Infographics – Overview
[This section should take you around 5 minutes to complete]
Infographic is a broad term that includes any graphical information used in academic writing. You already have created tables in Word and Excel, and you have downloaded images from Creative Commons websites. Other common infographics that you may encounter in your readings include any charts, diagrams, illustrations, photographs, or even maps that include information or data. When referring to an infographic, anything other than a table is called a figure.
Infographics often provide a clear and visual representation of information that may not be easily explained. The infographics may identify trends, such as an increase in costs, or help to summarise important information, such as an organisational chart.
Figure 1
From Jobs and skills in the years ahead, by The Australian National Skills Commission, 2021, Australian Federal Government (https://www.nationalskillscommission.gov.au/reports/state-of-australia-skills-2021).
As a student, you may be required to reproduce existing infographics from another source into your document or create your own infographic to include in your assignment, often a report or presentation.
In this unit, you have already learned how to include an image attribution from an existing graphic and how to create some of your own graphics such as a table. In this section, you will learn how to create more infographics such as charts in Excel, as well as how to incorporate infographics into your academic documents.
Creating your own infographic
Often you may be required to create your own infographic to help to explain your topic. For example, you may need to design a figure to match the data that you collected or to design a chart that helps explain an organisational structure or an idea.
The table below describes some common types of Infographics and how they can be used.
Table 1
Common types of illustrative graphics
Adapted from Technical Writing Essentials, by S., Last, 2019, University of Victoria. CC-BY-4.0.