Infographic tools are an effective way to bring your data to life. The best infographics transform complex information into graphics that are both easy to grasp and visually appealing. The only problem is, infographics that look like they were simple to make are often anything but.
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Here, we've selected our pick of the best infographic tools and apps, which includes both free and paid for options. Some of the selections are even suitable for non-designers, as templates and other features make them easy to use.
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Timeline 3D for Mac History with New Perspective. Present historical events with Timeline 3D to reveal connections and clarify relationships. Make timeline charts of world history, family trees, fictional stories or business deadlines.
TimeLine lets you plan food preparation and save the planning information. Each Occasion has a Master Timeline plus up to five timelines with start, stop.
SmartDraw's timeline software is the quickest way to create timelines and other historical charts. Start by choosing the timeline starter template, then add timeline events or historical milestones. You can even add photos and images in just a few clicks.
Give these top infographic tools a try and let us know which ones you get on with by sharing your best infographics on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
01. Piktochart
If you're after an entry-level infographic tool, look no further. Piktochart takes out the legwork of designing an infographic by supplying you with easy to customise templates.
Once you've uploaded your stats, you'll be able to tweak the layout and colour scheme to your heart's content. Given that infographics are an art form in and of themselves, Piktochart is a great way to get to grips with the medium. If there's one catch, it's that you have to sign up and pay for its services. Although there is a free trial to take the edge off as you get started.
02. Biteable
Price: From free
Fancy something a little different? Biteable gives users the chance to create high quality video infographics for free that can be shared on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
As well as providing engaging and high quality image assets for creatives to work with, Biteable also offers soundtracks to really make your creations sing. With plenty of designs and pre-made scenes at its disposal, Biteable removes the barrier to entry that so often stops people from using videos to their full effect.
03. MURAL
Price: From $12/mo (with a 30 day trial period)
Thanks to its interactive, real-time tools, MURAL allows anyone to think like a designer and act like a designer. As an infographic tool, MURAL is more internally based, allowing teams all over the world to ideate with imagery and collaborate more efficiently.
Users can express ideas with smart inking on the Windows app, draw freely for a full whiteboard experience. and share sticky note feedback with team members so everybody is kept in the loop with the progress of a project. If your team needs to collaborate and share data in a visual way, MURAL could be the tool for you.
04. BeFunky
Price: From free
Free Timeline Tool
As well as a photo editor and collage maker, BeFunky includes an infographic tool. Select a template, customise your theme with images and icons, and personalise the infographic by adjusting the text, colours and layout. Then, simply save and export. Easy peasy.
05. Visme
Price: From free
Visme promises to help you 'speak visually'. You can use it to build presentations, but it's especially geared towards creating engaging infographics. This free infographic tool includes over 100 free fonts, millions of free images and thousands of quality icons, and there are options to include video and audio (including the ability to record a voiceover directly in the editor, which is handy). You can also animate your content to make things clearer.
What sets this tool apart from the rest on this list is that Visme allows users to whip up an infographic in a few minutes, thanks to a library of pre-made assets that can be easily dragged and dropped into place. This allows even non-designers to display their data visually. Visme also gives users the ability to create interactive and animated infographics, making their stats and figures sing like never before.
06. Cacoo
Price: From $5 p/month (free trial available)
Cacoo is a cloud-based infographic maker, and as with any cloud-based tool its major plus point is collaborative working. Cacoo's interface allows teams to create, edit, and deliver high-quality diagrams together online, in real time. The application offers a diverse library of templates and shapes to help you put together beautiful visuals quickly and easily, with everything you need to create flowcharts, wireframes, network diagrams, org charts, and more available through the user interface.
You can also share your infographics with team members and clients if they don't have a Cacoo account, and integrate Cacoo with other productivity tools such as Google Drive, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Confluence.
07. Snappa
Price: From free
Snappa is a graphic design tool that includes a free infographic maker. This one is aimed at non-designers. You won't have the kind of control on offer with some of the other tools on this list, but it does promise you will be able to 'whip up' an infographic in 10 minutes or so. Snappa offers preset templates that are optimised for social sharing on the web. There's a simple drag-and-drop interface, and access to thousands of hi-res, royalty-free stock photos.
The free plan gives you five downloads per month and two social accounts, or you can upgrade for features such as unlimited downloads, custom font uploads and Buffer integration.
08. Canva Infographic Tool
Price: Free; from $12.95/mo (trial period available)
Canva is a powerful and easy-to-use online design tool that's suitable for all manner of creative tasks, from brochures to presentations and much more besides. It also offers users a vast library of images, icons, fonts and features to choose from.
It features a dedicated infographic tool that you can use for free, with hundreds of free design elements and fonts at your fingertips, and many more premium elements that you can buy for $1.
09. Google Charts
Price: Free
Google's chart tools are powerful, simple to use, and free. You can choose from a variety of charts and configure an extensive set of options to perfectly match the look and feel of your website. By connecting your data in real time, Google Charts is the perfect infographic generator for your website.
10. Piktochart
Price: From free
Piktochart is an infographic tool that enables you to turn boring data into engaging infographics with just a few clicks. Piktochart's custom editor lets you do things like modify colour schemes and fonts, insert pre-loaded graphics and upload basic shapes and images. Its grid-lined templates also make it easy to align graphical elements and resize images proportionally.
There's a free version offering three basic themes, a Lite pricing plan for $12.50 or $15 per month (billed annually or monthly) or a Pro account that costs $24/$29 per month. There's also a Pro team option for up to 25 users – the price varies depending on the size of the team.
11. Infogram
Price: Fromfree
Infogram is a great free tool with a wide variety of graphs, charts and maps as well as the ability to upload pictures and videos to create cool infographics. You enter and edit the data that makes up the infographic in an Excel-style tool, the contents of which are reflected in your design. The software will automatically change the look of the infographic to perfectly represent your data, too.
When you're happy with your infographic, you can publish it to the Infogram website for all to enjoy, embed it into your own website, or share it via social media.
The five-tier pricing structure starts at Basic (free forever) and has a 24 per cent discount on the paid-for options when billed yearly. It moves up the scale with Pro ($19/mo), Business ($67/mo), Team ($149/mo) and Enterprise (priced on request).
12. Mind the Graph
Price: From free
Mind the Graph specialises in scientific infographics, but its tools can be used to create illustrations to complement most forms of data outside of scientific papers. The online infographic maker provides various infographic layouts that can be used straight out of the box to design many types of visual illustrations.
Mind the Graph provides thousands of icons that are useful for non-scientific purposes as well as for livening up a wordy journal paper, and you can take advantage of its built-in image editor and online updater to make changes on the fly.
13. Venngage
Price: From free
Venngage is a great tool for creating and publishing infographics because it's so simple and easy to use. You can choose from templates, themes, and hundreds of charts and icons as well as uploading your own images and backgrounds, or adapt a theme to suit your brand. You can animate them too.
14. Kartograph
Price: Free
For a map-based infographic tool, you need look no further than Kartograph. Kartograph is a free design tool that makes illustrative and interactive maps, created for the needs of designers and data journalists. The application doesn't require Google Maps or any other mapping service, making it a simple and lightweight framework – and there are a variety of map types to suit your needs.
It has Python and JavaScript-based tools to create the required maps. The Python library generates beautiful and compact SVG maps; while the JS library helps you to create interactive maps that run across all major browsers.
15. Animaker
Price: From free
Here's something a little different. If you're bored of static infographics, why not liven them up a bit with some motion? Animaker is a tool dedicated to the creation of video infographics, and the company says its service is exactly 10 times better than other online animation video editing software.
It offers plenty of resources, including charts, icons and maps, to help you make your data much more interesting and easy to digest. You can create up to five two-minute SD videos a month for free, or upgrade for more, longer, and higher quality video infographics.
There's a huge discount for annual billing with Animaker; Personal is $12/mo when billed monthly or $19/mo billed annually. Startup is $19/$35 and Business costs $39/$59.
16. Vizualize
Price: Free
It was only a matter of time before an infographic resume generator turned up. With Vizualize, you can, well, visualise your creative resume in one click and also take a look at previous examples. The idea is to enable people to express their professional accomplishments in a simple yet compelling personal visualisation. While infographic resumes aren't right for every situation, for certain cases, they can be a great option.
17. Easel.ly
Price: From free
Free web-based infographic tool Easel.ly offers you a range of templates to start you off, all of which are easily customisable. You get access to a library of things like arrows, shapes and connector lines, and you can customise the text with different fonts, colours, text styles and sizes. The tool also lets you upload your own graphics and position them with one touch.
The free option includes 60 images and 10 fonts, or for $4 a month you get a much wider pool of resources, plus boosted security options and – if you need it – design help.
18. Adioma
Price: From $39/mo
Adioma offers users a range of generative templates: you pick a basic template (such as timeline, grid, or cycle), then the infographics build themselves around the text you supply, and adjust as you add or remove information. That means you don't have to spend time adjusting and realigning your infographic. There's also a template switching feature that enables you to compare how the same data would look in different formats.
This infographic building tool includes a range of templates, large library of icons and colour palettes, and you can also upload your own images and icons to work with. The more expensive options include an expanded resource library, improved download options and the ability to upload more of your own content.
19. PicMonkey
Price: From £9/mo
PicMonkey is an online image editor with a section dedicated to designing infographics. Choose from the selection of templates, and customise the content with PicMonkey's library or by uploading your own images. There's also a selection of tutorials to help you out, focusing on things like how to design an infographic tailored to sharing on social media, and how to use grid theory to create a polished design. Watch out, though – it relies on Flash, so you might need to change your browser settings to use it.
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Active3 years, 8 months ago
votes
What's a good native Mac app for making timelines on Macs? I'm looking for an easy-to-use program that I can use to create timelines easily without delving into graphics programs like Illustrator. (Which I can use, but would be quite time consuming.)
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7 Answers
votes
Revised because of edited question...
OmniPlan can create very nice looking Gantt charts and timelines out of project plan data. It is a full-on project planning tool, which might be overkill. But the output is quite lovely.
Merlin is a fairly user-friendly tool for making Gantt charts. It's commercial software, so it is going to set you back. The interface is a clean 'Mac' interface.
OpenProj is another possibility, and it is free.
JoshJosh
votes
Bee Docs Timelines might suit your needs. The marketing is towards the 3D functionality, but I've had good results generating 2D timelines. Doesn't do Gantt charts, though.
I've been looking for a replacement for MS Project for a long time. I haven't found an acceptable native app on the Mac that works well enough and opens/saves Microsoft Project files. The best i've found up to now is Gantter, which is web based and integrates with Google Docs. Surprisingly good.
For serious Gantt charts, nothing beats Microsoft Project, so i often end up running that in a virtual machine (Parallels) on my Mac. Oh the pain!
nthonygreennthonygreen
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Project Libre is the closest to MS Project. Actually nothing is really close to MS Project. But as a MS Project user, I find Project Libre file compatible and quick to use.
Dak KolDak Kol
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I've been using TikiToki for a while and it is good for graphical timelines. It has a Web App and desktop app. There's a trial here. And the web app is here: http://www.tiki-toki.com
Another option is http://www.scribblecode.com Aeon Timeline which I have used the demo of and found good but haven't purchased yet.