There are many styles you can choose from when you design infographics (or posters, websites, and presentations). But what style should you choose? Sometimes your goal and audience will help you pick a style that works. Are you not sure what the options are? We’ll show you some styles from our portfolio to inspire you.

3D isometric

For infographics that show an overview of an issue, or need to put a lot of elements in perspective, the 3D isometric design can be a good choice. It makes it possible to show people and places from above.

See this example from Sport Data Valley that we created. We even animated it!

3D isometric style for Sport Data Valley

Hand-drawn illustrations

There are many styles of illustration, but a drawing can be used for more emphatic infographics such as this infographic about parenting styles. This art was commissioned for the project and is therefore unique.

Hand drawn illustration infographic

You can also buy a set of illustrations that fit your story. This infographic is about chronic illness in the workplace and can show the emotions that text cannot. Because it was created for a report, we used the illustrations to spice up the report as well.

Illustration set for an infographic about chronic illness

Realistic mockups

As you can see on our own website, we love mockups. Mockups are realistic images that look exactly like photographs, but are actually created (usually in 3D software). It helps every topic come alive. See this infographic where we used a crash test dummy in a car seat to show the bad effects on smoking in cars for children.

Realistic mockup style for an infographic about smoking in cars

Flat icons

The simplest design style is probably flat icons in a single color. It’s for people on a tight budget or to project a certain techy vibe. Since there are so many great icons (we usually get them at thenounproject.com) you can always find the icon you are looking for.

See this infographic purely made with icons for Bits of Freedom.

We used icons to style this infographic

For this infographic about COVID policy, we used a simple icon style.

Simple icons for an infographic

Flat illustration

Another type of design is flat design. There are many variations of this style, so it’s very flexible. For example, in this infographic on job opportunities in child care centers.

Flat illustration style infographic

Or you can create a line-style infographic with bright colors.

Flat line-illustration style

Collage (mix of styles)

When you cannot find a single style that works for you, you can also use a collage style. For example when you need some 3D style to show an overview from the top, but want to insert some real photography to show actual people or locations. You can combine anything: illustrations, icons, shapes, and photography, like we did for this story carousel that we created as part of a science communication plan for a research paper.

Photography

Although we mostly pick one of the previously mentioned styles for infographics you can also design your infographic with only photo’s. You can either pick copyright free ones from pexels.com or unsplash.com or buy unique ones at bigstock.com

You can see this style on the campaign website we made: afuturewithoutmanipulation.eu. It’s actually also a type of collage, but with only images.

Photography collage style

Are you designing an infographic with us? Then let us know what type of style you prefer. We can then see whether this style works for your requirements.

Have you found another style that is being used for infographics? Let us know!

About the Author: Liesbeth Smit

Liesbeth combines her knowledge of science communication, technology and design to explain difficult topics to a wide audience. You can use her practical tips immediately in your (poster) presentations to create a bigger impact. She developed dozens of websites, infographics and animated videos, and regularly gives workshops about design at The Online Scientist.