Message Design and Infographics

For this assignment we were required to create an infographic and to be honest I dislike creating infographics.  I did all the video watching and podcast listening that was required and I still was dreading this assignment.  It wasn’t until I began to dabble in each of the infographic creators that I saw the light. 

Easelly https://www.easel.ly/ was the first infographic I played with and at first glance I didn’t care for it too much.  Then when I began creating I found that the templates were simple to use and manipulate.  I found that to be plus for easelly since I am a beginner at creating infographics.  If I were to introduce infographics to a beginner this would be the tool, I would use because it is easier to navigate than the others in my opinion.  If I were more of an expert at creating infographics, then I probably would not choose easelly because there weren’t a lot of options if you don’t have the “pro” paid version.  If you don’t have the paid version, then the templates are limited and there were not many options to add objects into the infographic.   This would be my first choice in creating and teaching others to create an infographic until I got better at this skill.

Here is what I created with Easelly:

The next infographic creator I dabbled with was Picktochart, https://piktochart.com/.  At first glance it looks amazing to use and there were lots to create with.  Picktochart has different modes to create in, for example, the user can make an infographic, a presentation or a printable document.  This feature I liked a lot.  The user can choose to start from a blank document or choose a premade template.  It is diverse depending on the purpose of the user.  The reason it was not my favorite again I am a beginner and a hesitant maker of infographics and I felt that I was too much for me.  Too many choices and I found it difficult to find what I was looking for at times while I was creating.  I feel like this type of creator would be best suited for someone with more experience creating infographics not beginner like me.

Here is what I created with Picktochart:

The last infographic creator I experimented with was Infogram, http://infogr.am. I found this very easy to use if you have data ready to input. This site offered a tutorial video for getting started and had decent options for free templates.  The user can start with a design or data choice.  I liked that it had a teams tool to facilitate collaboration. This tool allowed the user to make charts and infographics with others which is great for classroom collaboration. As a future librarian this tool would be great to help generate charts and graphs to present data to administers or parents.  One downside I found was that I could not download this chart to my computer with purchasing an updated version, so I just took screenshot of what I had created.  It did allow the user the share through social media sites or embed this is a website and email to others. Overall this creator is great and one that I plan to use in the future.  

Here is what I created with Infogram: