Introducing the World's First Infozine!

Confession. At 256 Media we’re big fans of  infographics. So much so that we get a little thrill each day when a new email pops into our inbox from the folks at Dailyinfographic.com. This site is dedicated to infographics and if you haven’t signed up yet you should. (Some of our favourites include The Evolution of the Geek and the Harry Potter Myers Briggs Chart - apparently I'm Ron Weasley The Champion.

Because we believe that smart infographics have a place in any company’s content marketing strategy we’ve created them for many clients.

An infographic Challenge

But recently we were faced with a challenge. We were asked to come up with a new way of presenting the results from an indepth piece of research on the Irish property market. Given that us Irish as a nation are slightly obsessed with property, the study on how affordable houses are for first time buyers, was bound to be of major interest. But reports by their nature are not the most consumer friendly format, and a reader would have to wade through a lot of facts to get to the juicy bits.

Even though we love infographics we knew that an infographic alone wouldn’t suffice in this case. So we invented the ‘Infozine’ – playing to the visual strengths of the infographic but incorporating an editorial narrative.

The first step for our team was to pour over the detailed report extracting the the key consumer points and creating an overarching editorial story that would unify the infographic and the narrative.

While there was literally a ton of information in the report, the key to the success of any infographic is to simplify the data and let the graphics do the hard work.

The front of the Infozine incorporates the infographic in a vertical orientation, the top of which doubles up as the ‘cover’ once the piece is folded.

When you turn it over on the horizontal, the editorial runs from left to right giving the reader more depth of information than the ‘snackable’ graphics on the reverse.

We designed the infozine to be printed in a tri-fold format.  Here is the front and back of the finished piece which was printed on 170gsm uncoated stock.

We also designed the Full Index as a reference for more specialist readers as a companion to the consumer focused infozine.

Most infographics are digital only, often created in software packages that will not produce print quality files. But that's ok as most infographics live only online.

Digital only infographics may be missing a trick

However, at 256 Media we believe that the merits of the printed infographic as part of a brand's marketing and messaging assets should not be ignored.

Apart from this new 'Infozine' format, they lend themselves well to pull-up banners perfect for trade shows or point of sale. Oh, and there's also the fact that when they are done well with an overarching editorial narrative they work.

So there you have it. 256 Media's most recent contribution to the world of infographics.

Might be time to call the guys in Dailyinfographic.com