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50 Design Inspirations for 8 types of Infographic

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Have an idea for an infographic but don’t know where to begin with designing it?

Fear not!

With thanks to Lyndon, we’ve compiled an ultimate design resource for every imaginable type of infographic. Well, nearly every one.

Our blog post earlier this year, identified the 8 different types of infographics.

This is a list of 50 that we think deserve to be noted for their design, or certain aspects of them.

A visual list of infographic inspiration awaits…

 

The Visual Article

The Visual Article infographic is all about attracting the viewer immediately with the title and offering something more than just a written article. The content itself must be varied, interesting and plentiful so that readers do not come away disappointed.

 

1. Amsterdam: On Yer Bike – by easyJet Holidays

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2. A question of taste – by South China Morning Post

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3. 50 Unbelievable Facts about Earth – by Giraffe

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4. 50 Incredible Facts about Skin – by beautyflash

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5. Why Bill Gates is Better than Batman – by Frugal Dad

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6. 50 Insane Facts about Hair – by Hair Loss Geeks

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7. How to Control Your Dreams – by BedroomWorld

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The Flow Chart

Flow charts are successful for answering questions and when engaging the right audience do well on social media. The design of a flowchart prefers simple over cluttered and to make it worthwhile, there needs to be plenty of options so the viewer doesn’t feel forced into an overly narrow category. Tongue-in-cheek is common and a sense of humour is definitely a bonus!

 

8. Should  I Text Him? – by Becca Classon

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9. Which Infographic Should You Use? – by NeoMam Studios

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10. Star Wars Occupation Flowchart – by OnlineSchools

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11. I Want to Make a Horror Movie – by Canal+

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12. Are You Happy? – by Rick Webb

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13. Should Your Business be on Pinterest? – by Intuit

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Useful Bait

The useful bait does what it says and provides a useful resource to the viewer. Usability should be the priority with a straightforward design and content which is strictly relevant to the topic. When designing infographics like these it’s best to imagine them being printed out.

 

14. Gangnam Style The 5 Basic Steps – by Hugo A Sanchez

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15. Kitchen Cheat Sheet – by Everest

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16. Sitting is Killing You – by Medical Billing & Coding

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17. How to Train Yourself to Speed Read – by Mindflash

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18. Exceptional Expressions of Espresso – by Pop Chart Lab

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19. Pairing Wine & Food – by Wine Folly

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20. The Shelf Life of Food – by Visual.ly

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21. The Charted Cheese Wheel – by Pop Chart Lab

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Number Porn

Impressive numbers coupled with an engaging design make the ‘Number Porn’ infographic work. Numerical infographics boil down to a lot of numbers with little visualisation to aid comprehension. They are straightforward to produce but may lack a bit of imagination.

 

22. Titanic by the Numbers – by History.com

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23. Education by the Numbers – by Microsoft Education

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24. A Day in the Internet – by MBA Online

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25. Google: Behind the Numbers – by Business MBA

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The Timeline

The timeline shows a journey to the viewer and it must be important to them to be successful. Each element of a timeline infographic should be visualised, so it’s easy to see the progression and is visually stimulating.

 

26. The Road of the Future – by Carloan4u

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27. The Evolution of the Geek – by Flowtown

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28. The Evolution of Video Game Controllers – by Pop Chart Labs

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29. A History of Western Typefaces – by Mashable

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30. The History of Home Heating – by Global Home Improvements

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31. The Apple Tree – by Mashable

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Data Visualisation

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a data visualization is worth a thousand more.”

Data Visualisation is the bread and butter of the infographic world. A creative approach along with careful design can get great results and lead to placement on high-profile sites.

 

32. The Billion Dollar-o-Gram – by David McCandless

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33. Mission(s) to Mars – by Bryan Christie Design

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34. Fifty Years of Exploration – by National Geographic

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35. Snake Oil? by David McCandless

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36. The Big Numbers – by Rune Leth Anderson

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The Versus Infographic

Matching content to audience is crucial here. You need to consider what the audience care about and focus on two characters or concepts. A common feature of these infographics compares both differences and similarities. A little humour and stylised design are a must if they are to succeed.

 

37. Geek vs Hipster – by Geeks Are Sexy

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38. Messi vs Ronaldo – by Visual.ly

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39. A Tale of Two Meals – by Massive Health

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40. Beef versus Horse – Guardian Digital Agency

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41. How Being a Liberal or Conservative Shapes Your Life – by David McCandless

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42. Serif vs Sans – The Final Battle – by Urban Fonts

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43. Woof vs Meow – What Our Furry Pets Reveal About Us – by Hunch

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The Photo Infographic

Arguably the hardest to produce, these infographics need quality photographs and a well thought out design to come off as professional looking. When done right though, these infographics are visually arresting and provide a unique way to display information.

 

44. Dining Etiquette 101 – by Sun Sentinel

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45. The Simpsons, South Park and Ninja Turtles LEGOs – by Jung Von Matt

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46. Know Your Poop – by Raj Kamal

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47. The Evolution of a Hipster – by Paste  Magazine

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48. Fat or Fiction – by Fat or Fiction

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49. Seven Summits – by FFunction

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50. Refugees and Immigrants – by Peter Orntoft

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We hope these proved useful and let us know if you agree with our choices!

Compiled by Danny Ashton, founder of the infographic agency NeoMam Studios.

How to make money out of blogging and why I failed at Linklove London

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The first thing you need to do to make money out of blogging is to stop.

The second thing is to cancel all your subscriptions to the “Making money whilst blogging in your underpants” type membership sites. Then take all your ebooks and delete them, filling the hole left in your hard drive with Harlem Shake videos.

The third thing is to start doing something that is ancient, but online.

Why should you do something ancient, surely this is the new age where new, new, new is god. Where anything new is better than old.

That’s what they want you to think, because it’s easier to sell a book if what your selling is called something new.

But we know how to play that game don’t we?

Because we are all players, at least I hope to the High God of the Digerati you are.

I talked about this at my latest presentation in London at the online marketing conference called Linklove to about 300 SEO people. I tried to convince them that it was something ancient that they need to focus on instead of fannying around with Excel spreadsheets and setting up 200 domain networks on different IP numbers, filled with drecky articles.

And I think I failed at Link Love.

Because I think only a few got it.

Which is interesting.

It means that most of the seo community are on the same path, they are using the same techniques that worked 3 years ago. Which is great if you are a lumberjack. Lumberjacking has not changed in the last 3 years.

But are you that stupid to think seo has not changed?

Blogging is not dead. It’s just that it no longer gives a return on investment. And we are talking about blogging in the way that an SEO would describe it. as a means of ranking and implementing a mechanical solution.

The way to make money out of blogging is to stop blogging.

I know, it sounds nuts, but stay with me here.

Stop blogging, and start publishing.

Publisher is the new, new thing.

“Oh c’mon man, you mean I read all the way down to here and that’s it”, I hear you wail.

But that’s the thing, it really is that simple.

What do you think is happening in your brain if you tell yourself you are a publisher and not a blogger?

Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of ideas, thoughts, concepts and information it is the activity of making such things available to the World. Sometimes you are the originator, sometimes others.

It sounds a lot like blogging doesn’t it.

But it’s not and in your mind there is the big difference between how you perceive a blogger and how you perceive a publisher.

You may say that you know lots of successful bloggers, what about Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Chris Garret etc? Are not they successful bloggers?

No.

They are publishers in every definition of the word. They hire writers, produce courses, print books etc. Yes they started out as bloggers, but quickly morphed into something else. More akin to building a publishing empire.

But hardly the image of most of us have of the blogger which is someone sitting in their underpants eating a large back of chili Doritos. OK, we’ve all been there, we have all sucked the crack pipe of blogging. It worked great for a while, but that model is dead.

But if you are to make money out of blogging you need to stop thinking like a blogger and start thinking like a publisher.

And it’s the same for the seo crowd I spoke to at Link Love. Stop thinking like a content marketer and start thinking like a publisher.

Stop thinking like a link builder and start thinking like a publisher.

And I have to say this, even though it pains me. Stop thinking like a linkbaiter and start thinking like a publisher.

Very few people are teaching this right now.

I have been banging on about it for a while.

I tell clients, get a podcast out, get an iPad mag out, publish a Kindle book. They just look at me as if I am insane. “But they are not teaching that at the seo conferences I go to. And they are really expensive so they have to be good”.

Clients are frustrating.

I tell them, don’t just publish an infographic, turn it into a poster and give it away on a Facebook contest, turn it into a slide show, make it into a Youtube clip, have it printed out as a mini book.

Think like a publisher.

If you want to know how to do this, I have a coaching program you may be interested in. Linkbait Coaching is going into a new phase, the “Publishing” version. We still teach linkbait, but there is so much more you need to be doing and if you want to win. Sign up to the email notification on the page and get to know when it launches. I have not yet decided how many people to limit this one to, but if you sign up to the email list I can give you a shot at getting in early.

Guest Post Linkbait

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Typewriter

If I include “guest post” in a title, will I get lots of emails asking if they could get a guest post hosted and could they include a link back to their client who has a mobile toe clipping service?

I made my first guest post in 1999, it was image based and was a unique image grab of Julia Roberts. The movie Notting Hill was being made in my street and I had fun using a camcorder (remember those) to record the action. I sent the image to a Julia Roberts fansite for a link back. It’s always easy when you have unique content for a hungry crowd,

But, the landscape has changed. As agencies can no longer call up Guido to rustle up some mucus stained content that nobody will ever read and hawk it on article marketing sites, they have switched to guest posting. Blasting bloggers with barely interesting content for a link back. Some bloggers have now got savvy and started asking for money to place the posts and stupidly some agencies pay for it.

I say stupid because when that blog gets banned by Google for selling links, all the work gone into that relationship will be lost.

Some will use it to get competitors links knocked out, if a blog is linking to your competitor, buy a guest post link from them, link to a neutral party and then dob them in. Will it work? Who knows, but I am sure some will try.

If a site asks for money for a guest post I put them in a file “forget about it”. As their stability is questionable, and I only want to build links for clients that will stick around.

The truth is guest posting is one of those fads that come and go. It will work better when the sheep move on to the next easy win.

Any website should be doing a bit of this and a bit of that. Spread the tactics around, nothing is a ranking killer, but creating useful experiences is always going to be on top.

So if you want that guest post, absolutely. Bring it on, and no I am not going to tell you what the rules for getting accepted are. But donuts are involved.

Image source

Why you don’t need to know what Content Marketing means

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Gutenberg Printing Press

Lets be honest about “Content Marketing”, just for once.

“Content marketing”, was invented so online marketing agencies can sell more stuff.

Yes I realise all my pals or now ex pals in my industry will tell me to STFU. But I have thing little aberration in my brain that sometimes inhibits me from bullshitting. Which is a real handicap at times.

The reason why the term “content marketing” is a bucket full of rotten, frogs is this…..

There is already a term that adequately describes the act, and that is “publishing.” Some of you may be aware of it.

In the first 50 years after Gutenberg first cranked up his printing press (it was no longer Guttenbergs’ by the way as in was in debt to the investor and had to hand all the rights over to the businessman who lent him the money to make the printing press, but that’s a story for another time.) around 12 million books were printed.

Do you think they understood the art of using publishing for marketing purposes using the cutting edge technology of their time.

To me, the term publishing has marketing at its foundation. After all, publishing is simply a collection of communication methods designed to communicate and cause reaction in an engaged consumer.

If you start to peel off the layers of what people are actually doing when they create an infographic, publish it on a blog and promote it using social media, you quickly understand that the fundamentals never change.

All content marketing describes, is a mechanised way of taking advantage of current publishing and promotional tools, it does not get deep into the fundamentals. It simply hasn’t been around long enough, whilst “publishing” as a term has.

This may seem like semantic drivel, but when agencies overuse the term “content marketing” to promote methods using new mechanisms, when the fundamentals are the same, it gets annoying.

My argument is that the client does not need to know the definition of such mechanistic terms as content marketing, that’s for the industry to sweat bricks over.

But the client absolutely has to get what “publishing” is, and the increased speed and power that the technology can now give us.

So I’m not that bothered about using the word, but do you have to use it so much.

And do you really think that a client needs to know such stuff to get it?

Building Links with Quality Content

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People talk about “quality” all the time. Quality links, quality content etc., without really defining what they actually mean when they talk about quality content.

Mostly it’s just blather.

My definition of quality content, is that it contains the specific elements which together, creates something that is magnetic to a viewers attention. It’s not about how the piece looks, it’s about the positive reaction of the viewer.

I’ve seen companies stacked to the rafters with seemingly intelligent people spend over £10k for a piece of content that is nice and shiny, only to attract 15 people. The content usually put together by a trendy young thing from Hoxton who rides a single geared bike and spends over £50 a month on hair products.

The rules of great content is still old school, human interest does not change because it lives online. The primal brain still sits in the driving seat.

So if you sell plumbing supplies online and get into content marketing, you become a publisher. You need to think like a publisher, you cannot think like someone who sells plumbing supplies.

It’s the main thrust of what I teach over at Linkbait Coaching, the trick is mostly about getting the mind set. Some are already in the mode, others have the claw their way to it. But it can be taught.

Everyone can learn how to linkbait.

Look at this great piece of content, David Cameron with Pasties. The idea is simple, the execution without fuss and yet it’s pulled in some great links with very little input. This is because the creator gets it, and I have to say that they are indeed a member of Linkbait Coaching and killing it.

It may seem simple to come up with these ideas, but only if you are in the right frame of mind And I have to say that being in the right frame of mind means you sometimes have to act in a counter intuitive way when it comes to e-commerce.

You can have commercial messages to be alongside a piece of linkbait but it does not help and often hinders the progress of a piece of content.

It’s not just about publishing something shocking or scandalous, it must be carefully crafted and go through a set of processes that lead you to linkbaiting success.

Topical, news focussed content can get a lot of links relative to the amount of effort. Right now we are going deep with the Olympics and ramping up the US Election, which looks to be a good one linkbaiting wise. If only Michelle Bachmann becomes Mitts’ running mate. Heaven!

If you can’t afford the huge fees of Linkbait Coaching membership, follow the Twitter feed, usually one or two ideas are published each day.

May your links be many and aged.

Content Marketing is making every Brand a Publisher

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We know a massive disruption is occurring right now in publishing. Not only are old media like Newspapers under attack from the likes of blogs, but brands themselves are taking to online publishing or what some call content marketing.

Before, these brands would advertise in the old media, taking out adverts and buying advertorials. Now the brands themselves are creating content in which to build their brand, attract new customers, increase customer attention etc.

Although technology is allowing a brand or small business to become a publisher of web content and little cost, it is the story or the narrative of the message that is the true King.

Because, it’s not that content is king, most are wrong about this. Content is not King, it’s actually worthless. What is King is The Story. Unless the narrative grabs you emotionally and pulls you in, the content may as well be a pile of grey dust, stepped over on the way to buy a donut.

A lot of online properties have built themselves on foundations of waste pits of garbage content, churned out with no love and a couple of dollars thrown the writers way. Google with it’s not too recent updates put paid to that.

You can no longer build empires of online real estate using the Pyramid method, where the lowest level is garbage and links up to the next level which gets better and better in quality, till at the summit you actually get to the point where you have something you actually want to read.

Efficiencies in scale are always important when it comes to publishing. But if the content you produce does not resonate, does not connect, what’s the point.

Teaching content marketing on Linkbait Coaching daily means I come into contact with people who get this, along with:

  • An understanding you have to think before you create
  • Knowledge that real people need to desire the content
  • Time and resources will be needed to create quality content
  • We should be in the publishing mindset and not the seo mindset
  • We create for people, not search engines
  • Links are a natural effect of our work

Talking to a lot of SEO agencies, I get a feeling that some do not yet get the fact they are in publishing, rather than busting algos.

The story and a deep understanding on the pyschological needs of other humans are now the key weapons in the fight for eyeballs and sales in the World of online marketing.

Getting The Story right is the most important thing an online business can be doing right now in terms of internet marketing.