Infographics are on the rise (by 51% according to last year's figures), and it's no surprise why that's the case. Infographics make statistics come alive and can explain a complex process in a quickly digestible format.

Unless you have a designer on your team churning them out all day, it might feel daunting to start creating infographics. Fortunately there's all sorts of quick and dirty ways to create ridiculously good looking infographics for free.

Before I share some of my favourite tools though, we need to get two hard questions out of the way:

1. What is your infographic for? While an infographic is great at translating complexity, you need the image to be a coherent whole. Draft the journey you want your readers to go through and get rid of anything superfluous or confusing. In other words: Find the Narrative.
2. Do you have the right information for it? A lot of statistics can be found online, but it's even better if you have access to original data, as this will make your infographic stand out. It's not unusual for infographics to get their data from different sources, but do try to credit them in the infographic, as Credibility is Key.

Top 3 Infographic creators

1. Easel.ly is a very easy to use tool that allows you create infographics for free. The templates they offer are a little limited but you can still do plenty with them, or, for $3 a month, you can go pro and access more graphics and fonts: a bargain! Out of the three, this is the easiest to use.
2. Canva is one of my favourites, as it lets you create infographics as well as twitter banners, instagram pictures etc... Again, you get a fair amount for free, while premium images cost $1 per piece for 24 hours. The designed templates are all very beautiful, making it a good place to go to for general design inspiration. They've also recently launched Canva for Work to facilitate collaboration in the workplace and easily adapt an infographic to suit different social media formats.
3. Piktochart is another popular infographic tool, and the most expensive of the three if you go premium at $29 a month. The free version is great though, particularly the grid-lined templates which allow you to check that your infographic is well aligned. This is arguably the most advanced tool out of the three, so ideal for your more complex infographics.