Infographics: types, examples of work, future. Introduction to Animation
You've probably noticed a massive shift to online world from text-based content to visual content.
There is no denying the power of visuals on the Internet and in our Everyday life. YouTube and Instagram are dominated by visual content; YouTube is the 3rd most visited site on the web, and Instagram has over 80 million photos posted every day.
Blog posts and articles are 80% more likely to be consumed if they have color images, headlines or thumbnails, and people will spend no more than 15 seconds on a site if it doesn't grab their attention right away.
Infographics are a favorite among audiences and retailers, and are 800% more interesting to people today than in 2012.
On top of that, content is being created at an alarming rate - 60% of marketers create at least a small part new content every day! You can learn more from the review article.
As more and more people start creating content, one thing is becoming clear: in order to be seen, you need to stand out.
Naturally, content marketers are already thinking about the future of visual content, considering what they can do now, what they can implement, and what new technologies are on the horizon. This type of forward thinking is what can make or break your content marketing efforts; you must adapt or you will drown.
With visual content like infographics, marketers have unique opportunity see the future as it approaches. Companies, graphic designers, and marketers are all starting to use infographics - updating them to make them even more attractive to their audience. Even if you already “just post” infographics regularly, it's never too early to learn about trends that are just starting to develop, just as it's never too early to learn how to implement them into your content marketing strategies.
If you want to look into the future, and maybe even learn a few tricks before everyone else, now is the time!
Here are the three types of infographics that will be most common in the (near) future.
If you're looking for a cool infographic creation tool, I recommend checking out Visme. To begin with they offer free account and excellent convenient features for those who are not involved in design. You can get a free account now.
1. Interactive infographics
While we've seen the beauty of interactive websites and easy-to-use games, interactive infographics are still fairly new in their field. Like infographics, they obviously contain some information, and they are usually dynamic. But using interactive elements gives users the opportunity to connect with information and create their own.
No matter your business, product, service or message, you can create an interactive infographic that allows people to rate themselves (for example, “calculate your BMI here”). Users can also click on related information, which will take them to a more in-depth resource, or back to landing page, thereby creating traffic. It's a very adaptable and fun way to engage your audience.
Many marketers have already adapted to this type of infographic, and it transfers quickly. But at the same time, many still take as a basis simple infographics:
….just imagine what else you can do with interactive infographics.
You can try:
- Using scrolling techniques that make images or shapes stand out from the background
- Constructing “pop-up windows” that expand text areas
- Images or statistics pop up when you click on them
- Turn your infographics into multiple pages that users can view
For more detailed example For an interactive infographic, check out this one:
To make an infographic highly interactive (with scrolling, pop-ups, etc.) you'll need to learn a little about HTML5 or CSS, or hire someone else to figure it out for you.
Despite the extra effort, you will be rewarded with a unique, engaging, and effective piece of content.
Why should you try to implement infographics in the near future?
- This encourages your audience to interact with and share your content.
- This generates traffic (via links)
- This proves to your audience that you are innovative, resourceful, and intend to provide timely and interesting content.
- There are layers of interactive infographics that make its development manageable
2. Embedded video and GIF
This is a different type of infographic that we are seeing more and more of today. Infographics offering short videos or even GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) – great way grab attention and make your infographic stand out from the crowd. While this is limited by platforms, you can share your infographics in the present tense.
A bunch of simple tools Infographic creators like Easel.ly offer an “Embedded YouTube Video” option, or you can add video to an infographic you create in Photoshop using a video layer. You can even add a video to a Powerpoint slide, which you can also turn into an infographic.
Moreover, you can find millions of GIFs online and insert them in the same way. The catch here is that you will have to distribute your infographic as a URL to ensure that it is properly embedded into your site. You may not distribute or save such infographics in .jpeg or PDF format. No doubt, as this becomes more popular, there will be other video and GIF insertion tools to make the process even easier.
But if you want to use this type of infographic before everyone around you, even their dogs, learns how to do it, start now with the tools you find online.
If you want to go to next level, you can make a video from an infographic you already have. This is a great opportunity to be seen on YouTube, Instagram, and even on video platforms such as Vimeo, Snapchat, and others. The video below is a great example of how to turn an infographic into a video.
Why embed a video or GIF in an infographic?
- This gives you an element of surprise - people don't expect the picture to move!
- It's very fun and original, which increases the chance that people will interact and share your infographic.
- This good way show everyone the uniqueness of your brand
3. Animated infographics
The animated infographic has great amount visual models and requires a lot of attention. When a user views a page, they usually don't expect anything to move, so it's a good idea if you learn all these techniques before everyone else does.
Due to the fact that many animated infographics are quite complex and may require some graphic design, coding, and/or domain knowledge software, they are very highly valued.
Here's an example of what I'm talking about:
If you want to learn more about how to create animated infographics, check out this infographic from Tabletop Whale. You can also find various services, helping to create infographics of this kind. In any case, this is one of the most complex processes in the evolution of infographics.
Why should you invest your time, energy and/or money into creating animated infographics?
- This will actually make you stand out from the crowd because not everyone has access to this kind of software or content
- In just a couple of years this will be commonplace - you'll be one of the first to do it!
- Animation will make the information inside the infographic more memorable
- This will inspire your users to work with you.
This is not science fiction.
This may sound too technical and beyond your capabilities right now, but it's likely that these types of infographics will become very commonplace in 2-3 years. We can already see a strong breakthrough in animated infographics and GIFs, especially as GIFs continue to grow in popularity. Infographics are becoming one of the most consumed and most frequently created types of content on the Internet. Why? Yes, because the brain only needs 250 milliseconds to accept and process the meaning of a symbol.
If the average person spends about 15 seconds on a site and then starts to get bored, then you naturally want to pull up anything on the screen that might hold them back - or at least get a message in 15 seconds or less. Some studies have even proven that people can concentrate on something for no more than 8 seconds, and this figure is decreasing every year.
This is the reason and perhaps by-product our constant need to receive information. We live in the information age and all information is available to us. But this also means that the more people try to share messages and reply to everything possible questions, the more content produced becomes background noise.
If the availability of infographics today is any indication, they will soon be everywhere. This means new changes in your work. No marketing campaign in history has achieved success by doing the same thing all the time.
The idea here is to see the infographic as more than just a jpeg image. Infographics can be adapted to different mediums and used on a huge variety of platforms. Entrepreneurs and marketers have already seen the potential in this. And you?
Here's a beginner's guide to data visualization for anyone who wants to learn how to create interactive infographics and maps.
Infographics and interactive maps have become part of many projects implemented by activists, journalists and social movements. But what about organizations that do not have a full-time designer? Even in this case, you can create high-quality visual materials - The Guardian told me how to do it.
Data
The first thing you need to do is understand what data you want to visualize.
Let's imagine that you are running a campaign calling for improved sanitation around the world. To show how important this is, it must be emphasized how many countries still have limited access to clean toilets and how little this situation has changed over the past 10 years. In this tutorial we will use a dataset from the World Bank.
We now have 10 years of data, but we only need the 2000 and 2012 numbers. Therefore, after we have loaded our data, we delete unnecessary rows and columns (advice: save original file with data).
Now that you've cleaned the data, you're ready to visualize it. In our case, another column was added before visualization - the percentage difference between 2000 and 2012.
How to create an interactive chart
Showing data on a graph is the fastest and easiest way to visualize information. Sites like Datawrapper, Infogr.am and PiktoChart are lightweight and easy-to-use tools that allow you to create various graphs and charts and embed them into any website.
Datawrapper is perhaps the most intuitive, and it's also free. Weak side The problem with this tool is that it doesn't display large data sets very well, so we'll only visualize the 10 countries that have seen the most change in the last 10 years.
How to create a graph using Datawrapper:
- Register on the Datawrapper website and create a new chart.
- Copy and paste your information into the provided field.
- Check your details.
- Now the fun part - choose a chart template. For this visualization, a simple one was chosen interactive chart, but you can choose from large quantity options presented on the website.
- The last step is the final editing of your schedule. You can change the colors, add a title, description, etc.
How to create an interactive map
To show data related to different countries, it is best to use a map. We present to you an overview of three free tools for beginners.
Datawrapper
This tool now has a choropleth map option - creating a gradient based on your data. Datawrapper creates maps in the same way as graphs.
Behind: one of the fastest and simplest tools. Datawrapper will tell you when you have entered the country name incorrectly. Another good thing about this tool is that if you hover over specific color in the legend, only countries with this color will be highlighted on the map.
Against: There are no templates for individual countries or cities.
Behind: free and easy to use (especially for creating points on the map).
Against: additional features, for example, change color scheme, may seem complicated for beginners (but if you know how to connect KML files with existing data, you can create such a map). It's difficult to add a legend to a map.
It may seem intimidating at first, but with this tool you can create a wide variety of maps and customize them depending on what you want to see on the map.
Behind: will allow you to make many adjustments and add additional layers. Works on mobile devices.
Against: if you plan to create more than 5 maps and expect to get more than 10,000 views per month, you will need to pay to use this tool.
How to Create Traditional Infographics
Traditional infographics are a static, color image on which information is displayed with numbers and icons. The tools that were already mentioned earlier - Infogr.am and PiktoChart - will help you create such an image. They are easy to use - you can just drag and drop necessary information and insert your data to create graphs. Number of templates available in free versions tools, limited.
An example of a quick visualization of our data set using Infogr.am:
With the tools presented in this guide, anyone, regardless of skill level, can create a beautiful, interactive infographic or map and communicate their message to a wide audience.
The future of data visualization is interactive.
But how do you create truly amazing interactive infographics?
Infographics are everywhere, and Lately it is increasingly becoming interactive.
In today's article we will share with you the secrets of creating interactive infographics, as well as links to useful resources.
1. Understand psychology
Before you make an infographic interactive, it's important to understand why you want to make it interactive.
As detailed in this infographic, people are better able to perceive visual information. We are much more likely to read, understand and remember a presentation if it contains engaging visual aids. is an effective learning tool, but it can get even better.
Kinetic training – great alternative, since people learn information better through physical actions.
That's why adding interactivity to the promising field of visualization will help you create even more memorable and effective infographics.
This combination of visual and kinetic approach makes animated infographics the content of the future. Of course, for some themes it is better not to use interactive elements, but in most cases they will only improve the content.
Movement adds meaning to information, allows the user to control the experience, and engages the imagination in a way that static infographics cannot.
2. Add scrolling effects
What is interactive infographics? This is a question our clients increasingly ask us. Until recently, a small number of agencies and studios even understood what we're talking about, but today communication companies that keep up with the times are required not only to include in the price list this service, but also perform it efficiently. Unfortunately, not everyone can do this yet.
There are several types and definitions of interactive infographics.
First: interactive infographics are infographics that involve the reader in controlling the data displayed. Interactivity is created using Flash technologies or JavaScript, HTML 5.
Second: any infographic that allows you to online mode change the data displayed in graphical form.
Projects to create interactive infographics are only gaining momentum due to their high complexity and cost. One of the striking examples of interactive infographics was the project “Who congratulated Lukashenko on his presidency”, 2011.
Infographics, updated interactively, made it possible to see which of the heads of state congratulated A.G. Lukashenko with the 2010 elections. The data displayed on the infographic could be selected by the president's photo, the country's flag, in a table or on a globe. Thus, the user himself chose which data he was interested in and which would be shown. In the table, it was also possible to sort countries by the length of time the head of state was in power at the time of congratulations, by the state of rights and freedoms, quality of life, freedom of the press, de facto democratic elections and rating of dictators. The availability of congratulations was checked on the official websites of the presidents and changed manually.
Since launch of this project Quite a lot of time has passed, and today many experts are trying to make interactive infographics change the information in automatic mode. Although, this seriously affects the project budget.
Large Western companies were among the first to use interactive infographics as a means of building a reputation or increasing user loyalty, which understood the value of displaying compressed information in dynamics and the possibility of involving its users.
Some types of infographics allow you to interactively adjust some parameters and get interesting data. For example, the user is asked to enter a certain number, after which the graph or diagram changes before his eyes - a completely new one is obtained information material, which he was a direct participant in the creation of.
So, for example, on the third anniversary Chrome browser Google company visualized the history of the development of technologies and programs for viewing web pages: we strongly recommend that you follow the link and enjoy the colorful spectacle of interactive infographics in best traditions west.
In the example mentioned above, users of major browsers Internet Explorer 9+, Firefox 4+, Safari 4+, Chrome 10+, Opera 11+ can see two decades of development in the technologies used in browsers - from the http protocol to offline AppCache applications.
Russian companies have not yet mastered interactive infographics, since even simple infographics are available today good quality not everyone. Despite the fact that the service for creating interactive infographics is rather a new product Russian market, our agency is ready to perform such tasks today, since this format is becoming more and more in demand. The cost of this service is high because similar technologies are isolated and always strictly individual, which requires the creation software product with "0" for each task.
IN this lesson we will learn how to build interactive infographics with using SVG, CSS and JavaScript. One of the less discussed topics is the tendency of new browsers to increase support for SVG files. Unlike raster images, for example PNG, JPG or GIF, Vector graphics in SVG files is absolutely scalable to any size and will display at any resolution or screen density without loss of quality. In many cases, SVG files are much smaller in size and load faster. But the interesting thing that some developers don't realize is that SVG is based on the XML specification and can be applied in a similar way to HTML.
This also means that we can access and manipulate the graphics and elements in the SVG file using CSS technologies and JavaScript, which web developers are already familiar with. Developers can now create some pretty impressive animations and effects using SVG. Today we are exploring SVG capabilities using the example of creating interactive vector infographics for the web. View demo or download source you can by clicking on the links below the picture below. Let's get started.
Preparing the SVG file
There are many ways to create SVG graphics. While it's possible to make SVGs by hand coding, we'll want to do more complex graphics Have some type of vector software that can export in SVG format. Popular choice among most designers there may be someone familiar to us Adobe Illustrator , but there are others public applications, For example, Inkscape, which may be more suitable for our purposes.
Regardless of the software you choose, the ability to group objects together and to be able to name those groups (by writing id attributes) remains essential. This allows us to organize our SVG into a proper hierarchy, which we can later access using CSS and/or JavaScript. Illustrator and Inkscape have the ability to do this by selecting multiple graphic elements, going to Object > Group (or Ungroup) from the main menu.
Any object or group can then be assigned a name, which becomes the id attribute of the group or object when exported, so avoid spaces, special characters and duplicates.
In Illustrator this can be done in the Layers panel ( layers). Simply find the object you want to name in the panel, double-click on the layer field and enter the desired id. In Inkscape use Object > Object Properties panel for assigning an id to an object or group. This can also be done with Edit > XML Editor panel where you can register not only id, but also classes.
In our example, when we save SVG file and open it in text editor, it will have the following structure:
The markup above shows us the structure we're going for.
As we can see in our SVG markup, each tag
Loading SVG to HTML using JAVASCRIPT
HTML
There are ways to include or place SVG in HTML. This is possible through the use of a tag , tag
First, let's create a div block in the HTML document:
JavaScript
Now using jQuery loading, load the SVG file into the #stage block and assign it the svgLoaded class, which we will use to trigger the animation:
$(function () ( $("#stage" ) .load ("interactive.svg" ,function (response) ( $(this ) .addClass ("svgLoaded" ) ; if //Make absolutely sure you are running this on a web server or localhost! } } ) ; } ) ;
Important: load SVG from using JavaScript in order to access its DOM. Chrome (and possibly other browsers) won't let you do this locally; this will only work when running with HTTP protocol for security reasons.
CSS
Please note that the CSS in this tutorial will not contain any browser specifications, but the files will.
First of all, we specify some styles for div block. When loading an SVG, the file must fit within the block size, so it is important to set the block size to match the SVG canvas size.
#stage ( width : 1024px ; height : 1386px ; )
Styling SVG Elements: Setting "transform-origins"
The key to bringing elements within the canvas to life is in the transform-origin property. By default, all transformations to any element in an SVG come from the (0px, 0px) SVG canvas. For any element that we wish to transform (e.g. scale, rotate), we need to set a suitable transform-origin relative to the left and top side of the SVG canvas. The source will be different for each element depending on the desired effect/animation, but in most cases will be equal to the center point where the element is already placed. This can be quite tedious, but it's easier to simply copy the coordinate information that is provided in our vector editor.
#coffee ( transform-origin: 517px 484px ; ) #coffee-badge ( transform-origin: 445px 488px ; ) #coffee-title ( transform-origin: 310px 396px ; ) #coffee-details ( transform-origin: 311px 489px ; ) #design ( transform-origin: 514px 603px ; ) #design-badge ( transform-origin: 580px 606px ; ) #design-title ( transform-origin: 712px 513px ; ) #design-details ( transform-origin: 710px 620px ; ) #build ( transform-origin: 511px 769px ; ) #build-badge ( transform-origin: 445px 775px ; ) #build-title ( transform-origin: 312px 680px ; ) #build-details ( transform-origin: 310px 790px ; ) #complain ( transform-origin: 512px 1002px ; ) #complain-badge ( transform-origin: 586px 1000px ; ) #complain-title ( transform-origin: 718px 921px ; ) #complain-details ( transform-origin: 717px 1021px ; ) #beer ( transform-origin: 513px 1199px ; ) #beer-badge ( transform-origin: 444px 1193px ; ) #beer-title ( transform-origin: 313px 1097px ; ) ) #beer-details ( transform-origin: 316px 1202px ; )
Applying some initial transformations
We need to set initial styles to change the position of some objects. And also need to hide certain objects, which we don't want to show until we hover over them.
In order to do this we will use CSS selectors. We mainly select objects with id “suffixes”.
[ id$=badge] ( /* Any element with an id that ends in "badge" */ transform: scale(0 . 5 , 0 .5 ) ; ) [ id$=title] ( transform: scale(1 . 8 ) translate(0px , 48px ) ; ) [ id$=details] ( transform: scale(0 , 0 ) ; )
Adding style for :hover and applying transitions
We select the elements inside the hovered group and turn them back into initial position. Then we set the transition 0.25s for a cool animation effect.
#timeline > g:hover [ id$=badge] , #timeline > g:hover [ id$=details] ( transform: scale(1 , 1 ) ; ) #timeline > g:hover [ id$=title] ( transform : scale(1 ) translate(0px , 0px ) ; ) [ id$=badge] , [ id$=title] , [ id$=details] ( transition: transform 0 .25s ease-in-out; )
Introduction to Animation
We use CSS animation. First, we need to create a few keyframes to animate some different CSS properties:
@keyframes left-brace-intro ( 0 % ( transform: translateX(220px ) ; opacity: 0 ; ) 50 % ( opacity: 1 ; transform: translateX(220px ) ; ) 100 % ( transform: translateX(0px ) ; ) ) @keyframes right-brace-intro ( 0 % ( transform: translateX(-220px ) ; opacity: 0 ; ) 50 % ( opacity: 1 ; transform: translateX(-220px ) ; ) 100 % ( transform: translateX(0px ) ; ) ) @keyframes fade-in ( 0 % (opacity: 0; ) 100 % ( opacity: 1 ; ) ) @keyframes grow-y ( 0 % ( transform: scaleY(0 ) ; ) 100 % ( transform: scaleY(1 ) ; ) ) @keyframes grow-x ( 0 % ( transform: scaleX(0 ) ; ) 100 % ( transform: scaleX(1 ) ; ) ) @keyframes grow ( 0 % ( transform: scale(0 , 0 ) ; ) 100 % ( transform: scale(1 , 1 ) ; ) )
Creating an Animation Sequence
We can use selectors based on the svgLoaded class we used earlier.
In order to set the animation sequence, we will set the animation-delay property, and set animation-fill-mode: backwards so that the animation will have pauses.
SvgLoaded #logo ( animation: fade-in 0 .5s ease-in-out; ) .svgLoaded #quote-text ( animation: fade-in 0 .5s ease-in-out 0 .75s ; animation-fill-mode: backwards ; ) .svgLoaded #quote-left-brace ( animation: left-brace-intro 1s ease-in-out 0 .25s ; animation-fill-mode: backwards; ) .svgLoaded #quote-right-brace ( animation: right- brace-intro 1s ease-in-out 0 .25s ; animation-fill-mode: backwards ) .svgLoaded #background ( animation: grow-y 0 .5s ease-in-out 1 .25s ; transform-origin: 512px 300px ; animation-fill-mode: backwards; ) .svgLoaded #background > g ( animation: grow-x 0 .25s ease-in-out 1 .75s ; animation-fill-mode: backwards; ) .svgLoaded #background > g: last-of-type ( transform-origin: 458px 877px ; ) .svgLoaded #background > g:first-of-type ( transform-origin: 563px 877px ; ) .svgLoaded #coffee , .svgLoaded #design , .svgLoaded #build , .svgLoaded #complain , .svgLoaded #beer ( animation: grow 0 .25s ease-in-out;
animation-fill-mode: backwards; ) .svgLoaded #coffee ( animation-delay: 2s; ) .svgLoaded #design ( animation-delay: 2 .25s ; ) .svgLoaded #build ( animation-delay: 2 .5s ; ) .svgLoaded #complain ( animation-delay: 2 .75s ; ) .svgLoaded #beer ( animation-delay: 3s; )
WEB fonts
As we can see, the SVG file was exported using a font-family font named 'LeagueGothic'. So we just have to define the web font in CSS using the exact same name.
@font-face ( font-family : "LeagueGothic" ; url ( "../fonts/league-gothic/league-gothic.eot.woff") format("woff" ) ;
)
This is all! We hope you enjoyed the tutorial and found it useful and informative. We'd love to hear your comments.
