Seven Essentials of Good Infographic Design

Last week I posted a review of Randy Krum's Cool Infographics then followed-up by posting Five Good Online Tools for Creating Infographics. Consider this a second follow-up to my Cool Infographics book review. In his book Randy Krum goes into much more detail on each of these key elements of good infographic design. These are the elements of good design that he outlines in his chapter about designing infographics. You can get a sample chapter of the book here.

1. Be accurate. It seems obvious, but you will find infographics are not accurate. For example, make sure your pie charts add up to 100%.

2. Tell one story really well. An infographic that tries to do too much ends up not telling a story at all.

3. The 5 second rule. Krum shares that most of the page view duration times are 5-10 seconds for infographics featured on his blog. Create infographics that tell a story quickly.

4. Big fonts are not data visualizations. Krum states, "displaying the number in a large font doesn't make it any easier for the audience to understand."

5. Minimize text. Along the lines of #4 above. This is another tip that seems obvious, yet we see text-heavy infographics all over the web.

6. Eliminate chart legends. If the viewer needs a legend, your infographic's story might not be as clear as it should be.

7. Pick a good topic. Some topics are not as suitable for infographic display as others.

Disclosure: I received a free press copy of the Cool Infographics book, but I don't have any financial interest in sales of this book. I just find the topic and the book interesting.