers or statistics involved.

That’s because marketing is all about communication. Visualizing concepts through graphics helps you as a marketer get your point across clearly and add more value to your content at the same time.

For some marketers, especially those who don’t have any design skills or a dedicated graphic designer on their team, creating share-worthy infographics from scratch may seem like a daunting task.

If you’re one of these marketers, don’t worry.

The infographic design tips below will help you easily create stunning infographics that present your data clearly and concisely.

Infographic Design Tip #1: Select an Infographic Title

First things first. You need to select a title that will prime your audience for the data they’re about to digest in the next few minutes.

Clearly defining what the infographic will be communicating right at the beginning makes it easier to understand the rest of the graphic.

Even though this might seem straightforward, you would be surprised at how often this important detail is overlooked.

Try this. Before typing any copy or creating any of the graphics, type your title and give it to a friend or coworker. Ask them, “I know this may seem like a silly question...but, is it clear what this infographic will contain?”

Optimizing Your Infographic Title for SEO

Although infographics are technically images, they still contribute to the search relevance if part of a blog piece. If optimizing for search is part of your content strategy, we recommend including keywords in your title.

Infographic Design Tip #2: Choose Complementing Fonts

Not all fonts were created equal, and some fonts combinations work exceptionally well while others do not.

As a rule of thumb, you don’t want to use the same font in your title or headers as you do in the body of the infographic.

This actually applies to any body of text, not just infographic design, and it’s something that a lot of non-designers struggle with.

I use a tool called FontJoy that helps with choosing fonts that pair well.

Infographic Design Tip #3: Create Your Own Graphics

I used to be intimidated by vector images, but after understanding how combining other shapes can create a completely different shape, I create custom images all the time.

It’s easy to create nice-looking vector graphics from various shapes. After some practice, you’ll be able to start deconstructing vector images you see online or elsewhere.

Here’s a useful guide by Visme to help you learn how to use shapes in infographic design. With a few pre-made shapes and a bit of imagination, the list of unique graphics you can create is endless.

In the example above, notice how one of our designers at Visme created a simple envelope graphic out of three shapes.

One light gray triangle (placed upside-down), one dark gray triangle (placed right side up), and one medium gray rectangle (placed at the bottom).

Infographic Design Tip #4: Specify Your Infographic Design Medium

Your infographic design medium is simply the vessel that will carry your design to your audience.

Will your audience be viewing the infographic on a mobile device? Computer? During a presentation?

When creating an infographic, it’s easy to assume that everyone who views it will be viewing it in the same place or on the same device, and that all of those viewing environments will be equal—this is not the case.

While most things on the internet should be optimized for mobile, some still prefer to consume long form content, such as eBooks, on a laptop or tablet. These considerations will help you determine the scale of your design and how small or large you should make your copy.

Also, if you plan to print your infographic, you will need to first determine the dimensions of the page it will be printed on, and then decide how much of that page your infographic should take up.

It’s always a good idea to have a proof created before printing. Again, ask a friend or coworker to review it with a fresh set of eyes.

You can read all about choosing the right infographic design medium in Visme’s free eBook on creating infographics.

Infographic Design Tip #5: Use Premade Graphics and Icons

If your infographic requires photography or you still need practice creating shapes out of other shapes, you can always use premade graphics.

However, make sure that you can legally use the image in your infographic, especially if you're planning on publishing it online.

A simple way to be certain that your infographics remain legal is by tapping into Visme’s library of thousands of free infographic icons and shapes and millions of free stock images for nearly every industry and purpose.

To access this treasure trove of graphics and images, simply click on "Graphics" in the Visme editor and enter your keyword in the search bar.

Infographic Design Tip #6: Use a Premade Color Palette

Choosing colors that work well together can make your infographic look more visually appealing and easier to read and understand.

But if you’re not a designer, putting together a great color palette with complementing colors can be a difficult and time-consuming task.

If choosing colors isn’t your forte, there are plenty of tools to help you out. For example, you can use the pre-designed color palettes and themes in Visme to instantly change the colors of your infographic.

Other tools to use for help with color palette selection are Coolors and ColorHunt. They’re both free to use and very helpful.

Infographic Design Tip #7: Be Mindful of the Infographic Flow

When conceptualizing your infographic, use a pencil and paper to build a simple wire-frame as if you were designing a website.

You should be able to establish a flow for your design, so that the eye naturally goes from one block of information to the next.

In Western cultures, text and graphical content generally follows a left-to-right and top-to-bottom pattern, but this isn’t always the case.

I’ve seen many well-designed infographics with a zigzag or snake-like pattern— it works as long as the flow is intuitive and the data is clear.

Customize these infographic templates today!Try It Free!

Once all of your information is in the right sequence and you begin to work on the first draft of your infographic, you can also use images and symbols to help reinforce the flow of your infographic, such as arrows.

If you’re still having trouble making the flow of your design intuitive, all of the infographic templates in Visme serve as a good starting point and were built as a turn-key solution by our team of professional designers.

Infographic Design Tip #8: Avoid Flat Design

Flat design occurs when there is no z-axis depth to the visuals in the design, which gives it a flat appearance. Sometimes this is done intentionally by designers, but many people find non-flat designs to look more appealing.

The more aesthetically appealing your infographic is, the more engaged your audience will be. And the more engaged your audience is, the longer they’ll spend analyzing and extracting value from your content.

An easy way to avoid flat design is to use a drop shadow effect, which can easily be accomplished by selecting a shape or image and toggling "dropshadow" on or off inside the Visme editor.

You can also achieve the appearance of depth by placing an offset duplicate image in the back of your foreground image and toggling its opacity.

Getting this right will take a little bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be using it in all of your infographic designs.

Infographic Design Tip #9: Use Complementing Images

Whether you’re using graphics made by a third-party or creating the images yourself, make sure they look like they belong together.

What does this mean? I like to use popular cartoons as an example.

Everyone knows what the characters in the popular cartoon series “The Simpsons” look like. Although there’s enough variation for you to tell characters apart, they all have similar enough characteristics.

It's not surprising that one could easily point out a Simpsons character in a hypothetical lineup of cartoon characters (“It was him, he did it…the one with the skateboard and four fingers on each hand”).

When using images, ensure that they follow a common theme or look like they belong together (like the Simpsons example). Many of the premade icons in Visme have several complementing icons that were made using the same style and should flow nicely in your design.

Infographic Design Tip #10: Rule of Thirds

If you have ever taken a photography class or a visual media course, you are probably familiar with the Rule of Thirds.

The Rule of Thirds is a visual hierarchy rule that calls for the subject of your photo, video, or design to be slightly to the left or right of a frame.

There are several reasons for this, but it all boils down to it simply being more interesting to your viewer and, in general, more aesthetically appealing by not drawing the eye immediately to your subject.

The way the Rule of Thirds can be applied to your design is imagining each vector image as an individual picture that exists in an individual frame.

This imaginary frame can be divided into a 3x3 grid and your vector image should be placed on the right or left intersections of this grid. This will generally be more applicable when your elements are closer together.

Infographic Design Tip #11: Size and Scale

Size and scale is probably one of the hardest things to master in design for non-designers, but will provide the most amount of value to the overall appearance of your marketing infographics.

The first and most obvious thing in terms of size and scale is that you want your design to be clear and easily consumable. Keep in mind that this can be challenging if your infographic is going to be printed.

Again, if you’re not an experienced designer (and even if you are), always ask for what’s called a proof before any large printing job.

Aside from text, size and scale can also be used as a tool to add depth to your design by making images appear nearer or farther in a frame.

Size and scale can also be used as a graphical representation of data—the larger the image, the larger the data figure.

Just like the Rule of Thirds, size and scale is also an extremely powerful tool for expressing visual hierarchy in your infographic design.

Infographic Design Tip #12: Alignment

Use alignment in your text and graphics to add order and symmetry to your design. Alignment is a design concept used for organizing elements along the edges or the center to create a clean, uncluttered visual effect.

You use this concept all the time in word documents, where there are three to four buttons for left-justified, centered, or right-justified text.

This infographic design tip is especially useful if you’re going for a more minimalist approach to your design.

Customize your own infographic today!Create Now

This may be a bit more advanced, but don’t be afraid to play around with it. Even professional designers like to experiment things just to see how they look. If it doesn’t work, no harm no foul.

Many of the Visme infographic templates already have aesthetically appealing alignment baked in. All you need to do is replace the text and graphics with your own content.

Infographic Design Tip #13: Sources and Contact Details

Although this is more of a marketing tip, it’s worth mentioning because it is something that needs to be considered when creating your design.

Ensure that there is ample room left at the bottom of your design to link to any sources of data used in your infographic and to showcase your company’s contact details and information.

If you’re going to publish an infographic full of valuable information on the internet, then expect it to be widely shared and distributed.

Your infographic design should include a clear and easy way for someone to find your company’s social media sites and website.

If your infographic is technical or the information is highly specialized, it wouldn’t hurt to include an email address where someone could easily reach out for questions.

Infographic Design Tip #14: Mix It Up

When presenting multiple sets of data in an infographic, try to use different types of data visualization.

In other words, don’t use the same kind of graph, chart, or image multiple times to show different kinds of data. This will keep your design fresh and your audience engaged.

If you do need to use the same kind of data visualization to represent multiple data sets, try experimenting with size or color to create some differentiation between the graphics.

When creating contrast between data, the size or color doesn't have to represent anything directly other than telling the audience “These two graphs are different”.

Infographic Design Tip #15: Use Color Strategically

Designate a color within your infographic’s color palette that's used to highlight or emphasize different parts of your design.

This color should be designated strategically to provide enough contrast between the other colors so that the eye is quickly drawn to it.

Once this color is established in the design as the highlight color, your audience will associate it with important information or important graphical representations of data.

Using color as a means to emphasize ideas will create more clarity in your overall message.

Infographic Design Tip #16: Sometimes, Less is More

This holds true for design in general, but the rule doesn’t change when it comes to creating infographics for marketing purposes.

The whole idea of an infographic is that you’re taking complex information and condensing it down onto one, easily understandable page.

So, your task really isn’t to communicate a bunch of data. Your task is to communicate a bunch of data...simply.

If you take this idea and allow it to resonate throughout your design, you’ll find yourself removing unnecessary images or graphics.

Infographic Design Tip #17: Use Sticky Notes and a Whiteboard

One interesting use case for infographics is to help someone visualize a complex process. Depending on the process, there can be several moving parts with key events and “if this then that” scenarios.

When I need to create an infographic like this, I start mapping out the process visually using sticky notes, a whiteboard, and a few markers.

It’s not always easy to visualize processes, so make the mistakes early on while they’re easy to correct. There’s nothing worse than having to go back to make time-consuming edits to fix simple errors in a final draft.

Infographic Design Tip #18: Stay Inspired

Finally, it’s important to stay inspired as you’re designing your infographic.

The creative process is sometimes challenging and it can be easy to get frustrated when you’ve seemingly run out of ideas.

The best design work will come from a rested mind that’s enjoying the task at hand. If you’ve been in front of the computer for too long, get up and take a walk to get some oxygen flowing to your brain.

Don’t think that all of your design work has to be original; many professional designers take inspiration from the work of other designers.

Browse Visme’s blog for plenty of infographic examples, or go to an online community for designers, such as Behance, for additional inspiration.

Use These Infographic Design Tips With Visme

As information continues to become more readily available in our lives, It’s important that marketers hone their skills at designing the best infographics. Audiences now expect to gather value from data quickly and clearly.

Use these infographic design tips when setting out on your next infographic project. If you’re new to it, you’ll be surprised at what you can create!

To get started, sign up for Visme and gain access to all of our premium infographic templates, stock images and vector graphics.