Public Health Infographic Design

Learn all about infographic design for public health

What is an infographic?

Infographics (/ˌinfōˈɡrafik/ | noun.) are the visualization of data or ideas.

The process of developing and publishing infographics is “data visualization”“information design”, or “information architecture”. It is the detailed planning of specific information that is to be provided to a particular audience to meet specific objectives. The goal of information design is to help humans process information as efficiently as possible.

Through the use of infographics, you are trying to convey complex information to an audience in a manner that can be quickly consumed and easily understood. 

On this page, you’ll find: 

Our best articles and tutorials on infographics
Podcast episodes on infographic design & public health
Course designed to help you build infographics with tools you know and use
Free resources to get you started with infographic design

Learn to Design Public Health Infographics

Infographic Design Articles and Tutorials

These articles, tutorials, and case studies will help you
in your journey of designing infographics in public health.
VIEW ALL ARTICLES ON INFOGRAPHICS

Resources for Infographic Design

Interested in designing your own public health infographics but not sure how to get started? Use these resources to get started.

4 ways to use infographics in your public health work

A FREE GUIDE for public health professionals. With this guide, you will walk away with: 4 applications for infographics in public health, numerous ideas for each application & sample infographics for each application.

6 Day Infographic Challenge

At the end of this challenge, you will have confidently chosen a piece of work to disseminate to an audience and have taken the first few steps to designing your first infographic.

Infographic Design Templates

Six (6) easy to edit templates designed in Microsoft Power Point: for those comfortable with infographic design and are looking for a quick starter guide: Requires Microsoft Power Point – no additional software needed.

Infographic Design Podcast Episodes

Frequently Asked Questions on Public Health Infographics (FAQs)

Infographics (/ˌinfōˈɡrafik/ | noun.) are the visualization of data or ideas.

The process of developing and publishing infographics is “data visualization”“information design”, or “information architecture”. It is the detailed planning of specific information that is to be provided to a particular audience to meet specific objectives. The goal of information design is to help humans process information as efficiently as possible.

Through the use of infographics, you are trying to convey complex information to an audience in a manner that can be quickly consumed and easily understood. 

Design is “a plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose” (Madame L’Amic of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, 1972).
 
The elements of design include line, shape, color, texture, and typography.
 
The principles of design are guidelines on how to use the elements of design (line, shape, colour, texture and typography) in an aesthetically pleasing way.

As a public health professional, our responsibility is to effectively communicate findings to our audiences.

Today, we (along with our audience) receive more information than ever before – some sources say that the numbers are as high as 100,000+ words per day, and this doesn’t include what people consume at work! Getting through all of this noise, and effectively communicating your public health message (whether it’s to the public, senior management, or stakeholders of a project) is extremely important. We would even go as far as saying that as a public health professional, it is our responsibility to ensure that quality public health information is translated in a way that is easily consumable by population groups we serve and deeply care about. And if you haven’t guessed it, this is where infographics come in!

Infographic design requires the use of a number of concepts including psychology, data science, and graphic design, but in our opinion, that’s not to say that only specialists in those areas can design them. 

Public health professionals are in a unique position as content experts to lead infographic design projects. They just need to know some basic concepts, the available tools/resources, and how to execute the design process.

You can use a number of software to design infographics. Some of the popular ones are Adobe Creative Suite (i.e. Illustrator), Canva, or Venngage. 

The software we love to use for infographic design is MS PowerPoint. (Yes, MS PowerPoint is not meant to be a design software, but simple software are more than enough to design infographics.)

This is also the software we teach in our course! The Infographics 101 course is for beginners and aims to teach infographic design using software that is already available to public health professionals (instead of investing in new/expensive ones). We have found that great infographics can be designed using PowerPoint.

There are 9 simple steps to designing  an infographic. Starting with understanding your objective, and intended audience; then building your story and vision; drafting out the first version of it; pulling it all together by collaborating with your stakeholders; and finaly designing your infographic.  You can download the guide here.

A “layout” is the arrangement of your visual elements and content. Since infographics tell a story, ensuring you select the best layout to effectively (and efficiently) tell your story is important. There are 6 major infographic layouts: statistical, process, timeline, comparison, geographical, text-based & a combination of multiple core layouts.

Infographics 101 Workshop

Active Learning For you + your team

SET PUBLIC HEALTH CAREER GOALS

A simple template to get you started.

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