The type of infographic that you want to produce should definitely influence which of these options you choose to create with. Thinking of the design principles discussed on the first page of this guide, you should also take into consideration your own preferences and personality, the guidelines or expectations of the intended audience and also what you want the end product to look like! Creating your infographic should help provide a satisfying conclusion or step along your research and presentation process.
If you are using the free version of Canva (highly encouraged) you will have to click through their introduction pages each time you enter the site to create or revise your infographic.
You'll begin by speciifying your design size. You are not able to change the design dimensions once you've started while using the free version, this was the thing that I was most frustrated by. So make sure you have the width and height in the correct blanks as your first step. If you're creating a poster to use for a trifold the dimensions should be 36 inches in height and 48 inches in width.
There are tons of free options here for you to create virtually anything at absolutely no cost. They do also offer graphics, fonts, icons, backgrounds for a small fee if you just don't see enough options!
You can even upload your own images and charts, such as ones you might create using Microsoft Excel, to use as a part of your infographic. Once you have the graphic placed on your infographic, you can then delete it from the upload screen. Because you are using the free version, it really slows down the response time and you only have space to add one or two items to the uploads. However, once it's on your infographic, deleting it from the uploads has no impact on whether or not it continues to appear on your infographic.
This was my favorite program to use to create inforgraphics. I really felt that I was able to be much more creative and there were just so many more choices available to me. I was even able to decrease the spacing between letters and lines of text, which had a better look for what I was trying to accomplish. Also, the variety of colors was incredible and I could easily lighten and darken the texts by making them more and less transparent to ensure my colors were in the same color group. One of my favorite parts of the design features was the ability to center and make sure that things were straight and lined up on my page. It uses the center of whatever object you're moving to line things up, so even if you're moving pictures, text blocks, or whatever, you can easily make sure it's all lined up and has an eye-pleasing impact.
Piktochart also has great free tools and templates that you can use to create your infographic. You can choose to use a ready-made template and plug in your data and other information.
You can upload charts, graphs, photos and other images that you have created using programs like Excel or Paint.
One word of warning while using this program, it is based in creaating images and webpages. It is nearly impossible to size it perfectly for formatting to make into a poster to display on a trifold for a presentation. It works best to display on a webpage or download a smaller poster image, but it still be somewhat odd sized. Otherwise, it does produce a fantastic looking result!
I don't have as much familiarity with this particular program, but it offers many of the same features as Canva, also at no charge. As with any program like this, they offer some great features for all users free of charge, but the more complex tools are only available for those with a paid subscription to the service. I did find that the return visits and ease of login was much better with this program.
This program is probably the easiest of the three shown on this page, but also has the most limited options for graphics and icons. However, if you struggle with creativity or want something that is very straightforward to use, this is what you'll want to use.
As soon as you click on a size for the poster that you want to create, 36x48 for trifolds, you will have several different templates to choose from. The templates are based in Powerpoint, so upon selecting a template, it will open Powerpoint on the computer or device you are using.
The templates are very similar in set-up and mostly varies in color. Once you have the template open, you simply begin inserting your data, text and images until you have filled up the poster.
These poster templates are probably the easiest ones to use in order to create your infographic. The template is designed as a "fill in the blank" type solution, which makes creating it a lot less time consuming than either Canva or Piktochart.