For wider dissemination: Making infographics for your research

What do you do to fill the gap, reach beyond the Ivory Tower, or drive your gown into town? As part of my graduate research course this semester, we talked about access to research. If researchers have articles behind a publisher paywall, what can they do to bring the findings to the masses.

Enter the infographic. Students have been tasked with making infographics for a handful of research articles. But before I set them out on this project, I thought I better practice what I am now preaching. It's not perfect, but here's my stab at an infographic for a project Dr. Chris Gearhart and I recently completed.

Here's what I learned:

1. Wow, condensing your research to an inforgraphic forces you to boil it down to its core. I suspect this will be easier when the article is not YOUR baby.

2. Letting go of text is HARD for some of us. I found myself wanted to clutter the *graphic* with words. Use the templates and icons as guides. Tell yourself to think in images. Edit, edit, edit. I could probably still replace some words with graphics.

3. So many good, free resources are out there. I chose to use Visme.co, but there are tons of options. As with any freemium, you have to settle for the basic package if you're on a zero-budget. But, I was able to complete my project and export a jpg.

Let me know what you think. What has worked for you when creating an infographic for your research?