Good afternoon and we hope you’re having a lovely start to your week. DigiKnow has been covering different learning Apps lately. This has included:
To move on a little, DigiKnow wants to look at how information is displayed. If this is predominantly in text format, this can be overwhelming for the viewer and hard to grasp.
Not only does this take a long time to convey the information as there’s so much of it but if we think about accessibility and different audience members’ needs, it’s not inclusive.
In this blog post, we look at Piktochart as an infographic display of information.
What is Piktochart?
Piktochart is a visual graphics creation tool which can be used online to create graphics, banners and presentation visuals. The user creating these visuals doesn’t need any design experience as Piktochart has a wealth of templates and colour palettes to choose from.
Believe it or not, Piktochart originated in 2012 so it hasn’t been around for long but is being used by many to improve their visual communications.
Piktochart is described by Forbes as an infographic tool for “the graphically challenged,” or for those who are simply in a time-crunch.
McCue, TJ (8 Jan 2013). “Why Infographics Rule”. Forbes. Retrieved 6 December 2013.
What is an infographic?
Infographics can be considered a group of images, charts and minimal text to communicate large amounts of data in a succinct and easy-to-understand way.
Typically, infographics use engaging graphics within the imagery to help providing context to the information displayed. For example, if you were a marketing manager in a coffee shop, you might use coffee cup graphics (per hundred coffee sales) to display the quarterly / monthly sales.
This display of information is more interesting and it allows easy comparison of sales per month compared to the same information presented in text.
Where can I use Piktochart?
The old saying ‘a picture says 1000 words’ is apt here. Instead of using multiple words to communicate information, Piktochart allows you to convey figures visually and much quicker compared to using text.
Since Piktochart is a digital tool, these infographics can be created, embedded, saved in image formats, printed, emailed, etc. They’re very versatile.
The data can be changed and graphics updated. We have included a video below (from Piktochart) to help you get started using the Piktochart online tool.
The following video gives an overview of Piktochart and demos some of the features you can use.
Advantages of infographics
There are a number of advantages for using Piktochart, we have listed a few below:
- When Piktocharts are complete, they can be downloaded to your device for insertion into other applications. Or, Piktocharts can be embedded on webpages and/or shared to social media. They are very versatile.
- The Piktochart platform is intuitive to use and has many tools to assist the user, there are how-to videos included to assist users.
- Using Piktochart instead of text allows for users to improve their visual communications and storytelling skills.
- Infographics can have company logos inserted.
- There is a free license to get users started. You need never pay but Piktochart will only save up to five infographics. However, if you have an infographic complete, it can be downloaded to your device (in a variety of image formats), thus allowing for an online Piktochart to be recreated.
- Piktochart can be used across platforms and devices. Infographics can be created on the go.
Albeit one disadvantage is you need to be online to access Piktochart but with today’s increasingly connected society, this poses less of a problem compared to yesteryear.
Summary
Whether you are ‘graphically challenged’, ‘time challenged’ or want quick and easy graphics, Piktochart can help.
Why not sign up for a free account and start condensing textual information to visual infographics? This will convey more information more quickly whilst also helping audience members interpret the information.
The bottom line is, infographics can make information look more interesting to review. Infographics can condense information and widen audience participation. Text by itself may seem boring or tedious for some to read and digest. Graphical communications can add interest and reduce the stress of reading. You can also colour-code your graphics to suit your needs.
Next week
There won’t be a blog post next week or the week after as Queen’s University are closed for the Christmas break. We will be back blogging in January 2021 and look forward to sharing more digital tools, techniques and teaching tips then.
Remember, the DigiKnow blog posts are now released at noon on a Monday.
Please do join us then to learn more and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter: @MDBSelearn.
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