Almost certainly, we humans process images faster than words and hence, graphics representations such as infographics are very popular tools that marketers have been using to gain popularity in their niche because such graphics and data visualisation are easy and fast to read, and I suspect, memory retention rate could be higher too.
Often, such graphical representations of data or information are anything but simple to make and often, you will need to outsource such design to a professional designer and it takes a fair amount of time. But fret not, there are many free, and some paid tools that the content marketing guru can use to construct a quick and nice infographic and we’ve taken pains to pick out the top 25 for you.
Infographic Tools for the Content Marketing Guru
Canva’s easy, drag-and-drop infographic creator is the perfect tool for creating beautiful infographics and it’s suitable for a variety of functions too, such as brochures and presentation slides. Its best feature is its vast collection of more than 1 million free images (photographs, graphics and illustrations), icons, over 130 fonts, backgrounds and design elements. And if you have an iPad, you can also download the Canva app to experiment with data visualization on the go.
However, you have to pay for professional quality design assets such as selected icons, fonts or photos separately.
Create and share visual ideas on Easel.ly, from thousands of infographics templates, which include reporting, timeline, resume and process templates, all of which are customisable. Access their library of tools and icons like arrows, shapes and lines, and customise text with different fonts, colours, styles and sizes easily. If you don’t like their images, just upload your own graphics or images and work from there because I don’t think there are as many free images to choose from as the other free infographics tools.
Often used by educators and students, Easel.ly is so easy to use that it’s even commended by the American Association of School Librarians for being so simple that even a child in the 6th grade could navigate and design their own infographic without any assistance.
Piktochart, one of the best infographics creators around, has a customisable editor with more than 400 fully customizable themes, and it allows you to modify colour schemes and fonts, insert pre-loaded graphics and upload shapes and images. They also have different icons, vectors, canvas, charts and maps and you can even embed videos from YouTube and Vimeo into your design after which you can export the materials as jpeg or html to embed into your website.
However, there is a limited selection of free templates. You have to upgrade to a Pro account to get higher quality templates.
Create stunning infographics that increase visitor engagement and traffic to your website or blog with Infogr.am, an excellent free tool that offers access to a wide selection of graphs, charts and maps as well as the ability for you to upload images and videos.
It’s easy to use this tool, because all you have to do is just to select the template and proceed to edit the elements on the built-in spreadsheet on the page itself. You can even import your own .xls, .xlxs or .csv data files into Infogr.am, and this online tool will help you turn that data into a beautiful chart or infographic. When you’re happy with the creation, just publish it or embed it into your website easily.
Infogr.am is great for chart creation, with over 30 different charts such as bubble charts, tree maps and pie charts to choose from. But the disadvantage is that it has a small selection of templates for infographics and no images.
Venngage is mainly used by analysts who want to communicate their data better and marketers who want to convey their insights easily, or rather, everyone who wants to use data to better communicate their ideas and information.
A great tool for creating and publishing infographics due to its ease of use and its ability to track results, Venngage has a wide collection of infographic templates, themes, as well as hundreds of charts and icons for you to play with. Talking about playing, you can also upload your own pictures, backgrounds or customise a theme for yourself. There are also additional options such as statistical, informational, comparison, process, timeline, geographic infographics to choose from.
Visme, a relatively new data visualization service, is making waves while still in its beta form. It let you create beautiful infographics as well as other visual content such as presentations, ad banners, animations and more. With its variety of templates and extensive library of free icons, shapes and objects, you can easily insert and edit text and images. One great function is its ability to change percentages within the charts with just a click of the button.
One disadvantage for the free plan is that your infographic will include the Visme logo for the free plan and there is limited access to charts and infograph widgets. But it’s priced competitively for teachers and students for the premium plan.
Visualize.me is an infographic resume generator but you could also use it to create other infographics using different templates. Job seekers can create a visual representation of their professional experience using this tool, and adequately express their accomplishments in a simple, visual infographic.
A range of stunning themes, maps, timelines, charts, maps, pictograms and images await you as you sign in, and you could even sign in using your Linkedin account to populate your information automatically.
Visually, the world’s largest community of infographics and data visualization, let you view content creation in a brand new way – Visually matches you with carefully selected designers, journalists and creative directors to help you create infographics. You just need to describe your project to them, and they will give you a quote. Once you accept their pricing, the project starts immediately.
This platform keeps you in contact with your creative team, and you can get your infographics in an estimated 16 days.
Google Developers has a set of chart tools that are powerful and simple to use. Best of all, they are free, packed with a variety of charts, maps, bars and statistical widgets such as simple scatter plots and hierarchical treemaps that you can use to configure your designs. You can easily connect your data in real time using a set of data connection tools provided, or use special URLs to embed graph and chart images in your own website. An excellent infographic generator for your use, and definitely an option to explore.
Inkscape is a totally free open-source vector graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Freehand, or Xara X and it uses Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open XML-based W3C standard as the native format.
Features include objection creation, manipulation, fill and stroke, text support, rendering and more. See it here.
Essentially a photo infographic generator app on your Android phone, InFoto takes the EXIF data such as number, ways and timing attached to your photos inside your phone and generates infographics from them. So your infographics will have information like what time of the day you prefer to take photos, whether you like horizontal or vertical photos, or your favourite places to take photos.
The interface is great, and the paid version only costs USD99 cents.
Wordle is a word application that you can use to generate “word clouds” from the text that you input. It essentially allow you to create unique and interactive word clouds using different fonts, layouts and colour schemes instantly.
This app emphasizes words that appear more often in the original text.
Get About is a free Windows app and infographic maker that lets you monitor your social media activity and generate infographics that allow you to visualize how you connect and share with your social network.
It allows you to track your Twitter terms, hashtags and mentions, and monitor your social activity.
iCharts is a cloud-based visual analytics platform that let you create quick and easy visualizations for complicated business information, data sets or extensive research work.
Access and update your data in real time and watch your charts change in minutes. This platform makes it easy for you to visualize, share and distribute all kinds of data.
Creately, a diagram tool, allows you to create and edit different shapes, diagrams, connectors, bringing together information in one platform and allowing your team to work together in real time.
It is most popular among corporate teams, developers, software architects, students and teachers and most use it to create diagrammatic infographics.
Created by Intel, “What About Me?” is a digital drawing tool that creates infographics for your social life online.play your digital life online. It visualizes your social media habits automatically from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
ChartsBin is an online tool to help you create your own interactive map instantly with no coding needed. Just start by inserting values or zooming into the map, and then copy and paste the HTML code to your website easily.
TimelineJS is a simple-to-use platform that you can use to create stunning timeline with information and media from different sources with integrated support for Twitter, Flickr, Google Maps, YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Dailymotion and Wikipedia.
Gliffy, a free, cloud-based diagram editor, can help you transform your ideas into professional infographics using flowcharts, UML diagrams, floor plans, user interface designs, network diagrams, wireframes, organization charts and sitemaps. You can create digital data visualizations by dragging and dropping these items from the library and transforming words into graphs.
Smile Widgets is a free and open-source data visualization web widget that allows you to create simple infographics, exhibits, timelines, time lots and runways.
A free, award-winning software mainly made to create interactive maps which are fully customisable, StatPlanet also can create interactive graphs, charts and infographics.
It is available as a web-based or a desktop software to make data analysis and creation easy and efficient.
Tableau Public is a free application for your Windows computer that helps to bring any data to life. Superbly easy to use and immensely powerful, you can create and share interactive charts and graphs, maps, live dashboards and fun applications in mere minutes.
amCharts let you create and configure charts and paste the generated HTML code to your HTML webpages.
Tagxedo turns words such as news articles, important speeches, slogans, themes, or any text paragraphs or passages and even your love letters into a visually stunning word cloud. Every word is individually sized to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text.
Infoactive, a simple and flexible platform, allows you to create interactive infographics and other “data driven” stories. It simply let you connect your data to the application and then automation takes over.
There are many other smaller tools for creating infographics such as Gapminder, Hohli Charts, Inkscape, Pixlr, Many Eyes and so on, and you probably will have a blast exploring them. I certainly hope these tools can help you create some stunning infographics and data charts to kickstart your editorial calendar. If there are any tools that I’ve missed, feel free to reach out to me below in the comments – I would love to hear from you!
Contact us for a chat using the form below – we’ll be able to offer some tips on how to use infographics to reach your target audience, or check out more details on our infographics package.
Please subscribe to our YouTube channel for more!
