Infographic Design: Complete Guide for Non-Designers

Marketing and communication teams need infographics that explain things fast and are easy to share.

The problem is, most people who need them aren't designers and don't know where to start.

Infographics package data, text and graphics into a single visual that distills your message into scannable chunks without overwhelming your audience. And you don't need a design background to create a great one.

In this guide, we'll show you how to create amazing infographics without professional design training. You'll learn which layouts work for different content types, how to balance text with visuals for contrast, build a logical flow, choose the right font pairings and avoid the most common design pitfalls along the way.

We've also rounded up the five highest-rated infographic makers available online right now, so you can hit the ground running.

But if you’re short on time or prefer watching instead of reading, check out this video to learn the dos and don’ts of designing engaging, animated infographics.

Table of Contents

• What is an Infographic?
• How to Make an Infographic?
• 12 Infographic Design Tips & Tricks to Help You Get Started
• 5 Best Infographic Makers to Use
• Infographic Design FAQs

What is an Infographic?

Simply put, an infographic is a visual representation of information. Their typical purpose is to transform a text- or data-heavy document (or blog post) into a visual format that’s quick to scan and easy to grasp.

Infographics work well as communication tools because they're faster to process than long blocks of text or large spreadsheets. Plus, they’re easy to share digitally through blog posts, email, social media and landing pages.

Common uses for infographics include explaining processes, comparing options, showcasing statistics, mapping timelines or simplifying technical concepts to an interested audience.

If you’re wondering if Infographics are still relevant, Ryan Robinson from RighBlogger has something to say about that:

“While infographics may have peaked in popularity a decade ago, they still have a significant role to play in content marketing today, especially on visual-centric platforms like Pinterest. Sharing your infographics on Pinterest can drive traffic back to your blog and expand your post to new audiences.”

How to Make an Infographic?

Here’s a quick rundown on how to make an infographic. For a detailed walkthrough with templates and step-by-step instructions, see our complete guide onHow to Make an Infographic.

Start with clarity on what you're communicating and who needs to see it. Nail down your core message and the single takeaway you want readers to remember.

Once you know what your infographic is about, collect the data that supports it. Pull statistics from credible sources, fact-check every claim and keep your citations organized.

Pick a layout that matches your content type and find a template that aligns with that choice. The final structure should guide readers through your information in a visual and cognitive flow.

When designing, choose two fonts that pair well, limit your palette to two or three colors and use charts or icons to replace text blocks wherever possible. Make sure to leave white/empty spaces so elements can breathe.

Share the finished infographic with your audience in the format that best supports your communication goals. Visme offers many options.

12 Infographic Design Best Practices

If you want your infographic designs to generate shares, build links and bring people to your website, here are the 12 tips you need to follow.

1. Plan Your Infographic Design

The first tip you need to know when making an infographic that works is to fully plan out your design from head to toe. 

This helps ensure you:

• Lay out your information properly
• Include all relevant statistics and resources
• Create an infographic design that flows well and makes sense
• Keep the topic super specific.

As Maddie Mack, from Lemonly shares,

“When it comes to infographics, follow the straight and narrow path. By that, I mean your infographic should get straight to the point by covering a narrow topic.”

Planning an infographic design involves nine easy-to-follow steps:

Following these will make sure your infographic content is relevant to your audience, goals and business and help you get the most out of your designs.

1. Pinpoint the target audience
2. Define the goals and objectives
3. Choose a relevant topic
4. Collect data and information
5. Fact-check everything and cite your sources
6. Decide how to visualize the data
7. Set the tone for your infographic
8. Write the copy and create a textual outline
9. Sketch a wireframe of your infographic

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2. Choose the Right Layout for Your Infographic

Once you’re ready with the first step, it’s time to choose the right layout for your design.

There are various infographic layouts to choose from, each helping you to convey information in different ways.

Take a look at these layout examples to get an idea of what your infographic design could look like depending on the kind of information you’re planning to share.

You can easily find a template that fits your design in Visme's infographic template library.

3. Create a Powerful Headline

Research shows that 61% of consumers say infographics help them retain information better than other content formats. Your headline will determine whether they stop scrolling long enough to be interested in your information.

Our favorite formula for crafting a compelling infographic header is: Number + Adjective + Noun + Keyword + Promise.

So, for example, in an infographic showcasing 8 Surprising Tips for Lead Generation That Will Exponentially Increase Conversions, the headline has: 

• A number – 8
• An adjective – Surprising
• A noun – Tips
• Your focus keyword – Lead Generation
• A promise – Exponentially Increase Conversions

Easy enough, right? Try to put this formula into play within your next infographic headline.

4. Bring Data to Life With Interactive Visualizations

There are so many different types of charts, graphs and data widgets that you can add to your infographic. And with Visme, you can make all your data visualizations interactive and engaging.

There are dozens of data visualizations to choose from:

But how do you know which chart to use when? Let’s take a look at which one works for what purpose and how interactivity will make it even better.

Here’s what Alejandra Mariscalez, Design Manager at Visme, has to say about this technique:

"I think one of the most important things to clarify with interactive infographics and anything related to interactivity is that it has to be engaging. Some people confuse interactivity with simple animations or special effects and forget about the most important part which is having the user interact with elements within the design in order to convey/uncover a special message."

We’ve put together a guide on creating charts and when to use each one to help you out, but we’ll summarize quickly below.

• Bar graphs: Use interactive bar graphs to compare data across groups. Let viewers hover to see exact values or click to explore different periods.
• Line graphs: Perfect for showing trends over time. Add hover effects to display specific data points and enable toggling between different metrics.
• Pie charts: Make percentages more engaging with animated segments and clickable sections that reveal detailed breakdowns.
• Scatter plots: Help viewers understand correlations better with zoomable plots.
• Pictograms: Bring your numbers to life with animated icons.
• Flowcharts: Guide viewers through processes with clickable steps.

You can easily combine multiple types of graphs and charts all into a single infographic by strategically placing them around your design. And since infographic dimensions are typically longer, you have plenty of space to do this.

Here’s what Alejandra Mariscalez, Design Manager at Visme has to say about this:

5. Ensure Balance Between Text and Graphics

Regardless of the topic of your infographic, the main goal of good infographic design is to maintain a solid balance between the text and the visuals throughout.

Here’s a great example of that in practice:

It’s easy to see which of these two infographic blocks is more eye-catching and therefore, a more effective infographic design.

In the first example, there’s too much text, making it tough to read. On the right, the hierarchy is better and the content is easier to grasp quickly.

The best way to achieve this balance is to cut your text down to the essentials, as we see in the second example.

Then, adding decorative elements to your text, like a background color or a call-out, is the perfect way to offset the layout and pull the composition together.

Information design agency Ferdio’s Notebook on Infographics warns against a common mistake: '

"So much to say, so little space? For fear of leaving out important information, you run the risk of cramping too much information into too little space. But the risk is that the more you add, the more difficult it will be for your audience to digest and to remember your key message."

On the flip side, Alejandra emphasizes that having too little content can also be a negative, so watch out for going too far.

6. Select the Best Infographic Design Elements

When creating an infographic, you’ve got a whole world of design elements at your fingertips. And Visme’s extensive library offers everything you need to make your infographic visually stunning.

You'll find icons to symbolize concepts, shapes and lines to create structure and flow and text frames to organize your content.

But that's just the beginning.

You can add depth with 3D elements, bring emotion with 3D characters and illustrations and create movement with animated graphics.

Visme also has a stock photo library integration through Unsplash that lets you access over a million free images.

You just need to determine what kind of design you’re going for and make sure your elements match.

For example, if you choose to use icons in your infographic, you need to stick with the same style throughout. It doesn’t matter if you want to add isometric illustrations, icons, or 3D elements to your infographic; make sure the style, size and color are consistent throughout the project.

I asked Hylie Zhan, Graphic Designer at Visme, about the common design mistakes she sees non-designers make, and here are the major ones she pointed out.

• "Too many fonts in the design. Keep it simple: use only two or, at most, three fonts.
• Use of layout, alignment and spacing is important for users to read the information properly.
• Limit the use of colors, so you can express your information more effectively.
• Using data, graphs and charts to support your content will give your audiences a deeper understanding of your information.”

7. Pinpoint the Best Color Scheme

Your next challenge is to tackle a color palette that makes sense for your infographic. Keep this in mind:

• Don’t create an infographic with more than two or three colors: one or two main colors plus an accent color, so it’s not overwhelming.
• Pay attention to color psychology and choose colors that emit the same connotation that you want your reader to feel.
• Choosing an infographic color scheme requires understanding your audience, your topic and your brand.

Take a look at the infographic below to learn about the meanings and positive and negative connotations of colors.

Choosing an infographic color scheme requires understanding your audience, your topic, your brand and the basics of color to ensure you’re choosing the best colors for your design.

8. Determine Your Infographic Font Pairing

Now it’s time to focus on fonts. Ideally, you need two fonts. That’s why they’re called a font pairing.

Make it easy on yourself and use the fonts from your brand guidelines. But, if you want to explore other typography options, choose a bold serif or sans serif font for headers and an easy-to-read sans serif font for the infographic copy.

Here are a few tried-and-true font pairings that will work well in nearly any infographic typography combination.

9. Build a Cohesive Infographic Flow

Your infographic needs a cohesive visual flow so it's easy to read and understand, while also looking like it makes sense at a glance. Without it, your viewers could be left confused and unimpressed.

Use numbers, lines, arrows, visual text styles and other design elements to help you build the flow from the heading, through the copy and down to the sources and call to action.

Check out the infographic below. The design provides a clear direction of where a viewer’s eyes should go first, second, third and so on.

10. Create Contrast Between Your Elements

Another important factor for your infographic to perform well is visual contrast. Your chosen colors, fonts and design elements must pair well together while also creating enough contrast against their background to feel separate.

In the example below, the left side uses a blue color scheme in a variety of very similar shades. There is hardly any contrast. On the right, we added a light background to contrast with the blue and pink, making the illustrations and text stand out.

11. Allow For Enough White Space

One major rule in graphic design is ensuring your design elements are clutter-free. This can be achieved by incorporating white/empty space. This technique helps elements “breathe” and be easily identifiable from each other.

Take a look at the two examples below. There’s a definite don’t on the right as we see small margins and design elements nearly touching each other.

By contrast, the left keeps equal margins between elements and plenty of white space around the design. This makes for a balanced infographic design that your viewers will flock to.

12. Cite All Your Sources

The last tip is to ALWAYS cite your sources.

Whether it’s research you conducted yourself, statistics from a trusted website or data from your own blog post, you want to include where the information came from.

Always fact-check the sources you’ve gathered outside your organization. This helps ensure your infographic is a credible source of information.

Since infographics are a powerful SEO tactic for your marketing strategy, people need to feel comfortable sharing your content.

Ferdio also emphasizes this responsibility:

"Your audience must rely on your information and trust that it is credible. Trustworthiness and authority should be present in your sources, your data, your visualizations and your design. Treat your data and sources with respect. Don't be cocky, frivolous or too simplistic, as it will make your data visualization lose authority and trustworthiness."

Take a look at the infographic footer example below to see how it's done:

This helps ensure your infographic is a credible source of information and that you’re fact checking everything you’ve compiled.

Infographics are a smart tactic in any SEO and marketing strategy, so ensuring people feel comfortable sharing your content by adding sources is essential.

Want more infographic design ideas? Check out this video:

5 Best Infographic Makers to Use 

This infographic design guide would be incomplete without discussing the tools needed to create them.

I’ve compiled a list of the current top infographic makers, and tested each one to see what they can do.

Here’s a quick breakdown of our testing methodology:

• Signed up for all tools that offered truly free accounts or trials (no credit card required).
• Used templates that were completely free.
• Built at least one infographic to try out the features, including fonts, colors, built-in graphic assets, AI capabilities (if any) and collaboration features.
• Tested the export formats and other sharing options (e.g. embedding or link sharing).

Check our comparison chart for a quick look:

Tool #1: Visme

Visme is a super easy-to-use infographic maker thanks to its extensive template library, millions of design assets, AI-powered editing capabilities and design flexibility and control.

Plus, aside from the typical vertical infographics, you can also make video infographics to add to newsletters, infographic presentations or Instagram infographics to share on social media.

Getting started is simple:

• Pick a template from the dashboard
• Input your content in the placeholders
• Customize the design elements to match your story
• Apply your branding with the AI-powered brand wizard
• Use Visme’s AI writer to help finesse your text
• Add animation and interactivity to make your infographic more engaging
• Share the finished infographic to social media or embed it into your site

There’s something that Visme’s infographic editor has that I have always found extremely useful. It’s the individual block editor with a draggable vertical bar. Let me show you how it works. I’ll use our B2B Case Study Infographic as an example.

By creating your infographic with content blocks, you can edit each block's content individually without having to move all the elements to fit new elements. And the last content block has an option to add a new block, which can be either a blank block or a template block. There are tons of options to choose from like:

More Visme Infographic Maker Features

• Built-in design assets: Quickly search for relevant design assets using Visme’s stock photo and video library, library of professionally designed slides and templates, font and icon library and more.
• Animation and interactivity: Animate any object you want in your presentation, including text, shapes, charts and tables. Insert CTA buttons, videos, surveys, quizzes, etc.
• Interactive data visualization: Visualize any type of data using 30+ data widgets in 2D and 3D formats, such as radial gauges, progress bars, clocks, population gauges and more. Integrate live data into your charts and graphs with our Google Sheets integration.
• Extensive font library: Choose from 100+ fonts and font pairs that make your presentation engaging and easily readable.
• Easy branding: AI-powered brand wizard that automatically pulls all design assets from your website and stores them for future use.
• Visme’s AI Writer: All you have to do is enter a detailed prompt or upload your content then wait as the AI produces easy-to-customize first drafts. You can edit them to fit your tone or ask AI to regenerate.
• Customizable transitions: Incorporate seamless transitions from slide to slide.
• Dynamic fields: Personalize and automate content by dynamically inserting variable data, such as names, logos and email addresses.
• AI image generator: Create unique images, art, 3D objects and abstracts with a simple prompt.
• 3D character creator: Design and customize animated characters with various body types, hairstyles and facial expressions.
• Real-time collaboration and workflow features: Bring multiple teams together to work on projects and keep everything on track by assigning tasks and deadlines and setting up reviews and approvals using Visme workflows.
• Publish and share anywhere: Share via URL or embed into a blog post or web page.
• Access third-party integrations: Add forms, videos, analytics and more with the integration of YouTube, Vimeo, JotForm, Google Analytics and many others.
• Analytics dashboard for tracking opens, views and demographics when sharing your infographic as a live Visme link or embedded into your site.
• Download as a single vertical graphic, or as a PDF with each block on a new page.

Pricing

Visme’s free, basic account has everything you need to get started with any type of visual content, not just infographics. But to download your designs

• Free
• Starter: $12.25/month
• Pro: $24.75/month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Tool #2: Canva

Canva is a popular online design tool. The platform has thousands of templates in different styles and for various industries. Their editor has a built-in asset library, a drag-and-drop interface, AI capabilities, solid animation features and plenty of third-party apps to support your workflow.

Even though there are plenty of tools to help with infographic creation, getting there isn’t as straightforward as it is in Visme and other tools. For starters, infographics aren’t one of the suggested content types when you open the dashboard. You have to search for them in either the templates directory or the Create New landing.

When you finally find what’s available, it’s a pleasant surprise. Not only can you create a vertical, digital infographic, you can also create printable infographic posters, infographic presentations and unlimited infographic whiteboards.

All with available templates. For the printable infographics, Canva offers a printing service you can organize from within the editor.

Once you’re done editing, download your infographic for offline use, or share it with your audience using a public view link, embed it on your blog or QR code.

More Canva Infographic Design Features

• Visual assets: 10,000+ premium stock photos, videos, audio tracks, illustrations and graphics to choose from.
• AI-powered Magic Studio: Transform your design workflow with tools like Magic Write, Magic Design, Magic Edit and Background Remover.
• Brand Kit: Store and organize your brand assets, including color palettes, logos and fonts for consistent branding across multiple projects.
• Data visualization: Add customizable data widgets and animated statistics to your infographics to take data storytelling to the next level.
• Team collaboration: Work seamlessly with multiple teams through real-time editing, commenting features, project folders and role-based permissions.
• Easy sharing: Download your infographic for offline use, or share it with your audience using a public view link, embed it on your blog or QR code.

Pricing

You can get started with Canva for free, but you won’t have access to the premium features, which are a lot. Paid plans are definitely worth it.

• Pro: $15/month/user
• Teams: $10/month/user
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Tool #3: Venngage

Next up is Venngage, a long-time contender in the infographic design space. Unlike other tools, Venngage’s front-and-center offer is infographics. They do offer other content types, but infographics are their main product.

Like many tools in 2026, Venngage has incorporated AI into its systems. So, when you arrive at the Venngage site, you’re greeted with their AI Design Maker. To test it out, I asked it to create an infographic about the best tips to create Instagram Reels.

The results were ok, nothing outstanding. I tried the prompt twice, and the results were similar, but neither was better than the other. Definitely not ready to use in either case. Each generation created a different title and body content as well.

The good thing is that everything is customizable using Venngage's icons, illustrations, graphics and data visualizations. You can also use their AI to request design edits, but your results will always be better if you edit it manually.

Top Features

• Extensive template library: 1,000+ professionally designed infographic templates across categories like statistical, timeline, comparison, and process.
• Design elements library: Built-in icons, illustrations and charts, organized by category and style with advanced search filters to find exactly what you need.
• AI design assistant: Generate custom text content, suggest design elements and get layout recommendations based on your industry and content type.
• AI Tools: like AI text generator, Alt text generator, background remove and branding.
• Brand kit management: Upload and store your brand colors, logos and fonts in one place—apply them across all designs with a single click.
• Data visualizations: Plenty of data widgets, charts, graphs and maps to choose from, but less extensive selection than Visme.
• Downloading: Options include PNG, PNG HD, PDF, PowerPoint, and HTML but the options available will depend on your plan.

Pricing

Venngage has a free plan with plenty of free templates and assets, but you won't be able to share or download your project. The paid plans include:

• Premium: $10/month/user
• Business: $24/month/user
• Enterprise: Contact sales for a custom quote

Tool #4: Piktochart

Piktochart is another design tool heavy on infographic making. They have also added an AI builder to their offerings. It seems more advanced than Venngage’s. I tested it out with the same prompt.

“Create an infographic about tips to make Instagram Reels”

The results were quite streamlined, with less reliance on icons for the section headers. Layout alignment and balance were also better with Piktochart than Venngage. To edit the results, you have all of the Pikto AI Tools plus all the elements available in the editor.

I tested changing the framed image that Piktochart suggested with the generation and found that there are lots of framed images that look great in designs like these. When you have the framed image selected, you can change the frame shape or apply several edits to the image itself, such as background removal and upscaling.

Top Piktochart Features

• Extensive template library: Hundreds of customizable templates for infographics, presentations, reports, posters, flyers and more.
• Comprehensive design assets: Extensive collection of icons, illustrations, photos, shapes and element combinations to enhance your visuals.
• Data visualization tools: Several types of charts and graphs available for presenting complex data, including pie charts, bar charts and maps.
• AI-powered infographic design: Choose the type of infographic you want to create, enter the topic, select a style that matches your aesthetic and click on Edit on the top-right of your screen to get started.
• AI Design tools: Lots of AI tools like image or text generators, icon generators, and visual enhancers.
• In-editor powerful AI tools: Generate visuals from prompts, convert documents into engaging visuals and create custom images from text descriptions.
• Collaboration capabilities: Invite team members to collaborate on projects, share visuals and provide feedback through annotated comments.
• Download and share: Download your infographic for offline use (you get 2 downloads on the free plan) or share it publicly on the web via an embed code or directly to social media.

Pricing

Piktochart has a free plan but only offers 2 PNG downloads. You do have access to all the templates and most of the features, but for actually creating something worthwhile, you’ll need a paid plan.

• Free
• Pro: $14/member/month
• Business: $24/member/month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Tool #5: Infogram

Last on the list is Infogram, an infographic design tool that focuses mostly on data visualization. Their pitch is that with Infogram, you can turn your data into interactive stories, which can also be infographics.

To create an infographic with Infogram, you can either start from scratch or choose a template. When building from scratch, there are content block options like with Visme, but you can’t have several blocks in one infographic, only one.

The tool and editor are simple enough to use, but there are some unfortunate things that happen when you open sidebars and popups. If it covers part of what you’re working on, you can’t move it over to see it. The pop-up for adding your data is particularly big and covers half of the design.

But what really caught my eye was Infogram’s data widgets. There are plenty of options to choose from like Tornado diagrams, Sunburst, Stream area, Sankey and Alluvial. You can change their colors, add legends or animate the data widgets to make the infographic more engaging.

If you’re using the free version of Infogram, you can share your project via a link, embed on your website or directly to your socials. But to download your projects in JPG, PNG, PDF, GIF and MP4 formats, you'll have to become a paid member.

Top Infogram Features

• Template library: There are mostly infographics but also some other content types like single graphs, dashboards and reports.
• Visual assets: Several options to choose from, including high-res images, animated stickers and GIFs.
• Data visualization tools: Features 35+ chart types and data widgets with customization options to create interactive infographics. Unique options include tornado diagrams, sunburst, stream area, sankey and alluvial.
• Team collaboration: Get team members to work on projects in real-time.
• Responsive design: Create once and publish everywhere with designs that look great across all devices.
• Sharing and downloading: Share your project via a link, embed on your website or directly to your socials. Download as JPG, PNG, PDF, GIF and MP4 formats.

Pricing

Infogram offers a free plan with complete access to interactive charts and other visual elements in the editor. For AI features and no watermark, you’ll need a paid plan.

• Free
• Pro: $19/month
• Business: $67/month
• Team: $149/month
• Enterprise: Contact for a custom quote

For detailed info on how much infographics cost, check out this article: Infographic Cost: How Much Is It & How to Save

Infographic Design FAQs

Design Your Infographic With Visme

This guide walked you through the elements that make infographics work. We showed you how to plan your infographic so it serves a clear goal and how to create flow so readers move through your content with clarity.

We also covered the top five infographic makers available right now, ranked by features, ease of use and value. One of which is Visme, which you can try out straight away.

Are you ready to create your first infographic or speed up production for your team? Discover Visme's infogrpahic maker and choose from hundreds of templates designed for non-designers just like you.

Written by Chloe West

Chloe West is the content marketing manager at Visme. Her experience in digital marketing includes everything from social media, blogging, email marketing to graphic design, strategy creation and implementation, and more. During her spare time, she enjoys exploring her home city of Charleston with her son.