The buzz right now is that the one of the hottest careers online will be copywriting. While I agree with this, judging by the number of blog and linkbait writing offers I get these days, I think that another hot career will be information graphics design, aka infographics.

Infographics is a part of data visualization. Take quantities of otherwise boring data and produce not ony an attractive diagram/ illustration to represent the data, but do so in a manner that actually helps viewers understand the data. This sort of ability takes great analytic skills, graphic design ability, and good tools.

I am not professionally trained in graphic design, though I’ve been doing my own infographics for probably thirty years now. In my teens, I would browse my father’s college mathematics and statistics books and get a lot of my ideas from there. This is why I love creating diagrams so much, and I spend a fair bit of time trying to use the right one for a given blog article.

As for tools, my current toolset is as follows, in no particular order:

1. Pencil, pen and paper. I keep a clipboard with a small stack of 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper, as well as a small stack of moleskine-style unlined notebooks (approx. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches). I use whatever strikes my mood at a given moment. Moleskines, at least cheap knockoffs, don’t always sit open nicely. But I love them when they do. I find that my best diagrams start off on paper first.
   
   
2. Vector drawing software. Inkscape is free, and is comparable to great tools like Illustrator and Corel Draw.

   
   

3. Raster graphics editors. There are dozens of choices. The big dogs are Photoshop, Paintshop Pro (which is more affordable), and Fireworks, which has both raster and vector abilities. More recently, there are several free web-based options, which I hope to cover here soon.
   
   
4. Business graphics editors. There are tons of choices. I used Visio long before Microsoft bought that company out and made the software expensive for the entrepreneur. Gliffy, which is web-based and free, is competitive, but not as robust. I currently am a huge admirer of SmartDraw (affiliate link - click on this or the graphic above the nav bar and download it free). You can see some of the diagrams I’ve created with it on my SearchEngineJournal articles. I like it because it’s robust and has many great base examples that I can build off of. I’ve also learned diagramming standards for multiple disciplines in only a few short hours of browsing the examples.
   

   
   SmartDraw also lets me create diagrams and infographics that no other package lets me do as easily. Trust me. I’ve been using Visio on and off for about 11 years or longer. I don’t remember being able to do the same thing, though I haven’t tried in a while. I have stacks of complex diagrams on paper that have never made it to digital form in the past year. But now that I have SmartDraw, which I bought last week, I can see finishing them all in the next few weeks - some of which will appear here.
   
   

5. Miscellaneous visualization tools. I am a huge admirer of mindmapping techniques = which I’ve been using for 20+ years - for brainstorming, planning, and some project management. While you can use them for these purposes, they can also serve nicely as infographics for some datasets. There are both standalone applications as well as web browser-based ones. Here are a few, some of which I’ve used and like:
   1. Standalone:
   • FreeMind. This one is free but very basic.
   • Mindapp. This is a very nice package, though probably intermediate in level.
   • MindManager. This is one of the most amazing, robust mindmapping packages. It’s my favorite, with Mindapp a close second. [Update: Someone from MindJet has dropped a comment. I’ll follow up with them. It’s not appearing because I wiped out the entire database over the weekend.]
   • Topicscape. If you need to go beyond mindmapping, to a 3D paradigm, this might be your tool. Read an indepth review of Topicscape.
   2. Browser-based:
      • Bubbl.us. This one is very basic.
      • Mindomo. About on par with Freemind, above, plus additional features including collaboration and sharing.
      • Mindmeister. No collaboration but more features than Mindomo and Freemind.

   I have a large series of reviews of mindmapping software in progress that will appear elsewhere. When it’s published, I’ll drop some links here.

6. Sceen capture:
   While Techsmith’s Snagit is the cream of the crop, freebies abound. Some sit in your browser as an extenion, others run as a standalone application.
   
   
7. Screencasting:

   Again, Techsmith is tops with Camtasia Studio, but the steep price of US$299 might be too much if you just want basic abilities. In that case, try the free, Open Source Camstudio.
   
   

8. Slideshow/ Presentations:
   There are loads of choices in this regard, but my hands-down favorite is SplashCast Media’s SplashCast player. Each frame of a SplashCast can have a variety of content: document (text, PDF, etc.), image, or video. You can record audio over each frame, and run background music as well. It’s my presentation tool of choice at Tubetorial and other websites that I’m hired to write for.tube

So if you’re considering a (side) career in infographics and data visualization, those are some of the tools that you might consider.

The diagrams here were made in SmartDraw, which I’ll talk about soon. It’s not free, but for professional diagrams, it’s one of the most versatile I’ve ever used (and I’ve used a lot). In the week or so I’ve used it, I’ve been able to create complex, professional looking diagrams in 30-60 minutes that might have taken me 2-3 hours in other packages, if they could be made at all and retain their “smart” properties. It still has its flaws, but for my freelance writing, it’s been worth every cent.

I’ll review SmartDraw at length in the future. In the meantime, here are three graph theory diagrams (click to enlarge) that show node connectivity. Feel free to use them for whatever purpose, if they’re of any use to you. I’ll add more complex examples in the future.