All About The Details

This past week, I was required to construct my very first inforgraphic for my J 452 course. When we were given this assignment, I was nervous about doing something that I had no previous experience in. As we began to go through the process I became more confident about my abilities to create an interesting infographic. I had seen a ton of infographics throughout the years and felt confident in my skills of being able to construct the proper message delivery.

When trying to settle on a topic, I started thinking about the different aspect of my life and how I could incorporate things I knew something about or was interested in. I knew that by doing this I would be able to deliver a better finished product. While running through possible topics my sister’s employer, Vectors Espresso, came to mind.

When selecting our topic we were given a few requirements: Have a call to action and either teach something or inform people about something. With these requirements in mind, I started making a list of ideas that related to the coffee industry.  Some of the ideas were: how to make latte art, how to get the most caffeine for your money and how to make the best cup of coffee.

I decided that teaching people how to make the best cup of coffee would be the best topic to display through an infographic.

I began the research process by searching the term “how to make the best coffee.” From there I began exploring websites to see what information they provided. I combined the information that I thought would be relevant to this process into a Microsoft Word document. Once I felt I had an adequate amount of research, I started to go through it and organize by steps in the coffee-making process. After doing this, it became evidently clear that my project should be broken into four specific steps that were vital to making a good cup of coffee: Bean choice, roasting, grinding, brewing and equipment choice. Once I had the outline established it was easy to pull information I thought was important enough to be included in the infographic.

Tips for creating a successful infographic:

1. Over research: Research as much as possible. Google terms that are close to your original search but that are slightly different. Don’t be afraid to go down that rabbit hole. You never know when you will find great information that you never even thought to look for.
2. Organize your research into a broad outline.
3. Try to pull out the most important information that viewers need to know. Infographics aren’t the place to jam in a ton of information. You want to only include the highlights.
4. Don’t clutter your infographic with too much information or images.
5. Try to provide a logical flow that is easy for the eyes/brain to follow naturally.

Have any of you had experience in creating infographics? Share your tips for success!