Timeline infographics are probably the greatest strategies for displaying information over time. Their easy linear structure makes them excellent for making complex information more attention-grabbing, simpler to comply with, and extra digestible. While timeline infographics have historically been used to visualize historical info, they can be used for thus rather more! Whatever the purpose, there are a few fundamental steps you’ll be able to follow to create a timeline infographic that’s attractive and fascinating. Let’s see how each of those steps might help us create a timeline infographic.
You can even take a look at timeline infographic templates, to see which one would work finest for you! Before designing any new timeline infographic, I like to start with a simple define that can help guide me by way of the entire process. This step is essential as a result of the design of the timeline will be extremely dependent on the amount of content you need to include.
When you don’t understand how much content material you have got to suit within the timeline, you may choose the unsuitable structure, and you’ll end up doing a ton of additional work. The idea behind a timeline is that you want to offer a little bit of details about key occasions in time, so each event ought to have, at the least, a specific date and a brief description. Since a timeline needs to be a visual summary of a collection of occasions, strive to maintain the descriptions pretty transient. I usually wish to goal for lower than 30 phrases per description, then attempt to spice it up with some visuals like icons or illustrations to make it visually thrilling.
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Keep in thoughts, too, that having the same amount of textual content for each occasion will make it simpler to create a delightful, symmetrical design. So let’s say, for example, that I need to make a timeline infographic all in regards to the history of widespread social media platforms. I’d start by putting collectively a top level view with three of those 4 important parts: dates, headers, and brief descriptions.
Then I’d find a simple visual, like an icon, to accompany each point. These visuals are what sets a timeline infographic other than a plain previous timeline. They draw the reader’s eye, add visible curiosity, and make the graphic straightforward to scan, with out an excessive amount of thought. If you don’t have your own visuals ready to go, you can find some proper in the Venngage editor.
This quick define must be accomplished within the very first step in order that you may make good design selections down the line. With an overview prepared, it is now time to pick a format! This is where you may start to make vital design selections primarily based on your define. Some layouts are higher for prolonged text, while others are suited to many cut-off dates with much less textual content.
Let’s assessment the strengths and weaknesses of every kind of timeline structure. The vertical structure is by far the preferred format for timeline infographics. It is available in two important types: centered and left-aligned. The centered vertical timeline is my private favorite. Its symmetry and simplicity makes it pleasing to take a look at and intensely straightforward to follow. Most people will routinely recognize it as a timeline with out learning it for more than a second. It’s additionally quite flexible; there’s plenty of room for long descriptions, and so as to add more points, you possibly can merely extend the size of the web page.
Plus, it’s simple so as to add visuals to this kind of layout. Use a centered vertical layout when you have got many factors with a mixture of textual content and pictures. Next, we now have the other most popular timeline infographic structure: the left-aligned timeline. Instead of having branches come off of either facet of the timeline, the road itself is aligned to the left of the web page, and all of the content is positioned to the fitting of the road. The left-aligned vertical layout is nice for textual content-heavy timeline, with few visuals and plenty of sections. I recommend the vertical format, either centered or left-aligned, for most timeline infographics because it’s so flexible.
It’s the simplest to create, edit, and adjust to all types of content. You might acknowledge the horizontal timeline layout from every presentation you’ve seen in the last decade. While they do work properly on presentation slides, they’re not ultimate for most infographics. They can solely handle up to six or 7 closing dates (on a letter dimension page) earlier than they get too cramped to learn. If you’ve obtained lower than 7 points and your descriptions are very transient, you need to use a horizontal structure. Otherwise, stick to a vertical or snake format. The final timeline layout you may want to use is the snake format.