7 Free Tools for Creating Great Infographics

The web is changing dramatically, and web surfers’ habits are evolving extremely rapidly. It is no longer impressive to simply research and churn out written information. Web users are experiencing diminishing attention span. As a result, they are getting more attracted to infographics – information that can be scanned quickly and remembered easily.

Infographics are clearly displayed visual or graphic representation of straight-forward and interesting data. They tend to draw surfers attention to a particular trend or possibility and help visitors quickly capture the major part of information. So, you can use infographics to spruce up your blog, website, documents and presentations.

Tools for Creating Awesome Infographics

Here are 7 solid tools for creating or generating infographics. Depending on your need, you will find at least one that perfectly suits you. Impressively, all of them are easy to use. So you do not require any technical skill to be able to use them.

1. Visual.ly

Visual.ly is fast becoming a repository of great infographics as well as the most efficient tool for creating and sharing infographics. Though Visual.ly is still new, about 11,000 infographics have been added already.

The site contains three components – search engine for web-based infographics, store for public data, and web-based platform for creating infographics. You can create ‘Facebook Monster’ from your Facebook profile. You can also use Visual.ly’s Twitter tool to generate infographics of your Twitter usage.

Use Visual.ly to Create an Infographic

2. Wordle

Wordle describes itself as a “toy” for generating word clouds, but the tool actually helps to create nice infographics. It is an effective infographic service to play with words.

Wordle makes a colorful design of the most commonly used words on your site or specific words entered by you. They also have a lot of beautiful designs for you to select from.

Use Wordle to Create an Infographic

3. Hohli

Hohli is a simple online chart maker. You can use Hohli to create Venn Diagrams, scatter plots and other kinds of charts based on the information you enter. You will be allowed to choose a title, select data points and alter the background of your graphic.

You can use Hohli to create infographics for comparisons, process description or data presentations. Hohli also helps to customize their appearances. Using Hohli is really easy – select a type of chart, add data, tweak variables like size and color and get an excellent output.

Use Hohli to Create an Infographic

4. ManyEyes

ManyEyes is an IBM Research tool but is available for public use. It is a powerful tool for creating infographics based on your own data or existing public data.

You can browse through existing data or upload your own data, and then create awesome visualizations from them. You can paste almost any data set, including spreadsheets, without losing the source format. Interestingly, you are not limited to numbers-based presentations; ManyEyes can also be used to create word cloud.

Use ManyEyes to Create an Infographic

5. Google Public Data Explorer

This is really useful if you require public information in producing your infographic. Google stores a lot of public data and allows their users to transform this data into amazing visualizations.

You can use this tool to create visualizations by comparing different sets of data – whether they are public or personal. You can upload your own data and choose to either make them public or not. Then, it is easy to embed your output in your blog or website. This is definitely a service you should try out.

Use Google Public Data Explorer to Create an Infographic

6. Stat Planet

Stat Planet is used for creating interactive maps that are customizable. To create a feature-rich infographics, you can include interactive graphs and charts.

The site stores world statistics and allows users to make infographics from them. You can use Stat Planet on your browser or download it for free.

Use Stat Planet to Create an Infographic

7. Creately

Creately is a web-based diagramming service for creating professional infographics. The service is essentially paid, but the free trial is worth the try.

You can use Creately to create flowcharts, Venn diagrams, story boards, network diagrams, organizational charts and sitemaps. Moreover, there are many templates and professional color schemes available for users to start drawing immediately.

Creately integrates Google image search, so you don’t have to download images to your computer. They also have a huge library of important icons for social media and people as well as other objects.

Use Creately to Create an Infographic

Conclusion

As web users continue to crave for visual information, the use of infographics is becoming very important. Some top sites already have pinboards for different categories of infographics on Pinterest – a hot new social media site. So, whatever you do online, consider creating relevant infographics for your information. In creating infographics, try as much as possible to keep them really simple. Avoid adding too much information to one picture or graph. First outline your plan before starting the design of the infographic.