more than words - ragan communications 200 clint schaff.pdf · visualjournalism –80% of the news...

MORE THAN WORDS:Or, Infographics, as explained by early 1990s

Grammy award winners Extreme and Bonnie Raitt

CLINT SCHAFF#raganvisual

@clintschaff

HELLO & WELCOME

ABOUT CLINT

• US GM, Dare Digital

• Adjunct Professor, USC Annenberg

• Entrepreneur and startup advisor

• In-house and agency experience

• Board member, PRSA-LA, Social Media Club LA, LAGRANT Foundation

MEH. A LIL’ BORING.

LEARN FROM JACK & ERICA

Visualresume.co

mPinterest.com

WHAT’S AN

INFOGRAPHIC?

HotButterStudios.com

InfographicsArchive.com

INFOGRAPHICS ARE...

“Statistical graphics of complex ideas

communicated with clarity, precision, and

efficiency”

Mr. Edward R. Tufte

"The Leonardo Da Vinci of Data" The New York Times

WHY INFOGRAPHICS

MATTER

Saying I love you

Is not the words I want to hear from you

It's not that I want you

Not to say, but if you only knew

How easy it would be to show me how you feel

More than words is all you have to do to make it real

Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me

Cos I'd already know

Extreme, “More Than Words”

OUR BRAIN PROCESS IMAGES BEST

Source: Mark Smiciklas

INFOGRAPHICS THROUGHOUT HISTORY

Source: Mark Smiciklas

INFOGRAPHICS THROUGHOUT HISTORY

INFOGRAPHICS THROUGHOUT HISTORY

Posterous.DontMindRick.com

Searchenginejournal.com

SIX BENEFITS1. More eye-catching than printed words

2. Easier to scan and remember

3. Extremely shareable for use around the web.

4. Reinforce a brand and build awareness

5. Drive people to your site through sharing and search engines

6. Engage and connect in a fun way

WORKING TOGETHER

• Let’s figure this out together

• Worksheet exercise

WHEN TO VISUALIZE IT

Source: Visual.ly

SETTING GOALS

P-O-S-T

• P - People

• O - Objectives

• S - Strategies

• T – Technologies (and Tactics)

Source: “Groundswell” book by Charlene Li

COMMON OBJECTIVES• Thought leadership

– “To create infographics that share important industry ideas and

concepts and highlight our strategic thinking”

• Awareness– “To create infographics that are ‘sharable’ and create awareness of

our brand”

• Traffic– “To create infographics that drive traffic to related pages on our

company website”

• Communication– “To create infographics that make it easier for employees to

understand company information”

• Entertainment– “To create infographics that entertain our customers and showcase

our corporate culture and personality”

HSUS Society Infographic

To Celebrate Reaching 1 Million Fans

Charity Water infographic to

market a fundraising opportunity

Amnesty International infographic

to advocate on an issue

Cisco infographic to share research report findings

Supplemental insurance group

infographic to explain why we

haven’t cured cancer.

DoSomething infographic to community its quarterly metrics

Infographic to capture the history of

space missions to Mars

Zach Martinet infographic to propose

to his girlfriend Stacy via infographic!

LET’S GIVE ‘EM SOMETHING

TO TALK ABOUT

Source: Oli Gardner, Unbounce.com

CREATE CONTENT PEOPLE WANT

Let's give 'em somethin' to talk about

(Somethin' to talk about)

A little mystery to figure out

(Somethin' to talk about)

Let's give 'em somethin' to talk about

How about love?

Bonnie Raitt, “Something to Talk About”

DATA, DATA, DATA

This is a good example of the bottom of an infographic that shows where the data came from.

Research, realness, relevance, remarkability

MAKE SOMETHING REMARKABLE

Source: Lifestylebyps.com

– Pie charts

– Line & bar graphs

– Big stats with % next to them

– Tweetable factoids containing key

stats and quotes

– Topicality

– Originality

NAIL THE DESIGN & DATA VIZ

Source: ComicalConcept.com

– Visual approach

– Visual hook

– Color scheme / palette

– Wireframes

– Design around data

– Testing

DESIGN TOOLS

• Easelly

• Piktochart

• Infogram

• Creately

• Visually

BE MEMORABLE

• Memorability alone might enhance

an infographic's effectiveness

• Visualizations with more than six

colors were much more memorable

than those with only a few colors

• Findings refute common perception

that a busy graphic is a bad one

• Bar graphs and charts are easy to

forget

• Icons, images, and human-

recognizable objects will instantly

increase memorability

SHOW, DON’T TELL

• Which is better

• Why?

PULL THEM IN

• Short and sweet

• Get personal

• Interesting adjectives

• Negative wording

• Numbers

• Personalize with a little extra

• Submit an SEO optimized press release

• Create a social media release

• Create social media sharing plan– Ex. Provide “Tweetables”

• Submit infographic to directories

– Visual.ly

– Daily Infographic

– Cool Infographics

– Infographics Archive

– Infographic Journal

– Infographics Showcase

– Visual Loop

– Flickr

– Pinterest

– Tumblr

• Start manual outreach

GIVE IT A VIRAL PUSH

Source: QuickSprout.com, Neil Patel

WHAT’S NEXT? VIDEO INFOGRAPHICS

1-2-3 STEPS TO

STRUCTURING YOUR

INFOGRAPHIC STORY

1 – THE TITLEGrab people’s attention

Source: Piktograph

2- THE BODY

Source: Piktograph

A) Typical B) Singular

2- THE BODY

Source: Piktograph

C) Comparison D) Process

3 - CONCLUSION• End story with impact – lingering thoughts, call to action, etc.

• What story are you telling?

GOOD EXAMPLES

#FAIL EXAMPLES

MEASURING ROI

TANGIBLE METRICSAwareness

• Inbound links

• Page views

• Searches

• SEO ranking

Engagement

• Average time on page

• Comments

• Social sharing

Source: Mark Smiciklas

INTANGIBLE METRICSExternal

• Building relationships

• Credibility

• Experience with your brand

Internal

• Communication

• Corporate pride

• Decision-making

• Learning

Source: Mark Smiciklas

WRAPPING UP

LAST WORDS• There are no strict guidelines

• There is no step-by-step blueprint to guarantee success

• Avoid common, silly mistakes. Be disciplined. And don’t take any short cuts.

• Generate great ideas. Create wonderful designs. And write well.

• Most importantly, focus on your target audience. Delight them. Help them. Show your passion and you’ll find an audience.

THANK YOU!Let’s keep the convo going!

CLINT SCHAFF

#raganvisual

@clintschaff

clint.schaff@thisisdare.ca

clintschaff@gmail.com

APPENDIX

INFOGRAPHIC CHECKLIST Share interesting statistics about your

industry, use humor to entertain, or

provide in-depth buying advice; Don’t

“sell”

Be original

Remember your target audience

Focus on an overarching idea you

can explain in one sentence

Provide in-depth information

Don’t be a blabbermouth

Surprise people by avoiding

obvious info and viewing from an

unusual angle

Have an outreach plan

Make it look great with irresistable

design

Limit infographic to 8,000 pixels, and

compress to under 1.5MB.

Develop an eye-catching design

Limit to two font types, and emphasize

readability

Ensure images, colors and graphs

all match overall tone

Write compelling copy for your

infographic

Craft a headline that grabs attention

Use simple language and tighten your

text

Double check your facts and use

accurate information

Take a stand with specific, concrete

details

Match tone of voice to topic

Use sub headlines to draw readers

to other parts of infographic

100+ RESOURCESData Visualization Tools and Software

Visual.ly – Awesome community for creating and sharing infographics.

Information Aesthetics – The relationship between design and information.

Visualizing.org – Making sense of complex issues through data and design.

Visual Complexity - A resource for the visualization of complex networks.

Daily Infographic – A new infographic every day.

GOOD Infographics – GOOD Magazine’s excellent infographics section.

Information Is Beautiful – Ideas, issues, knowledge, data – visualized.

Infographic of the Day – Fast Company’s excellent and long running series.

FlowingData – Exploring how designers, scientists visualize data.

Datastore / Datablog – Two great data journalism sites from the Guardian.

Infographics Archive – A visual library offering infographics.

Visual Loop – There’s an infographic for it… even if it didn’t happen!

Infographr – All about infographics.

Newsilike – An infographics blog from India.

Video Infographics – Motion infographics that explain, educate or inform.

Datavisualization.ch – A news and knowledge resource for data visualization.

VisualJournalism – 80% of the news in infographics.

Eagereyes – Reflections on the visual communication of data.

Amazing Infographics – Cool information graphics.

Submit Infographics – Share and rate infographics.

The Infographics Showcase – Collecting infographics.

I Love Charts – A Tumblr blog about charts.

Well Formed Data – An infographics blog by a freelance data visualizer.

Best Infographics – Pointing you toward great infographics.

Infographic List – For those who love infographics.

Create Personal Infographics

Biogrify – Create a fun visual snapshot of your life.

Vizify TweetSheet – Your Twitter activity as an instant infographic.

Photo Stats – App for creating iPhone infographics out of your photo data.

Re.vu – A visual resume tool.

Vizualize.me – Visualize your resume in one click.

Kinzaa – Build your infographic resume.

Source: dailytekk.wordpress.com

Data Visualization Tools and Software

Piktochart – Transforms your information into memorable presentations.

Infogr.am – Create interactive charts and infographics.

Gephi – Like Photoshop for data. Graph visualization and manipulation software.

Tableau Public – Free data visualization software.

Free Vector Infographic Kit – Vector infographic elements from MediaLoot.

easel.ly – Create infographics online.

Weave – Web-based analysis and visualization environment.

iCharts – Charts made easy.

ChartsBin – A web-based data visualization tool.

GeoCommons – See your data on a map.

VIDI – A suite of powerful Drupal visualization modules.

Prefuse – Information visualization software.

StatSilk – Desktop and online software for mapping and visualization.

Gliffy – Online diagram and flowchart software.

Hohli – Online charts builder.

Many Eyes – Lets you upload data and create visualizations.

Google Chart Tools – Display live data on your site.

Great Infographic Studios and Designers

Column Five – Creating visual content that brings people to your site.

FFunction – Data visualization consulting.

Interactive Things – A user experience and data visualization studio.

Periscopic – An agency whose tagline is “do good with data”.

Fathom – Helps clients understand and express complex data.

JESS3 – Creative agency specializing in data visualization.

Visual Evolution – London-based infographic design.

Lemon.ly – Create understanding through visuals.

Prime Infographics – Creates custom infographics for businesses.

Other / Miscellaneous / Overflow

Wolfram CDF – Create “infoapps” using always-current data.

Kaggle – Making data science a sport.

KISSmetrics Infographics – Useful infographics by KISSmetrics.

Better World Flux – A beautiful interactive visualization of what matters in life.

Data Wrangler – Interactive tool for data cleaning and transformation.

Lyza – Analyze, socialize, decide.

A World of Tweets – Twitter visualization.

QlikView – Business intelligence for everyone.

We Feel Fine – An exploration of human emotion.

Visual Economics – Unraveling complexities in financial data.

ComponentArt DV – Present, navigate and visualize your data like never before.

DOMO – Business intelligence platform.

Infochimps – Big data infrastructure made clear.

Evaluat3 – The best way to know your professional strengths (graphs).

Webpages As Graphics – An HTML DOM visualizer app.

Creately – Draw diagrams online using a collaborative approach.

Wordle – Create beautiful word clouds.

Tagxedo – Word clouds with style.

Data Sources

DataMarket – Find and understand data.

The Data Hub – The easy way to get, use and share data.

Knoema – Your personal knowledge highway.

WorldMap – Explore, visualize and publish geographic information.

Get the Data – Ask and answer data questions.

Influence Explorer – Provides overviews of political influence data for politicians.

US Census Bureau – Measures America (people, places, economy).

datacatalogs.org – A comprehensive list of open data catalogs.

Freebase – An entity graph of people, places and things from Google.

World Bank Data – The world at a glance (key development indicators).

Data360 – Telling compelling and data-driven stories.

Number Of – You ask, they count.

Gallup – Public opinion polls.

EveryBlock – Uncovers info on large cities contained in government databases.

Daytum – Helps you collect, organize and communicate your everyday data.

Google Public Data – Filter and animate data sets from around the world.

Gapminder – Displays time series of development statistics for all countries.

Munterbund – Graphical visualization of text similarities in essays.

JavaScript / Flash Infographic Tools

KeyLines – A JavaScript toolkit for visualizing networks.

d3.js – Free JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data.

InfoVis Toolkit – A JavaScript tool for creating interactive data visualizations.

Flare – Makes it easy to create interactive data visualizations (ActionScript).

JS Charts – Free JavaScript charts.

FusionCharts – JavaScript (HTML5) and Flash charts.

amCharts – JavaScript and HTML charts.

Highcharts – Interactive JavaScript charts.

Infographic Articles and Tutorials

How to Create Outstanding Modern Infographics – Vectortuts+

Infographic: Do-It-Yourself Guide to Infographics – Marketing Tech Blog

A Few Rules for Making Homemade Infographics – The Atlantic Wire

The Do’s and Don’ts of Infographic Design – Smashing Magazine

How to Create a Great Infographics (Slideshow) – The Content Lab

Design a Magazine Infographic – Digital Arts

Create an Infographic Typography Animation – aetuts+

How to Create Great Infographics – .net magazine

The Anatomy of an Infographic – SpyreStudios

How to Strike a Balance Between Data and Visualization – The Daily Egg

7 Steps to Make Your Infographic a Success – SEOmoz