How to Create an Infographic Layout That’s Easy to Follow
By: Payman Taei
Tags: Infographics, Infographic Designers, Infographic Design, Infographic Maker

An infographic layout — or the style in which your infographic is designed — can make the difference between a well or poorly designed infographic.

A poorly designed infographic with a layout that doesn’t deliver your story well can leave your viewer feeling confused and won’t properly get your message across.

In this article, you’ll learn about the types of infographic layouts at your disposal and how you can create the perfect layout for your story.

Along the way, we’ll also hand over an infographic layout cheat sheet that you can refer to anytime you sit to design an incredible infographic.

What is an Infographic Layout?

An infographic layout is the way visual elements are laid out in an infographic.

Does it have a timeline? Or is your infographic going to be packed with charts and graphs? Will images or icons go into it? And how will you arrange all the content — in sections or rows?

These are all questions that you should ask yourself as you plan an infographic.

The layout you use largely depends on your content. If it’s historical data you need to present, it’s a good idea to make a timeline infographic like this one:

Customize this infographic template and make it your own. Edit and download here.

If you plan to compare two or more items or concepts, use a comparison infographic such as the example below to visualize similarities and differences:

Customize this infographic template and make it your own. Edit and download here.

Let’s now show you the types of infographic layout ideas that you can explore for presenting your story in an effective manner.

Infographic Layout Types to Choose From

You’d have already figured it out by now: there are plenty of infographic types out there.

The ones available in Visme’s bank of infographic templates are:

Statistical infographics Timeline infographics Process infographics List infographics Informational infographics Comparison infographics Anatomical infographics Visual resume infographics Hierarchical infographics Location-based infographics Roadmap layout Multi-chart infographic layout

Remember: Use an infographic layout design which is not only visually appealing, but also visually communicative. This means, your design should not only appeal the eye, but also communicate your message effectively.

How to Plan The Perfect Infographic Layout

You might wish to avoid all the upfront work that goes into planning a design (there’s a procrastinating devil in all of us, I feel you!), but I guarantee: all the pre-design work is worth it.

For one, taking the time to lay out the details of what goes where in your infographic will help minimize edits in your final design.

Two, you’ll find yourself less confused as you design since you’ll be fully aware of what work each section needs. You wouldn’t even miss a detail or two as well.

Ready to work on your infographic’s layout? Buckle in as I walk you through the steps you need to take starting with:

1. Be aware of the sections you’ll need to work on.

An infographic comes in three main sections:

The header

Body

Footer

Each of these are pretty self-explanatory.

The header is where your infographic’s title goes. The body is where the meat of the matter or the bulk of your content is. As for the footer, this last section is reserved for adding references and copyright information.

Know that there are etiquettes to designing each section. Let’s address them one by one:

Designing the Header

Make this section count with an attractive title and an appealing format. Use bold text to make the title standout.

Make sure the font is larger than the rest of the infographic’s font size. This is so that you can differentiate the header and the title. This way, the header can do its job of attracting readers the best.

Working on Your Infographic’s Body

Decide what this section needs. Do you need to present the content in sections or do you need to add charts to the body to visualize data?

Next, work on the body’s arrangement.

For instance, if you’re using sections, decide how you’ll arrange them. If it’s a timeline that’ll be the focus of your infographic’s body, trace the pattern the timeline will follow.

See how the timeline in this example infographic template flows from the left to the right:

Customize this infographic template and make it your own. Edit and download here.

Settling on section arrangement is essential for your infographic’s visual hierarchy.

The hierarchy or the way you arrange your infographic determines the way you want your viewers to read the infographic.

Think of it like this: you start skimming a design from the element that’s the most prominent (the header, let’s say), followed by other elements — each one guiding the user’s attention like a trail that leads to the climax.

Usually, two prominent hierarchy patterns are popular: the Z or F viewing paths. You need to be familiar with both for creating infographics.

A quick crash course: the Z viewing pattern is when you guide the viewer to start from the top left corner, go on downwards, and finally to the left — just as Z is designed.

Similarly, the F pattern is when viewers start seeing the design from a horizontal movement (left to right), followed by the next line and down as in the alphabet’s shape.

You can navigate your viewers with the help of font sizes, data widgets, arrows or numbers.

One last thing that you need to work on in your infographic’s body: the visual elements, for example, the icons and images, that you’ll add here.

These visual elements serve a simple but very important purpose: they make this section easy to digest. This is particularly helpful if the body is long.

Finalizing Your Footer

The copyright and reference material that goes into this section doesn’t need to be prominent. It only needs to be readable, so you’ll have to work out the font size.

In the infographic templates that Visme offers, the footer font size is 16 — a good reference for you to bear in mind if you’re designing your infographic from the scratch.

2. Start working on the wireframe.

All the planning you do in the first step will materialize in the wireframe, or a rough draft of how your infographic will look.

Your wireframe can be as simple as a pencil sketch. The idea is to know exactly how your infographic layout is going to unfold.

With a wireframe, you’ll know how your infographic will look like. So if you need to make any drastic changes, you can easily do so at this point without having to mess up the rest of the design.

An important action step to bear in mind: arrange visual elements in the body section in addition to deciding the layout (timeline, multi-chart, comparison, and so on.)

Finally, review your wireframe for its visual hierarchy — see how the content, and subsequently, the story flows. Is it clear and well-balanced? Does it leave a clean impression or are the data widgets or other elements cluttering the body?

3. Settle on the color scheme and typography.

Instead of changing the colors to see which look best together when you design your infographic, pick your color scheme beforehand.

The same goes for the fonts you’ll use. Because, both of these factors play a crucial role in making your infographic a hit.

To begin with:

Select Your Colors

While multiple colors are usually fun, they’re tricky to work with. A safer option is to stick with 2–3 colors for your infographic.

These will be colors that you’ll use throughout the infographic: for the font, the header and footer sections and the design elements in the body.

If you represent a brand, the colors that you’ll use are obvious: from your brand kit.

Not affiliated to a brand? Pick contrasting colors.

A good way to see if you’re working with awesome color contrasts is to enter your preferred color in Coolers, a tool that’ll instantly generate a good color combination for you. You can also explore their trending color palettes and pick your infographic’s colors from there.

Pro tip: Don’t pick a fully dark color palette as it’ll make it difficult for you to bring your audience’s focus on the content and visual elements.

Working with a light background and bold colors makes it easy for you to organize information, helping you encourage viewers to focus on the bold colored shapes and font.

Here’s an example of good infographic color contrast:

Customize this infographic template and make it your own. Edit and download here.

Moving on:

Pick the Right Fonts

Don’t play around with a handful of fonts. That’s a big no-no.

Select max three font types instead of one. A good idea is to use two fonts to create a seamless hierarchy.

As for the font size, you’ll find the following size benchmarks helpful:

24–36 points for large headers

20–24 font size for medium headers

14–18 font for text content size

4. Prepare the elements that will go in your infographic.

We’ve already talked about introducing visual elements in the body section of your infographic for making it digestible. Now is the time when you work on them.

First, decide which elements you’ll work into the body. Will you rely on stock photography, animations or icons?

Whatever you finalize, keep in mind that you’ll need to be consistent in the elements’ use.

For example, if you’re using thin-bordered icons, stick to them. Don’t add a thick-bordered icon in the middle and disrupt the design consistency.

Next, start designing. 🎨

Alternatively, select your design elements from the vast pool of elements that Visme offers. You can explore from:

Icons

Animations

Diagrams

Graphics and text

Header and text

Data widgets such as counters, tables, progress bars, and more

You can find all of these on the left side of your dashboard in Visme:

5. Write your infographic’s content.

An essential aspect of an infographic layout design is having everything at hand and planned in advance. Doing so tells you how your layout will finally look like.

That’s why an essential step here is to write the content that’ll go into your infographic.

Here some tips to guide you through this step:

Cut straight to the point with everything you write

Never spell numbers as that takes up space. Instead of ‘three,’ go for ‘3’

Write short sentences. Long ones are confusing to follow and give your design a cluttered look

Here’s more on how to design clutter-free infographics.

Ready to get into the practical design stuff? Read on to learn how to design a brilliant infographic.

6. Create your infographic layout design.

Now’s the time you put your design chops to use.

You’ve two options: design from the start or pick an infographic template available in Visme. Let’s walk you through each option separately:

Design on a Blank, Infographic Canvas

To begin with, you need to be careful about your alignment.

Why?

Because it helps you create a well-balanced design with enough space between various visual elements and the edges. This lets your design breathe and keeps the infographic clutter-free.

Therefore, to guide your action on the canvas, use a grid line.

To get started with this, click the big blue button titled Create on the left side of your Visme dashboard. Select infographics from the top options bar and press Get Started on the blank template.

To enable the grid, select the three horizontal lines on the extreme left side of your screen. Next, pick View Options beside a settings icon and turn on the grid.

Refer to this grid whenever you want to add space between elements.

If you want to tweak the canvas size, you can do so in the same section. Not sure which dimensions are the best for your layout? Bookmark this guide on the right infographic dimensions.

Another thing that can simplify designing the perfect infographic layout in Visme: Content Blocks.

Notice the + on the floating sidebar on your canvas’s right? Click on it to get two options: Add Empty Block and Add from Templates.

The magic happens when you pick the second option. You can select from a variety of headlines, icons, charts, maps and more without wasting time on designing something yourself.

Here are just some of the template-based headline options I get when I choose Headline under the Add from Templates option.

Note that each block is customizable. Meaning: you can tweak its font, colors, and even add another element to the template-based content block.

Done with your layout’s headline? Move on to the next section by adding an empty block using the + symbol below the first block.

By simply selecting it, you’ll get another empty block for your infographic layout design. At the same though, you can also choose Add from Templates that appears as you hover over the + sign.

Depending on the layout blueprint you have with yourself, work on your infographic’s body and footer sections.

The good news is that by sticking to using content blocks, you can design your infographic in less than an hour.

Want to move sections or blocks around?

Use the floating sidebar to change section positions with the up and down arrows. You can also duplicate or delete a block with the double copy and trash bin signs on the right side bar.

Customize an Infographic Template

Visme makes designing infographics a piece of cake whether you work with templates or start from zero. Thanks to the content blocks.

If you want to save more time, browse through our infographic library and select the template you think will serve your purpose best.

Note that if you like a template, but it doesn’t have enough sections or has more of them, you can always customize it to your needs.

Let’s pick a template and show you how:

Customize this infographic template and make it your own. Edit and download here.

The sidebar on the template’s right side is going to be your control panel for tweaking it.

In the same way as you worked above, the + sign will let you add a blank section or one from the template-based content blocks pool. The directional arrows will let you rearrange sections and you’ll also have the luxury to duplicate and delete blocks in the same manner as above.

One another option you get here are the three dots at the end of the bar. Press those and you’ll get the option to Change Background and alter the block’s height.

Want to change the background to your brand colors? Hit the three buttons and select the option. You’ll get the following options on the top of your template:

That’s a good amount of flexibility, isn’t it?

You’ll get multiple options under each of these. For example, under Background, you’ll get the choice to pick from:

In this example, I’ve selected Animated and changed the background to this:

Photos

Patterns

Gradients

Animated

In this example, I’ve selected Animated and changed the background to this:

Since this is a screenshot, you won’t be able to see the lines in the background moving. But they actually do! There’s an animated background option with animated hearts moving upward — that’s my favorite one so far (although it’s hard to pick favorites.)

Want some inspiration to create an animated infographic layout design? Check out these 23 stunning interactive infographics. And here’s a video guide to creating animated infographics:

Enjoy Making a Brilliant Infographic Layout

See? Wasn’t that easy?

Although chalking out your infographic layout can be overwhelming initially, the right amount of planning and wireframing can save you precious time and edits.

Most of all, Visme can make the entire designing process a fun activity. So first things first, sign up for Visme right away and start making attention-grabbing infographic layout designs.