How to build a compelling infographic quickly and easily

Infographics are a great way to spread your message.

The mingling of rich visuals, typography and large amounts of data give content marketers a way to reach audiences that isn’t at all overwhelming—as data-heavy content often is.

Danny DeMichele, CEO of Elevated, says: “Infographics make data accessible to the masses. They’re a fantastic compromise that allow you to use vast amounts of data in a way that doesn’t feel intrusive or overly dry.”

The challenge, however, lies in how to churn these out quickly. This is especially difficult if you don’t have the budget—or turnaround time—needed for a designer and you aren’t very artistic yourself.

Here are a few ways you can build infographics with breakneck speed, some of which don’t require an ounce of artistic ability:

Use PowerPoint Instead of Photoshop or Illustrator

HubSpot, Slideloot and others offer rich data visualization tools (infographics) that you can edit and redesign in PowerPoint, with which a lot of marketers feel comfortable. These assets were once intended for slide decks but can easily be modified into beautiful infographics.

Bonus: Because they started as PowerPoint slides, you can easily insert them into your next presentation.

Buy a kit

Sites such as Creative Market and Graphic River offer hundreds of templates to help you put together infographics. These similarly styled graphical assets feature PSD or vector images that enable you to mix and match pieces until you find a layout that works. Rather than designing the pieces, you simply have to put them together.

[RELATED: Master your visual communications prowess at this conference at the National Geographic Museum.]

Take it to the Web

There some great online editors that you can use with no knowledge of Photoshop, Illustrator or PowerPoint.

Canva and Piktochart enable you to start with a predefined roadmap. You can then edit, add and drop into place new elements, including different fonts, colors, shapes and images-all from a pre-existing library. You can tweak to your heart’s content by easily changing sizes, fonts and spacing until you download or share your infographic right from the platform.

An infographic worth sharing

No matter which way you decide to create your infographic, keep these things in mind to ensure it’s worth sharing.

1. Use high-quality graphics and imagery. Don’t settle for dated or tired designs that you’ve seen floating around on the Web for months. Many non-designers are using the same templates, so make sure you’re using one that hasn’t been copied ad nauseam.
2. Form a logical timeline for data presentation. This often starts with an outline. Moving graphical elements around and ensuring proper spacing, balance and white space can be time-consuming. Save time by mapping out a top-to-bottom approach for presenting your data. From there, you can set about moving pieces into the proper spots.
3. Get a second set of eyes. Never publish an infographic until at least one other person has seen it. After working on projects like these, we have a tendency to get blind to certain elements. For example, while working on the design, we might overlook typos or unclear text. Once you send these out in the world, it could be difficult to make changes. Errors make you look unprofessional, so fix them before publishing.

From there, it’s all about getting to work. You don’t have to be a designer in order to provide beautiful visualizations of complex data—though if you have the budget and time, a professional designer is always the best bet.

A version of this article originally appeared on Convince & Convert.

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