Infogram vs. Shorthand

Infogram is perfect for creating engaging and professional-looking infographics, data visualizations, and social media content with no technical knowledge required. I have worked with NGOs with no technical or design staff that need to get their message out there or raise awareness about something. Infogram is easy and quick to use and the results look great. Infogram is not heavyweight data visualization software, it's best for summarizing and explaining the results of data analysis to an audience or breaking down complex concepts to make them understandable to the general public.

Shorthand is ideally suited to visual stories where you have a good number of images and/or embeds or video to include. It is well-suited to long-form stories, where you wish to keep the readers' attention longer than usual. It can help to differentiate particularly important or intriguing stories from others on your website - and for this reason, it could be used as a premium content tool, perhaps for subscribers. It can also be used to showcase stories about awards you've organised, giving them special treatment. It is less suited to breaking news, or very time-sensitive news stories, as it can take some time to prepare, post or update shorthand stories. And it doesn't work well for stories with strong accompanying imagery

Incentivized

• It is specifically made for the creation of infographics and it excels in this field.
• It provides the novice user with many beautiful templates, easing the learning process.
• It integrates with many databases, making the infographic dynamic always up-to-date.

Incentivized

• Enabling visual storytelling with multiple pictures
• Embedding rich media within a story, including video
• Engaging readers for longer than average dwell times
• Making it easy to create striking article design without coding experience

Incentivized

• I gave it a 10 for a reason....
• Some graphs could have more features to change their appearance (but perhaps then it wouldn’t be as simple)
• Should have a better way to copy and paste to another app

Incentivized

• Additional flexibility in how text is overlaid on pictures would be welcome so that there are more choices on what images to use with particular layouts
• Enabling users to control the path of text - for example, enabling runaround - could enable some excellent designs
• Adding additional section templates could speed up design
• More flexibility in caption placement would be helpful

Incentivized

I have never known it to be down during my use of it. All you require is an internet connection to log in and you can use it on multiple devices. Adding ease of accessibility, there are simple ways to log in. I've also never known a Shorthand story to go down once live on our site.

Incentivized

Due to the integration with our content management software, there is a short delay on our site while it loads, which may cause some readers to drift away. However, I've seen other sites where it instantly loads articles, so I believe this to be down to the content management software behind our site more than Shorthand itself. Once that brief initial period is over, it doesn't require additional loading time.

Incentivized

I have personally always had quick, friendly, and helpful responses from the Infogram team.

Infogram's most unique strength is its focus on infographics, providing a great number of templates and at the same time connecting such graphics with data sources. Prezi is great for presentation, but it provides static infographics. Illustrator and Photoshop have some possible ways to integrate data into their graphics, but they are rudimentary compared to Infogram's abilities. Despite the huge power of Photoshop and Illustrator for creating specific images, Infogram is easier and more powerful in conveying data, making it the best option for infographics.

Incentivized

As a web-based service, it is easy for users to log into from anywhere. Content can easily be shared, as you can set up teams that enable access to each other's work as required. And content can be reviewed by others before publication using the sharing function. You can also view how an article will look on different devices.

Incentivized

• Has a free user option and it is faster and easier to build great graphical graphs.
• Now I don’t have to ask design guys to make me a fancier graph for a presentation.
• After the first graphs are made I can reuse them for the next month's presentation.

Incentivized

• Helped us create one of our top 10 most-read and most-shared stories in the last year
• Enabled us to elevate key pieces of content, boosting dwell time on our site
• But can also be time-consuming to adopt for some stories, meaning you need to choose well what stories really deserve the investment in time
• Boosted collaboration between teams via its ability to share, including offering the chance for others to preview content prior to publication

Incentivized