Selecting Vendors: The Landscape

  • Traditional Options
  • Visualizing Visual Options
  • 1. Do-It-Yourself Tools
  • 2. Infographic Freelancer
  • 3. Community Site of Infographic Designers
  • 4. Traditional Marketing or PR Agency
  • 5. Ad Agency
  • 6. Technical Writers
  • 7. “Explainer” Video Shop
  • Evaluating Information Design Agencies

Traditional Options

So you and the organization are convinced that visual solutions are the answer to your business communication goals and you have scoped exactly what type of visual solutions you need short- and long-term. Now you need a vendor. Rather that analyze a particular agency, as agencies can come and go, for the purposes of this book, I thought I would take the reader through the different types of options one might consider. Please remember that I have more than twenty years of experience on the client side so I had first-hand knowledge before I formed an information design agency. My perspective is that there are significant problems with the traditional “normal” options, shown in the following visual and discussed below.

Visualizing Visual Options

A colorful pictorial representation of seven common pitfalls of visual solution providers. A man standing in the center is holding a pile of papers and seven arrows representing the pitfalls point in different directions. The seven pitfalls are do-it-yourself, infographic freelancer, community sites of infographic designers, traditional marketing or PR agency, Ad agency, technical writers, and “explainer” video shops.

1. Do-It-Yourself Tools

A crop of charting type tools have been developed to answer the need for visual content in the form of infographics. The motivation for those who use these tools is to skip the expense and time involved working with a professional information designer. The results are clunky. With ...

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