Infographics are bedeviling beasts. The best ones are simple, powerful, and easy to digest. But if they’re so straightforward, why do so many of them just suck? The answer lies in their complicated creation, a union of three separate crafts: writing, design, and statistics. Let’s dive into the suckage.

3 Reasons Why Most Infographics Suck

1. Writers like to write

One thing you’ll notice about many bad infographics is the sheer number of words on them—and that detracts from both the design and the overall message. The problem is that infographics start off as written documents. And writers are accustomed to filling a page with words. They’re good at this—trust me. But when it comes to infographics, less is infinitely more.

So when our writers hand in an infographic draft, my first major task is to cut, cut, cut. How much? I’d guess about 40–50 percent. Yes, that’s right. I frequently cut half of the words the writer hands in. Call it a sacrifice for the greater good.

Stage 1

Our writer sends us something way too long.

Stage 2

I cut and edit to pare the message down.

Stage 3

Designer works her magic.

2. Writers are not graphic designers

I love our writers (and we wouldn’t have a business without them), but they’re not graphic designers—why should they be? So when they’re writing infographic copy, they aren’t necessarily thinking “how will this look as a visual?” This is something we’ve worked with our writers on, over the years, and they’ve gotten a lot better at it. However, we still go through multiple rounds of editing with them before we hand the draft to our designers.

Question: How in the heck is the designer supposed to create a visual around that?

Answer: They can’t. I either edit the paragraph or send it back to the writer with a helpful comment—something like, “How in the heck is the designer supposed to create a visual around that?”

3. Writers and designers are not mathematicians or data scientists

The best infographics simplify complicated statistics, relaying numerical information in an easy-to-read visual format. But therein lies another problem: the artists making the infographics usually are not trained in math or data science (again: why should they be?). This problem frequently manifests in two ways:

1. The writer doesn’t include stats in the draft

Writers love to ignore numbers—and that’s a problem when you’re creating an infographic. In fact, we’ve only encountered a few infographics in our career that did not rely on numbers and still conveyed a powerful message. It’s possible to pull it off, but it’s difficult and not recommended. After all, infographics are at their most powerful when they’re helping readers quickly and easily grasp complicated data or information—and that frequently revolves around research and survey data.

2. The designer doesn’t understand how to display the statistics

Let’s say you worked with your writer to ensure that juicy stats are included in the draft. Now it’s the designer’s job to figure out the best way to convey those stats. Should she use a bar graph or a pie chart? What if the survey participants were each allowed to select more than one answer, so the results don’t add up to 100?

Our designers are awesome and they’ve also become more accustomed to figuring this out as they’ve worked with us over the years, but we still help them wherever we can by brainstorming the overall concept with them and by suggesting types of graphs.

The Copy

The Design

Try Not to Suck

For something that’s meant to be digested by a reader in a minute or two, infographics are deceptively complex to build. To avoid infographic suckage, take time to help your writer and designer think through the visual concept of the piece ahead of time, and don’t be afraid to cut like crazy—at every stage in the process.

Need an infographic and don’t know where to start? Send me an email and I’ll help.