An infographic is a Skill and Tech job: the AI turns your data into a layout brief, and a rendering tool turns the brief into the finished image. Plan on an afternoon for the first one, most of it spent gathering the data and checking the numbers. The chat assistant you already pay for does the thinking well. The rendering step is where most attempts go wrong, because image models draw text and numbers as pictures and can get them wrong. The fix is to render with something that types the text, such as a web page or SVG the assistant builds, or a design tool where you paste the copy.
- Shape
- SkillTech
- Sitting
- an afternoon
The shape: Skill and Tech
The Skill half is editorial. An infographic makes one point with a small amount of data, and choosing that point is a judgment call. The AI is good at it once it has your material: it can cut ten facts to five, find the order that tells the story, and write labels short enough to read on a phone. That part is the same skill as writing a tight post, only with numbers, and once the brief works you keep it and reuse it for the next graphic.
The Tech half is the render, a route you pick once and use for every graphic after. You have three ways to get from a brief to an image, and they fail in different ways. An image generator gives you something that looks designed in seconds, but it can misspell words and change numbers. A web page or SVG file built by the chat assistant keeps every label and figure exact, because they are typed text, but it can look plain. A design tool gives you full control of fonts and colors, and it costs you the time to place each box yourself.
For anything with real numbers on it, we recommend the second route first and the third if it needs polish. Save the image generator for a background texture or an icon, never for the figures.
| Render route | Who does the work | Text and numbers | Looks | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Image generator in the chat app | The AI | Can be wrong, must be checked letter by letter | Polished at a glance | Mood pieces with no data |
| Web page or SVG built by the AI | The AI, you check | Exact, typed from your data | Clean, can be plain | Most small business infographics |
| Design tool, you place the parts | You | Exact, you paste them | As good as your eye | Brand pieces you will reuse |
What you give the AI
Gather these before you open the chat. The quality of the graphic depends almost entirely on this list.
- The one point: one sentence that finishes "After seeing this, a customer should know that..."
- The data: five to seven data points as a plain list or a pasted table, each with a label, a value and a unit.
- Where each number came from: your job log, your booking system, your invoices or a public source with a link, so you can stand behind it.
- The channel and size: an Instagram feed, a blog post or a printed handout, with the pixel size for social channels from our image size guide.
- Your brand basics: two or three hex colors, the font name if you have one, and your logo file if the tool accepts uploads.
- One example you like: a screenshot of an infographic whose layout you admire, with one line on what you like about it.
- What must not appear: customer names, prices you do not publish, anything a regulator would care about.
What comes back
You get two things back, in two steps. First, a layout brief in plain text that you read and correct. Second, the rendered graphic, built from the corrected brief. Keep them separate. Fixing a brief takes a minute; fixing a finished render takes much longer.
Paste this as the first message, with your material filled in:
You are designing one infographic for a small business.
Do not make an image yet.
First write a layout brief.
The one point: [one sentence]
Audience: [who sees it, where]
Channel and size: [for example, Instagram portrait, 1080 x 1350 px]
Brand colors: [hex codes]
Font: [name, or "a clean sans serif"]
Data (use these exact values, do not round or change them):
[label] | [value] | [unit] | [source]
[label] | [value] | [unit] | [source]
Write the brief with:
1. A headline of 8 words or fewer that states the point.
2. The chart or layout type, and why it fits this data.
3. Each section from top to bottom, with its exact text and number.
4. Where the eye goes first, second and third.
5. A one-line source note for the bottom of the graphic.
6. Anything in the data that does not support the point, so it can be cut.
Keep every label under 6 words.Read the brief, change what is wrong, then send the second message:
Now build the infographic from the corrected brief as a single
self-contained SVG (or HTML page) at the exact size above.
Type every word and number as text.
Do not draw text as an image.
Use only the brand colors.
Leave 60 px of margin on every side.
Size bars and shapes in exact proportion to the values.Open the result in a browser and check it, then ask the assistant to convert the SVG to a PNG at the exact size, or open the SVG in a design tool and export it. If your assistant cannot build files, paste the corrected brief into a design tool and place the text yourself. If you want several frames instead of one dense image, the same brief works as a carousel; our free carousel generator is one way to see that format.
How to judge it
You can reject a bad result in a minute if you know what to look for.
- A number does not match your list: the most common failure and the costliest, so check every figure against your source, one by one.
- A word is misspelled or half formed: the text was almost certainly drawn by an image model, so re-render it with typed text.
- The bars or slices are out of proportion: a bar for 40 should be twice the length of a bar for 20, even if you need a ruler on the screen to check.
- The headline describes the chart instead of making the point: "Our service calls by month" is a label, while "Most calls come in the first week of a cold snap" is a point.
- There is more than one point: if you cannot say what it means in one sentence, cut sections until you can.
- It is unreadable at phone size: shrink the image to the width of your thumb, and if the labels blur, there is too much text.
- Decoration the data did not ask for: stock icons on every row, a gradient behind the numbers or a 3D pie chart, all of which should go.
- A source line is missing or vague: "industry data" is not a source, while your own records, named, are.
What stays with you
The AI arranges the facts; it cannot vouch for them. Every number on the graphic is a claim your business is making in public, so the check is yours, every time.
You also own the choice of point. The AI will happily make a clean graphic out of a weak idea, and it cannot know which of your facts a customer actually cares about. That comes from the questions people ask you on the phone and at the counter.
Watch what the data reveals. A chart of jobs by neighborhood can point to a customer's street. A before and after can show a client who never agreed to be shown. Anything from a regulated field, such as health, money or legal outcomes, needs the same care you would give a printed brochure.
The last part is the posting. No assistant knows when your customers scroll, which caption suits the image, or whether this graphic fits the rest of the week. You put it out, or you decide not to.
An editorial example
This is an invented business, for illustration only. Say you run a small residential plumbing company and customers keep asking whether they really need to flush a water heater.
The one point: a yearly flush is cheaper than an early replacement. The data comes from your own job log: how many water heater replacements you did last year, how many of those units had never been flushed, the typical age at replacement, your typical replacement price and your published price for a flush. The source line reads "Our own service records, last 12 months."
The first brief comes back with a headline, a two-bar comparison and a three-step "how a flush works" strip. It also flags that the age data is thin, so you cut it. The second message returns an SVG at portrait size with your two brand colors, every figure typed. You check each number against the log, fix one label that says "tank" where you say "unit", and save it as a PNG. The same brief, with the bar chart swapped for three frames, becomes a carousel for next week.
Make the second one faster
Once the first graphic is done, ask the assistant to turn the corrected brief into a reusable template. Keep the colors, fonts, margins and layout rules, and leave the data and the headline as blanks. Save it somewhere you can find it. The next infographic is then a matter of pasting new data, which turns an afternoon into about an hour. If the AI's wording starts to feel generic, our guide to using AI without the slop covers how to feed it specifics.
Of every job on this list, social media is the one that comes back every week, and Boomp is software that does that one for you. See ten posts made from your website, free
