1. Concept
The first step is to come up with a great concept. Grab yourself a cup of coffee and a sketch pad and prepare to think outside of the box. What have you seen lately that caught your eye? What colors does your client like? Can you design an infographic that supports his or her brand?
2. Data Analysis
Next you need to conduct thorough conceptual due diligence and market research. The content needs to be simplified. With a time crunch, this can be a challenge obviously. What numbers are significant? What statistics will turn heads? Nobody will be able to read an infographic written in legalese so it all needed to simplified and translated to terminology and wording that most people use on a daily basis.
3. Visual Metaphor
An infographic needs a great visual metaphor. On this project, I was able to come up with a visual structure that would help readers make a connection to the underlying information. Some of the initial structures considered included a gavel, scale and all of the cliché items that come to mind. These are rarely a good idea, as it will just put the reader asleep. In the end, I had to revert back to the map approach and the relevance the firm had as far as covering territories.
4. Design
Infographic design is an iterative process with that is constantly changing and with the layers and complexity required in designing an infographic, it would be quite difficult to summarize all of his design processes in a single paragraph. Most designers would probably have trouble distilling that into a short novel! The good news with my example, is the client loved the approach with the dots, so soon I was off and running. Sometimes it's just dumb luck.
5. Publish & Socialize
What we are all forgetting that is that one of the main reason infographics are created is so they can be shared, and often business seek to create a viral effect that will link back to their website, and help them generate credibility, trust, and authority. Thus for businesses, infographics are actually an exercise in marketing, specifically public relations and branding. Businesses like Fletchergraphics can help with that aspect of the business. The title not only needs to be search optimized but it needs to be an exciting and buzz worthy title. Once that is set, it is good to generate a list of blogs and industry contacts that would be interested in the infographic.