I was trying to make an creative diagram of all my social channels and the only drawing tool that I had around was Dia. I had used it for schematics earlier but never for infographics. Sure I had inkscape, powerpoint and vision, but Dia it had to be. Here's my simple how to tutorial to make brilliant infographics using Dia.
The tool is Dia (for windows) you can download it from sourceforge
"Dia is free (open source) drawing software"
Dia has a collection of lines and polygon tools. I chose the most basic circles and rectangles to capture the flow. The text tool offers a limited set of portable fonts but you can always choose system specific fonts for better effect. For my purpose I just went with Sans so that I could focus on content rather than aesthetics. Just put your creative side on hold till we get the basic data in place.
Layers are another useful feature to build a creative diagram over time. one problem I faced with layers is that I could never save a flattened final png or svg using all layers. Hmm... Dia team may need to fix that.
The idea behind an infographic is to grab attention and colors are a great start, Now that the information is laid out in a creative flow diagram. Its time to choose color. I tend to stick to 2 or 3 colors at most and minor shade variations for effect. You can use a color palette tool for suggestions but I use pictures and print templates for inspiration. A simple light colored background rectangle draws attention to the visuals by framing the picture. A couple of bright colors to highlight areas that are the core concepts. The icons are just an reminder for me to work more on that area.
Dia allows embedding images in a diagram. Since the diagram is about social media what better way to spruce it up than using social media icons, I head over to Simpleicons.org to grab some awesome free social media icons to spruce up my diagram and there we are.
When you embed PNGs with transparency you could end up with blocky white patches in image exports, choose save as jpg to workaround that issue.
The tool is Dia (for windows) you can download it from sourceforge
"Dia is free (open source) drawing software"
The Wireframe
My challenge was to create a information flow diagram of social channels into the brand. Its quite easy for the visual and creative side to hijack the actual information to be conveyed, so I ensured that I work on the basic information as a wireframe, no color, no pictures, just pure information that needs to be presented. The wireframe need not be an accurate illustration of the what is in mind but just enough to get started.
Dia has a collection of lines and polygon tools. I chose the most basic circles and rectangles to capture the flow. The text tool offers a limited set of portable fonts but you can always choose system specific fonts for better effect. For my purpose I just went with Sans so that I could focus on content rather than aesthetics. Just put your creative side on hold till we get the basic data in place.
Simple tricks
The trick in Dia is to align and group multiple objects for easy movement, alt+shift+C and alt+shift+M will center any selected objects horizontally or vertically. Grouping objects is ctrl+G and ungroup os ctrl+U. You can always add or modify text in an object by pressing F2. With those shortcuts memorized I had the first cut of the wireframe in place as shown.Let there be color
The idea behind an infographic is to grab attention and colors are a great start, Now that the information is laid out in a creative flow diagram. Its time to choose color. I tend to stick to 2 or 3 colors at most and minor shade variations for effect. You can use a color palette tool for suggestions but I use pictures and print templates for inspiration. A simple light colored background rectangle draws attention to the visuals by framing the picture. A couple of bright colors to highlight areas that are the core concepts. The icons are just an reminder for me to work more on that area.
Bells and whistles
Dia allows embedding images in a diagram. Since the diagram is about social media what better way to spruce it up than using social media icons, I head over to Simpleicons.org to grab some awesome free social media icons to spruce up my diagram and there we are.When you embed PNGs with transparency you could end up with blocky white patches in image exports, choose save as jpg to workaround that issue.
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