Best Free Tools To Make Infographics

Here is a great selection of tools for presenting data in visually compelling ways. 


As Fast Company notes, "it's not enough to simply write about data any longer; the world wants visuals."

A set recommended by Fast Company:

Many Eyes, by IBM;

Google Public Data Explorer;

Hohli for venn diagrams and scatter plots etc.;

Wordle, for word clouds; and

Visual.ly for not only creating, but also sharing infographics.

Link to post: The 5 Best Free Tools For Making Slick Infographics | Fast Company


Another great set of tools can be found here.

"Datavisualization.ch Selected Tools is a collection of tools that we... work with on a daily basis and recommend warmly... (and) will make your life easier, creating meaningful and beautiful data visualizations."

This list includes Web apps such as Stanford University's DataWrangler, for data cleaning and transformation, GeoCommons, a public community and set of tools to access, visualize and analyze data with maps, and Impure/Quadrigram, a visual programming language to gather, process and visualize information.

Read more about this collection at The Next Web. 


See also:

• 10 ways to report data better
• Infographic insights
• Infographics need stories
• Big data for development 

Infographics need stories

Data is a story waiting to be told, and an infographic that brings data to life should start and end with the story. Keep the audience in mind and stay focused, and you should be on the right track.
Some quick tips in a blog here by Mark Johnstone. The linked blog by Ian Lurie is also of relevance, wherein Lurie discusses information vs knowledge.


Johnstone starts with the audience:
Who are they?
What can you say that is valuable to them?
Why should they be interested?
Would they want to hear more?

He also recommends that you try out your ideas for an infographic by discussing the concept with other people first. "Tell people about it next time you’re in the pub.  And watch their reaction.  Don’t listen, watch!  You’ll know in a second if it needs more work."

Lastly, he recommends you focusing on the audience more than the information you want to convey.

What do they want to know?
What do they need to know?
How could they benefit from thinking about things in a different way?
How can you help?
"In short, don’t think about what you have to say, but what you have to deliver!"


See also:
The 5 best free tools for making slick infographics
10 ways to report data better
Infographic insights

Infographic insights

A good infographic can convey a message faster than text, tables and conventional figures.

There are many styles to choose from and creative minds are searching for new ways to help tell complex stories more easily. Some efforts fall woefully short: simply bundling facts and figures together with artwork is not as effective as a well thought out figure or storyboard. Ideally, the graphic, poster or animation will contain the minimum information needed to convey its message, put things in perspective and perhaps even entertain and 'wow' the audience.

The Guardian, UK has blogged about this and uses infographics extensively in its award-winning datablog. I'm a fan of their contributor David McCandless of Information is Beautiful. He has helped pioneer this field despite - or perhaps because of - being self-taught.

Such is the popularity of infographics that some job applicants are even adopting them as the basis for job applications or CVs. Commentators continue to debate this approach, but Vizualize.me has even helped automate the process.

Here are some places to find interesting infographics. Suggest others in the comments below!

Visual.ly
Good.is infographics
Fast Company daily infographics
Daily Infographic 

Cool Infographics

See also:
The 5 best tools for making slick infographics
10 ways to report data better
Big data for development

Using video to communicate

Video can be a great tool to communicate some ideas, but please make sure it is well done!

Even a mobile telephone camera can take reasonable video (if it is equipped).
It is important to learn some basics: firstly, you must tell an interesting story (focus and scripting are needed); Know your subject and your audience, get the audio right (re-record it later if needed), and pay attention to things such as lighting (don't make it too dark) and a balance between long shots and close-ups, stills vs panning and zooming.

The following are two videos about the same concept (a cafe in India with a new outlook on 'business': visitors pay for the next person's meal, and receive their own for free, served by volunteers). The first is a far more appealing effort, while the second suffers from poor lighting and sound (though YouTube's very poor quality does neither any justice).

Video 1 (Seva Cafe, India):


Video 2 (Seva Cafe, India):


Lastly, I have added a different video here, about a project designed to enhance diaster preparedness among children living in tsunami-affected areas in Sri Lanka.
The style is very different - a series of still images and slides (words on screen), supported not with narration but with music. It is an interesting approach, though I would suggest (if the 'editor' has the tools) to put key words over top of the images and to pan and scan some images to give a sense of movement. Some video creation tools enable this, especially iMovie on the Apple Mac.

Video 3 (Disaster Preparedness, Sri Lanka):


See also:
How to advocate with video
How to film a revolution