Making Words Work: Balancing Text and Graphics for Greatest Impact
Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2025 5:45 am
While a picture may be worth a thousand words, words in a picture are worth even more.
Using text to tell a story as it’s shown can supercharge an infographic’s impact. After all, words have a specificity and exactness that most images lack.
While a pie chart or bar graph displays raw data to excellent effect, an explanatory sentence tells you why that data matters: comparing it to other data, building bridges in your image.
The balance is delicate: too many images and you overwhelm the viewer with lines and color, too much text and you drown the message in the minutia.
Let’s take a look at some infographics that get the balance just right!
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Olympic Evolution
If you don’t need words, don’t use them. In this infographic, we know canada cell phone number list immediately that flags represent countries. We don’t need an explanation.
The only text found in this image is in the title and paragraph description. It’s powerful and communicative, few words required.
Olympic Evolution
by aliciakorn.
From Visually.
Largest Payouts in Sports
Visualizing numbers with minimal text. A number or statistic should always provoke this question: “How can that number be visualized?”.
Simply writing out numbers is fine in a text document but in an infographic, it’s often a missed opportunity.
Representing data in graphs, charts, or with creative juxtapositions is an infographic’s bread and butter.
This is how you make the data hit home. Save the text for the words. In “Largest Payouts in Sports” numbers are represented with simple circles creating an easy-to-interpret comparison.
Using text to tell a story as it’s shown can supercharge an infographic’s impact. After all, words have a specificity and exactness that most images lack.
While a pie chart or bar graph displays raw data to excellent effect, an explanatory sentence tells you why that data matters: comparing it to other data, building bridges in your image.
The balance is delicate: too many images and you overwhelm the viewer with lines and color, too much text and you drown the message in the minutia.
Let’s take a look at some infographics that get the balance just right!
Download this post by entering your email below
Enter your email here
Do not worry, we do not spam.
Olympic Evolution
If you don’t need words, don’t use them. In this infographic, we know canada cell phone number list immediately that flags represent countries. We don’t need an explanation.
The only text found in this image is in the title and paragraph description. It’s powerful and communicative, few words required.
Olympic Evolution
by aliciakorn.
From Visually.
Largest Payouts in Sports
Visualizing numbers with minimal text. A number or statistic should always provoke this question: “How can that number be visualized?”.
Simply writing out numbers is fine in a text document but in an infographic, it’s often a missed opportunity.
Representing data in graphs, charts, or with creative juxtapositions is an infographic’s bread and butter.
This is how you make the data hit home. Save the text for the words. In “Largest Payouts in Sports” numbers are represented with simple circles creating an easy-to-interpret comparison.