Infogr.am: Easily Create Charts And Infographics Online

Infographics: the original viral graphics, widely abused, but still loved. Infographics can be a great way of showing off data – or making yourself look extra smart without as much data – but they still take a fair bit of work to put together.

Today, I will introduce you to a new service called Infogr.am that lets you create charts and infographics in few simple steps. All you have to do is select your desired template, input the information you want to display and you are done. It’s that simple.

Getting Started

Using Infogram is pretty simple and straight forward. To get started, you’ll need to signup, but that won’t take you more than 10 seconds. After registration, you will be redirected to Infogram dashboard. The service offers users with two options: you can either create charts or infographics. The service has handful of templates in its library which can be used to create an infographic.

The service is currently in beta and may contain bugs. You might want to let the Infogram team know if you find anything major, but otherwise, it should keep getting better with time.

Creating Charts and Infographics

Creating Infographics and charts using Infogram is really easy. From Infogram dashboard, just select how you want to display your information. Let’s start with an infographic. Once selected, you will be presented with a number of templates that you can use.

One useful feature of Infogram is that you can manually place the elements like additional charts, maps, pictures, text and even videos in the template and add your information. For example, if I want the chart to appear on top of the text, I can simply drag and drop the required element and place it. You can even add multiple charts and other elements to your infographic depending on the data you want to display.

Adding data to your infographic is very simple. All you have to do is double tap anywhere on the template and add the required information. Similarly, you can also add text, title, change chart colors, and more. There is a separate button for each option on the right side of the screen.

You can even manually upload the data from your computer to Infogram in few simple clicks. Just the location of the file and it’ll import the data in a spreadsheet-like interface.

If you want, you can even add charts, tables, and more manually as well. The saved and published charts can be viewed from Infogram library. From there, you can manage all your creations, edit them, preview them or delete them from Infogram. This is a great way to be able to reuse your work later, and share it with the world.

Sharing Infographics

You likely made your infographic to share it with others. So, after you are done with the infographic, click on the Publish button to share your creation on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. The app even gives you a direct link which can be shared with anyone you want, say by email or on another network.

What I Think

There is no doubt that Infogram is a very handy and useful utility that can come in handy in many situations. However, one thing that really confused me is the fact that when you open your dashboard or Infogram library, it will show you the number of followers you have. The service also shows a Store option and it is marked as coming soon. Presumably, there’s an upcoming internal infographic network in Infogram, which could be cool, but there’s no way to use it just yet.

The great thing is, Infogram is one of the simplest apps I’ve used so far for creating infographics, and really is easier to use than most apps I use, period. Despite of being in beta testing, I didn’t find any major problems that made it frustrating to use. So, if you are looking for a simple yet professional way to summarize and present your data to anyone, you should be sure to give Infogram a try.