Canva Tutorial: Create a Slick Infographic in 15 Minutes

Originally published at: http://www.sitepoint.com/infographics-with-canva-tutorial/

With a whopping 800% increase in search traffic for the word “infographic” between 2010-2012, it is no surprise that infographics are a hot ticket item in 2015. Online applications like Canva are capitalizing on this infographic trend and making sharing information easier than before.

A few weeks ago everyone was talking about THAT infamous “dress”. For anyone who was away from Earth recently and that missed the biggest controversy of 2015, don’t panic! We’re going to put you “in the know” by creating an explanatory infographic in Canva.

That Dress and the Raw Numbers

Before we can start creating an infographic of any type we need to gather our data. The following statistics come from the good people at Facebook Data Science.

According to Facebook:

  • 58% of Facebook users saw The Dress as white and gold
  • 42% of Facebook users saw The Dress as black and blue
  • Men were 6% more likely to see The Dress as black and blue
  • More mobile users saw The Dress as white and gold
  • Facebook users between the ages of 13-17 were more likely to declare The Dress as black and blue
  • Facebook users between 55-64 were more likely to declare The Dress as white and gold
  • By 12AM EST more users saw The Dress as black and blue as opposed to earlier in the day more than likely due to the dilemma being solved

Getting Started

For those who are not familiar with Canva, it is a free online web app that can be used to design all sorts of graphic design materials. From presentations to menus to social media headers, Canva makes designing a lot easier especially for non-designers.

Signing up for Canva really takes only a minute. You have the choice of either logging in via your Facebook page or creating a quick account.

Once you have registered and activated your account through the e-mail you were sent you will be taken to the main dashboard. Here you can see some of the design formats you can create.

Because Canva as of right now doesn’t have a design template designated for creating infographics you’ll have to settle for the Blog Graphic template. Don’t worry though because this template is more than doable to create most infographics you need to make.

Designing in Your Dashboard

Unlike a lot of web apps, Canva doesn’t give you a pop-up walkthrough but everything is pretty self-explanatory. The dashboard, you will come to find out is very easy to navigate for all your designing needs. To the left you will find 5 tabs that offer various designing elements and customizations for you to work.

Search

The Search tab will be your go-to area for most of your design elements. You will find various sub-groups like lines, illustrations and photos which will typically make up the basis for your design.

Layouts

Depending on the template you choose after login you will find different pre-made layouts for you to use and build upon if you choose to use them.

Text

Here beneath the Text tab you will find preloaded text options and layouts but can also customize how certain text formats will appear.

Background

With the Background tab you can very easily change the color of your canvas or add the textured or patterned backgrounds that are provided.

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Infographics are a great way to display text that you don’t want people to be able to highlight and google.

That just comes down to execution, doesn’t it? Alt tags and written supporting content are essential to give almost any image context.

I dare you to link to even a single Infographics where that actually works.

(Cheesy Game-Show Interval Music, playing on infinite loop)

I quite like this one which I just came across.

i actually created an inofggraphic in this exact topic https://shieldfunding.com/2015/02/infographic-blue-black-white-gold/

Still just an image of text, nothing else.
Useless.

Say for example that i read “Mayor something bloomsometinh” in the text and wants to know what that thing is.
Normally with text, I just highlight that bit and rightclick + search google (or whatever).

How do do this, or anything at all, with the information in a info-graphics?

Note, that i don’t want to type anything.
Someone already typed the text in, its done, its an already accomplished and finished task, now I just want to use it, to consume it.

When it comes to being useful for information, Info-graphics are about as useful as a tin-opener encased in Lucite.

While you’re right, I linked to a graphic that you can’t highlight text to search google, I can click on most parts of the infographic and a popup with more info appears, which is mostly the stuff that I’d want to see in a google search anyway. So it may not be completely what you’ve got in mind, but it seems to be halfway there.

Have you thought about creating an infographic the way you describe? It could be a good challenge :slight_smile:

Aha, i didn’t even notice that there was any clickable part in that thing.

Since:
1.) Nothing at all looks clickable, its just one homogenous blob of orange and red.
2.) It looks exactly as an info-graphics, and info-graphics are never clickable,

And as i try to click around, i notice immediately that there is zero connection between any clickable items, and what happens when i click it.

Most links just opens the same blurry video, some throws me at other sites at random, some leads to dead sites, some just appears to zoom in in the same crappy graphics.

I don’t think something can be a “infographics” and good at the same tine, since “infographics” seems to just mean “shitty webpage”.

Its simply one big chunk of mytery-meaty horrible webdesign.

There used to be rule for imagemaps on sites (when people still used them) , that you would put a copy of all the links in it as regular links at the bottom.

It worked.
This does not.

Im not even sure what its supposed to inform me about.
It’s some kind of worldwide burger-chain i have never heard about?

Nice tutorial on Canva. One thing, and this may been brought to your attention already. Above the bottom portion that references 13-17 year-old, the info above it refers to the same 55-64 information that is on the opposite side. Probably a simple copy/paste, I’ve done it many times myself.

Using Canva from past 10 months and learnt to design infographic… here is my first
design http://www.onlinepersonalfinance.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Peer-to-Peer-lending-infographics.jpg

taken bit help from my friend as well :wink: