Some infographics get clicks. Some get cringes. What makes the difference?
The answer isn’t just a pretty design — it’s an intentional approach that starts way before you start picking out a color palette or illustration style.
Let’s dig into the infographic creation process: the planning, writing, wireframing, and design steps that go into making great visual content that sticks with your audience and works toward your goals.
Before you start any writing or design, you have to strategize. There are lots of kinds of infographics — problem-solution-outcome, comparison, timeline, you get the idea — and it can be tempting to start with one specific kind of infographic in mind.
But before you can decide which type of infographic you’re making, you have to figure out why you’re making an infographic to begin with.
Start by assembling your Ingredients — at least, that’s what we call them at Lemonly. These include your goal, audience, main idea, and research. They make up the bones of your purposeful, polished infographic. Your goal and audience should help you determine the story you should be telling and the type of research or data you need to wrangle up.
Write your infographic for a reason. What are you trying to accomplish? Are you clearing up a misconception? Driving traffic to a webpage? Rallying an audience to your cause? Teaching teens how to do laundry without shrinking all their sweaters? Whatever you’re trying to do, make sure you can define it.
Write your infographic for someone. (Like the aforementioned laundry-doing teens!) Remember the cardinal rule of content: If your audience is everyone, your audience is no one. It’s almost impossible to decide the right depth and breadth of information to include without knowing who is reading the information.
When defining your audience, include both relevant demographics and their familiarity level with the content:
Once you have a clear goal and a defined audience, it’s time to come up with a main idea or thesis statement. The trick is making sure your topic is narrow and focused enough.
If your topic is too broad, your audience will be overwhelmed and unsure about what they should take away from the infographic. A broad topic can also make the infographic too long, and you might start losing people. (We don’t know if you’ve heard, but attention spans are getting shorter.)
So keep that topic focused. Define your main idea succinctly. What’s the one-sentence summary your audience should take away from your infographic? We like to write them from the audience’s perspective. For example:
Here's a best practice: Beware of a takeaway statement or main idea that includes the word "and."
"I understand the importance of this cause and know how to get involved" is fine. You have a main idea and a call to action. That's still a nice, narrow topic.
But "I know the company history and understand how the product works" is iffy. Does it really make sense to include both of those things in one graphic? Which is more important for the audience to know? Does the company history have anything to do with how the product works? Probably not. Pick a lane and keep things purposeful.
When planning your infographic, it's important to nail down your topic — and it should probably be more narrow than you think. Read why the best infographics have a specific, focused topic and how to plan yours for a successful infographic.
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At this point in the process, you know what your overall goal is, who you’re talking to, and what you want them to take away from the infographic. Now you have to back it up with evidence and information.
Start rounding up the resources you need to fill in supporting points for that main idea. Some of it might already live in your brain or in existing content or materials you’ve already created. If you’re working with a team or tackling a more technical subject, you might need to talk to a subject matter expert or two. If you’re using outside sources, make sure to cite them in your final graphic. Found some raw data? Find some analysts to help you tease out the insights.
You have your main idea. You have your data. Use those two things to figure out the key supporting points or main sections of your infographic. Let’s take it back to essay outlining in school — each of your supporting points should ladder up to your main idea and have proof to back it up.
Aim for two to four main sections of your infographic content. Under those, fill in your data points — qualitative, quantitative, or a mix of the two. Once you have that outline, you’re pretty close to having a full copy draft for your infographic.
The most important thing to remember at this point is that your words won’t stand alone, no matter how beautifully they’re structured. That’s the whole point.
Visuals give us the chance to live out that great writing mantra — show, don’t tell. Infographics are unique from other marketing content or design pieces because the visuals carry so much of the meaning — they’re not just there to decorate the text. When we have the opportunity to use an illustration, diagram, or chart to explain information, we use it. Those elements require visual space and copy formatted with flexibility.
How do you provide that flexibility? By sticking to the copywriters’ three Cs: Clear, concise, and compelling.
As you beef up your outline into a full draft, be careful with your beefing. If you feel yourself starting to write paragraphs, pause and make sure that’s the most clear, concise, and compelling way to represent the information.
Before you head into design, remember these best practices:
That’s how you get solid, complete infographic copy.
When you cut out the clutter, your central idea has more room to shine. Check out five tips for cleaner, more focused writing.
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Once you have your copy all written and beautifully formatted, it’s time to design. In the design phase, it’s important to remember visual elements in an infographic aren’t just decorative. They help communicate your meaning. The design should be clear, beautiful, and accessible. It helps the reader process the information. It’s delightful to look at. And it follows accessibility best practices, so it can be enjoyed by as many people as possible.
There are two important stages of infographic design the Lemonly way. The first is the wireframe and moodboard phase. The second is design.
A wireframe is a grayscale blueprint of your infographic showing the text, layout, and notes with planned visual elements. Think placeholder shapes or images with notes like “icon of piggy bank” or “spot illustration of mountains.”
Here's a sample of what a wireframe can look like — text, layout, and visual placeholders to help plan out the structure and hierarchy of the infographic.
What’s the point of that? It’s all about planning. Wireframing allows you to focus on the hierarchy, layout, and spacing instead of doing everything at once. You can make edits to a grayscale wireframe much more easily than to a fully designed infographic — trust us on this one.
How do you start a wireframe? First, you gotta read. When reading the content, figure out what the most important points are. They’re probably formatted as headings. Take a look at the overall copy length.
These questions will help you plan your layout.
Then you can start thinking about your intended visuals. Where can visuals add understanding, structure, delight, or a visual break for your reader? Can you replace some text with a thoughtfully designed visual element? Where should you start placing supporting graphics? Are there any opportunities for data visualizations?
Some choices might take some more thought, but some might be pretty obvious once you get some experience. A few general tips:
No matter what visuals you’re planning out, function should always be at the forefront, and the wireframe stage is a great opportunity to plan that out. No color, no frills, just purpose and layout.
When reviewing your wireframe to decide if it’s working, the layout needs to flow. Each block should lead seamlessly into the next and give an overall sense of cohesion. The text and visuals should each have plenty of space to shine, and the audience should know where to look next. Make sure it’s not too cluttered and each visual element serves a clear and specific purpose.
The next step in planning your infographic is defining the visual style with a moodboard. A moodboard is a summary of key elements, such as colors, fonts, and icon and illustration styles — all that good stuff. It sets the overall creative direction for the infographic — the look and feel the final piece will have. If you’re making a branded infographic, most of those visual elements are probably part of an existing brand guide.
Here's a sample moodboard — showing the colors, fonts, illustration style, and overall look and feel of the infographic.
When creating a moodboard from scratch, we often look to a few favorite sources for design inspiration:
Whether you’re drawing from established brand elements or introducing new ones, creating a moodboard is all about high-level creative decision-making. It’s a chance to step away from the details and think bigger-picture about how the design will convey the right tone or match the brand.
So we have our wireframe. We have our moodboard. Now it’s time to bring it all together in design.
At Lemonly, we sometimes describe the design phase of the process as painting the moodboard onto the wireframe — add color, fill in illustrations and other visual elements, maybe make some tweaks to spacing or sizing, as needed.
Different types of infographics might require different design approaches. A really data-driven infographic will be designed differently from a more narrative or qualitative infographic. The intentional choices you make with the wireframe and moodboard will help make sure it all comes together neatly in the full design.
There aren’t many surprises in the design phase, but accessibility becomes extra important. You’ll want to be sure your color contrast and text size meet web content accessibility guidelines. And ensure any characters you’ve designed represent an inclusive range of identities.
And there you have it! A clear, concise, compelling, and effective infographic.
The difference between infographics that work and those that don’t isn’t just great illustration or clever headlines — it’s a thoughtful process from beginning to end. When you start with strategy and focus on being clear, concise, and compelling through copy and design, you create infographics that look great and communicate effectively with your audience.
Learn more about infographics and check out more examples we’ve created for our clients. Ready for some sweet visuals of your own? Get in touch with us about working together.
