Infographics and presentation tools

These tools are useful for creating reports, online graphics or any other visual output where you need a collection of graphs, charts and other elements to tell a story.

Infogram
This tool now boasts more than 35 different chart types and 550 maps from around the world, onto which you can overlay your data. There are also icons, text boxes and other visual components, as well as the ability to upload your own images. It integrates with other platforms like YouTube, SlideShare and Giphy, and you can pull in data from a range of external sources such as Google Drive or Analytics, Dropbox or SQL databases.
Check it out here

Piktochart
An easy-to-use tool for creating a range of outputs – including printed materials like flyers or posters. There are a range of templates that you can pick up and adapt, with more than 600 available if you pay to upgrade to the premium version. For images, it’s now integrated with Unsplash, which will find high resolution pics that are free to use for commercial or non-commercial use without the need for attribution (very similar to a Creative Commons Zero license).
Check it out here

Easelly
Another competitor in what’s becoming a very well-served market for infographics tools, Easelly offers templates for timelines, reports, processes and comparisons – making it particularly useful when you’re trying to visualise information that’s qualitative rather than quantitative. We’ve seen it used brilliantly to create informational posters aimed at staff or customers.
Check it out here

Canva
This one includes the ability to make graphs and charts, but it’s more of a general purpose layout tool for creating slides, posters and range of images tailored for social media. There are ready-made canvases with the specific dimensions for different platforms (eg. Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest), as well as templates for print outputs. It’s all drag and drop, and really quick to use – with a library of text elements, icons and images, and the ability to upload your own. We’ve used Canva for creating particularly visual slides to drop into PowerPoint (just export them and drag them onto a blank slide), and for quickly creating images for Twitter.
Check it out here

Infographia
Although there are an increasing number of fancy and clever tools for data visualisation, slide deck presentations are still where a huge proportion of information gets communicated. And since the standard design options are often limited, Infographia is a useful resource to know about. For a one-off payment, you get lifetime access to over 1500 templates for infographics, diagrams, dashboards, roadmaps, timelines and more. They're compatible with PowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides, and once you've downloaded them they're easy to customise and edit.
Check it out here

Prezi
This presentation and storytelling tool is loved by some, and loathed by others. If you imagine that traditional presentation software (like PowerPoint) allows you to present a series of slides in sequence, Prezi allows you to stick all of those slides on a wall and move between them in any order you want (as well as zooming in and out). We’ve seen it used fantastically well to present the journey of an organisation or project, but if it’s used without careful planning then you can end up with a mess of a presentation that induces seasickness in all who see it.
Check it out here