allblogs

In this video I’ll show you step by step how to create a simple infographic. We start with a column chart in Excel (a.k.a. bar graph or bar chart) and then bring it into Canva for annotations.

Video Transcript

Hey data designer! Welcome to my new recipe series.

The goal with this series is to inspire researchers and evaluators to get out of their heads and start creating stuff.

Before we get started, I’m trying to get to one thousand subscribers on YouTube. So if you could hit the subscribe button, like this video, or leave a comment, it would be much appreciated.

Have you ever used the back of a screwdriver to hammer a nail into a wall? I certainly have.

Would it have been easier to use a hammer, yes. But that would require going out to the garage and finding one. The screwdriver works in a pinch.

What’s the point?

The first rule of just creating stuff is to use the tools you have at hand. Or the tools that you are most comfortable using.

And for many of you, the chart building tool that you have at hand and are probably most comfortable using, is Excel.

Today I’m going to walk through the steps of creating a simple annotated column chart.

We’re going to start to create the column chart. Then we’ll move over to Canva for the annotation.

To start I made up a little data table in Excel. I then highlighted the data table and inserted a 2-D column chart.

Just in case you are wondering, it doesn’t really matter if you choose clustered column or stacked column. Since I only have one column of data, it will look the same.

Now that we have the chart, let’s start cleaning it up. This is a preference, but my goal is to strip the chart down to its essence.

This means deleting the grid lines. I also get rid of the y axis values.

Then I get rid of the title. After that I right click and go to format data series.

This is where I can drop down the gap width. Also known as the space between the bars. My preference is usually 25%.

After that I get rid of the random box around the chart by clicking on the full chart and taking away the outline.

And if you prefer not to have an X axis line, this is also removable by choosing the X axis and clicking no outline.

Finally, for any bar that I plan to color in the final infographic. I change the color.

Right now it doesn’t need to be the final color, it just needs to be different than the other bars. You’ll see why in a minute.

After I’ve cleaned everything up to the essentials. I right click and hit save as picture.

Then I want to save it as an SVG. This will give us the most flexibility and best resolution when we work on the image in Canva.

Now I’ll open up canva and create a blank presentation.

I use the standard 16:9 presentation format for a lot of charts and small infographics. It’s just easy. It works well on social media, inside of visual reports and slide docs. And of course, this way it also works well inside of presentations.

Once I have a blank document, I just drag and drop the svg chart I just created in excel.

Okay, now that the chart is in Canva, let’s make a little annotated infographic.

If you click on the chart image inside of Canva, you’ll notice that it came in with 3 colors. The blue (for the bars) the orange (for my highlighted bar), and white (for the background). This lets us switch the colors around as much as possible.

I brought over the x axis category names, but I want to recreate them inside Canva with a different font.

I could go back and redo this in Excel, but since it’s just at the bottom I can also just crop it away inside Canva with a double click on the image.

To add new category names I just use text boxes. There is a keyboard short cut for text in Canva, just hit the T button.

I ended up changing the bar colors to gray with a blue highlight. Boring I know, but a lot of professional stuff ends up on the boring gray blue scale.

Now for placement I like to use a little bit of measurement. And the easiest way to measure is to use grids inside of canva.

I use this three column grid all the time, just so I can get a sense of space.

For this one I’ll keep a margin around the page and just use the two right hand columns for my chart, aligned to the bottom of the page.

Once I have a sense I’ll delete the grid. I can always get it back, but it’s a start.

The first thing to do is create a nice little intro paragraph at the top of the page.

This is your takeaway. You can even bold and match the color of your highlighted bar inside the text.

Next I’ll add a bit of text to use as a kind of sub-heading or for further detail and context.

Then I’ll add a simple annotation box the color of the highlighted bar. Putting in a little line collecting the annotation to the bar.

Since I didn’t include data labels in my original Excel chart, I’ll go ahead and add those now using text boxes.

And really, that’s the trade off between doing this kind of thing in Canva versus Excel. It requires a little more manual work, but you get a lot more control over the design.

Everything looked a little too plain, so I added a rectangle behind the text at the top to separate a bit.

The final touches are really just tweaking things until I like how everything looks. Then making sure I sign it with my name or website.

Then we’ll go ahead and export it as an image. At this point, unless I plan to bring it into another design program, I’ll usually export as a PNG. And that’s it. Here is our final visual.

Infographics don’t have to be complicated. A nice clean chart annotated with takeaways can provide a lot of value.

If you enjoyed this video, please go ahead and like, subscribe, and leave a comment. It means a lot and I will always read every comment.

And if you’re interested in free resources like eBooks and courses, visit my resource library at freshspectrum.com/library

Now…

Get out of your head and go create some stuff.

Every now and again I rewatch one of my favorite TED talks, and one of the most popular TED talks of all time.

And like every favorite thing that you watch over and over again, the talk keeps changing as I age. A new little thing that I might have missed before, or simply forgotten, sticks out as super relevant.

In today’s rewatch, this stuck out:

“I say this out of affection for them: there’s something curious about professors. In my experience — not all of them, but typically — they live in their heads. They live up there and slightly to one side. They’re disembodied, you know, in a kind of literal way. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads.”

A quote from Ken Robinson’s super popular TED talk, “Do schools kill creativity?”

So many of you, who follow this blog, have graduate degrees.

I do too. A masters in sociology. This was my ticket into a social science research and program evaluation career.

My selfish reason for loving Ken Robinson’s talk is not a fear for my daughter’s education. It’s that it feels so true to my own evolution as a professional.

I was a kid who loved to draw. I went everywhere with a pad of paper and pencils. I wasn’t that good, never creating the kind of work that makes people say, “that kid is talented.” As art classes continued through middle school into high school, they become more and more about technique and analysis. I did not excel in these courses.

But I was good at math. I was in the gifted classes and told by teachers with the best of intentions, that one day I would become an engineer.

So the math part was encouraged, and the drawing part…not so much. I went to college as an engineering major.

And during my freshman year, I almost failed out.

A switch to social science kept me going forward. It wasn’t about creativity, but it was about critical thinking. And that was enough to keep me interested and moving forward.

Educated out of creativity.

With only a couple of exceptions, I was educated out of creativity.

High school gave me barely any creative training, my BA degree next to nothing, and my MA degree even less.

My master’s thesis and the one and only published paper I have written, are probably a couple of the least creative things I have ever produced.

Luckily, I was able to eventually revive my creativity.

My comics have made a bigger impact on my chosen field of program evaluation than I anything I could have published in a journal. My personal blog and newsletter have made a bigger impact on the professional lives of researchers and evaluators than the work I contributed to as part of my professional research career.

The way we teach design is flawed.

The biggest barrier keeping program evaluators, researchers, and academics from truly meeting the rising creative expectations isn’t technical.

If you have a lot of education, you were likely educated out of your creativity like I was. (I’m sure there are plenty of exceptions, but if my story resonates with you I would love to hear about it in the comments).

And the ONLY WAY to get it back, is to actually create stuff. Not read more blog posts. Not watch more tutorial videos. Not learn new software tools.

You need to just CREATE STUFF.

Before you can move forward, you need to stop living in your head.

This is why I believe the way we tend to teach design is flawed. We talk a lot about design process, thinking about your audience, and picking the right methods, charts, or software.

Almost every design process starts with a whole lot of in your head stuff.

But the real way forward is to get out of your head and just CREATE STUFF.

Want an eBook that uses 50 pages to tell you the same thing I just told you in two words.

Here it is, I wrote it last week. There are lots of pictures, an official looking colorful model, an alliterative 5 word method, and 20 example data designs for you to try to recreate.

Let me know what you think!