How to make impressive infographic posters fast and easily with Canva

Canva can convert data into beautiful graphic displays. You can utilize infographic posters to promote your business or to convey complex ideas in bite-sized chunks so they're easily understood by your audience. Whether you're organizing your data in Canva Sheets⁠(opens in a new tab or window) or importing it from elsewhere, Canva has thousands of free templates for you to use and adjusting them to suit your needs can be done in under ten minutes.

Choose from a variety of formats, including donut charts, line charts, bar charts and even pictograms. Below we'll discuss how to add graphics, including illustrations and pictograms to your infographic poster, and how to resize and arrange elements for printing.

Instead of starting from scratch, try finding a template that aligns with your design goals. From your Canva homepage, search for ‘infographic’ and scroll through to uncover different designs. If you run a boutique travel agency, for example, you might start by searching ‘travel infographic’ to see what already exists.

The best part about Canva’s designer-made templates is that they already include real information for you to base your ideas on, or to leave as is. And, so many of them are completely free to use. Keep in mind the templates with a crown symbol are for Canva Business or Pro subscribers only⁠(opens in a new tab or window).

Once you’re happy with your infographic design, you can share your creation with customers and colleagues via email or social media by making a shareable link. From within the Canva editor, simply click the ‘Share’ button in your navigation menu and toggle over to the ‘More’ tab and select ‘View-only link.’

If you intend to hand your poster out to people on the street, click ‘Share,’ ‘Print your design’ and select ‘Infographics.’ From here, Canva may ask you to resize your design if the dimensions of your document differ from the standard four-by-nine-inch format. To resize, you can utilize the Magic Switch tool⁠(opens in a new tab or window), a Canva Pro feature, in the top navigation menu of your Canva Editor. You can then proceed to select the number of pages you wish to print, the paper type, the paper finish, and the number of copies.

Hit continue, and Canva will run a quick press check to make sure nothing is going to be missed during the printing process. Turn on ‘Automatically fix issues’ to ensure any elements in the printing danger zone aren’t missed. You can even download a PDF proof of your design.

Finally, click checkout and you’ll have leaflets delivered to your door in no time.

To add a bar chart to your design, go to the ‘Elements’ tab from within the Canva Editor. Type in ‘chart’ into the search field and click ‘see all’ and toggle over to ‘bar chart.’ With the chart selected, you’ll be able to manually enter your own data or import data from Google Sheets.

To utilize Google sheets, click the ‘Google Sheets’ button in the navigation menu and select ‘See all your Google Sheets spreadsheets’ to give Canva access to your account, then select the file you’re working on. Go into the Google Sheet itself by clicking on the ‘Open on Google Sheets’ button and take note of your documents cell range. Copy and paste the data into your Canva Editor, making sure to use a colon in between your cell range so your data transfers seamlessly. Once you’re ready, hit the ‘Update’ button and your bar chart will be ready to publish.

From within the Canva editor, go to your ‘Elements’ tab and search for ‘chart,’ then select the icon of a person. From here, you can adjust the total number of items in your chart, the amount filled in as well as the spacing between each. You can even customize the colors or graphics used to represent your data.

Want to learn more about how you can increase your brand awareness online? Watch our tutorial on creating online banners for your social media channels here⁠(opens in a new tab or window).