The Infographic Design Plan is adapted from Rob Lamb’s “Infographic Creation Benchmark” lesson plan to help pull your ideas together and do a sketch on paper of your ideas so far. If you are working with a group, share and discuss your ideas and sketches. It is available to download as a Microsoft Word Document to use and adapt for your own purposes.
Topic: Plan a good infographic. Identify whether the information you’ve found is credible and useful. Write down what you intend to communicate with the infographic. Create a rough sketch of the infographic design so it’s easier create the infographic later.
Timeframe: 45 minutes
Materials
Classroom use
- If doing this in a classroom, students will turn in the benchmark for feedback discussion and then the teacher signs off on the rough sketch. Usually this is the very last time the topic can be changed.
- Afterwards, the teacher schedules meetings with each student to discuss about next steps specific to their topic.
Follow Up and Extensions
- Find more sources online or otherwise, go deeper into the sources, and grab images to create an idea board (Think Pintrest board) as a style guide for the design of the infographic. The images do not need to be about the topic. This helps separate out the design process from the data.
Step 1: Use your top topic from the Topic Chooser Helper lesson plan. Explain in exactly 14 words what your infographic is going to be about.
Step 2: List 5 websites you found while researching your topic. For each website, decide whether the information you found is credible or not credible and explain why you chose the website. If you don’t have a good explanation about the usefulness or credibility of the website, find other websites that are more useful and credible. If you can not find multiple credible sources, you might need to change topics.
Step 3: Write a paragraph explaining your infographic. Are you creating something others want to see? Explain the interesting stuff and highlight the main points to help refine your topic. How are you going to go about creating the infographic? Take your time with this step.
Step 4: Use a full sheet of blank paper to create a rough sketch of what you think your infographic should look like. If you have data, write in what message that data conveys. If you have an idea of what images to include, sketch them in. Refine your ideas, decisions, and vision so that you don’t have to make content choices when you’re working in an infographic canvas tool like Venngage. It’s okay to change your mind later.
Notes: Remember your audience. Design it so you can read all information from a distance. If you change everything in the end that is ok. If you’re having difficulties, google for solutions. Do not plagiarize. Have fun with it. If you don’t like your first rough draft, you can do a second one.