I have never seen myself as creative. I am a teacher though and teachers are super great at finding ideas and recreating them to fit their needs. Now, I SAY I’m not creative, however, I do have a craft room in my house where I have loads of scrapbook stuff, ribbon, embellishments, a Silhouette machine and a heat press…so I love being crafty, I just have to find ideas first and put my own spin on them.

Right after my son was born, I wanted to lose my baby weight (I know, what does this have to do with infographics? Keep reading!). I decided to join Beachbody as a fitness and health coach since I loved working out prior to baby. It was within this side job that I found a love for all things graphics. I began creating my own Facebook graphics through an app on my iPhone called Rhonna. From there I then toyed with PicMonkey (it was free at the time) and my latest crave has been Canva. I have thoroughly enjoyed creating invitations to many birthday parties, resume headers for myself and friends, graphics for my blog and more on Canva. Recently I even made an infographic over copyright and fair use using this site you can see here. It has been a dream and the best part-it’s free! There is a paid membership, but you can still do so much with it without paying.

Recently though I’ve been turned on to a few more sites, Easelly, Piktochart and Infogram that are wonderful for making infographics, posters, slides and more. I haven’t had as much time with these sites as Canva, but here is what I found to be helpful for each, along with things that I felt hindered me.

The first site I tried was Easelly. I’ll be honest (since this is my blog and I can be), I did not like it at all. If you are new to creating graphics of any kind, templates are a MUST. While this site has templates to LOOK at, you can’t use them unless you pay (womp, womp, womp). I felt like this site could be good for someone like me that has been creating graphics and infographics for years, but still, I need a source to pull my creative vibe from and this just did not fit the bill for me.

Piktochart was the next site I looked into. At first, I didn’t think this would be the site I favored between the three new ones, but turns out it was. I came back to this site after beginning a new infographic using Infogram because I wasn’t finding exactly what I wanted. As I began to dig into the templates on Piktochart, I found so many I loved and was able to take ideas from a few to create a wonderful infographic over Millennials versus Generation Z (see image below). This site is free, but does include a paid membership similar to Canva. As a matter of fact, this site reminded me a lot of Canva. They both have backgrounds to choose from as well as shapes, graphics, charts, maps, videos and you can even upload your own images. I found a couple of things that weren’t the same-on Piktochart you can only download the image at a low to medium resolution and only in a PNG (picture) form; you have to have a paid subscription to download at a high res and to PDF. That was a little disappointing. Another thing I didn’t care for was that PIKTOCHART is labelled at the bottom of your infographic when you download it. Overall though, I liked using this site. It was super easy to navigate, easy to add your flare, and great for a beginner.

The last one I’ll give my two cents on is Infogram. This design site is a good one to use as well. Although I liked Piktochart a little better, Infogram still had some great qualities.

Like the other sites I like, you can choose from lots of templates (for free) to create slides, infographics, Facebook posts and other projects. I didn’t like the fact that you have to pay in order to keep your designs private (yes, they are there for public eyes if you don’t pay).  Infogram had the abilities to add color, maps, charts, graphics and shapes. It even gives you the ability to integrate different forms of media and data! I simply didn’t use this one for my latest project because I felt Piktochart had better templates for what I was needing. I think Infogram is still high on my list though of sites I will keep in my pocket for future use.

All these sites are super easy to sign up for. You can simply sign in using your Google or Facebook account or use a good email and password. They all offer free use, but allow for more templates and graphics and abilities with a paid subscription. I always recommend trying sites out and using the free membership before you jump in all the way.

I feel like I have a good grasp on graphic design websites, so feel free to leave questions or comments below!