Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Not a web designer or developer? You may prefer free tools for creating infographics.

As author, data journalist and information designer David McCandless said in his TED talk: “By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes, a sort of information map. And when you’re lost in information, an information map is kind of useful.”

There are many different ways of telling a story, but everything starts with an idea. So to help you get started we’ve rounded up some of the most awesome data visualization tools available on the web....

One of the most valuable means through which to make sense of big data, and thus make it more approachable to most people, is through data visualization. Data visualization is wayfinding, both literally, like the street signs that direct you to a highway, and figuratively, where colors, size, or position of abstract elements convey information. In either sense, the visual, when correctly aligned, can offer a shorter route to help guide decision making and become a tool to convey information critical in all data analysis. However, to be truly actionable, data visualizations should contain the right amount of interactivity. They have to be well designed, easy to use, understandable, meaningful, and approachable....