There are SO many ways to communicate visually, and internet is full of handy tools that anyone can learn to use.
Here’s 105 tools for infographics, data visualisation and to all sorts of visual communication.
This resource was put together in Finnish Facebook-group “Tiedon visualisointi” (meaning ”Visualising Knowlegde”).
The collection is not perfect – and it doesn’t even include all the “obvious” great tools like Illustrator or Excel – but I find it helpful and use it a lot.
Many of the tools are free, but for some you need to pay a bit.
If you have any comments, or if you just want to say hello, I’d be happy to hear from you in Twitter or Linkedin.
I hope you enjoy the toolkit as much as I do!
Tools by topic
- Annual planning
- Color & palettes
- Data visualisation
- Diagrams
- Graphic tools
- Icons
- Infographics
- Inspiration & Ideas
- Map tools
- Mind maps
- Network maps
- Presentation graphics
- Photos & images
- Timelines
- Videos and animations
- Word clouds
Annual Planning
Plandisc
Circular planning tool for an overall view of the annual activities.
Clogga
Annual Plan App for teams and companies.
Color & Palettes
Adobe Color CC
Explore and create color combinations & palettes.
Color Brewer
Color advice for cartography.
Coolors
Fast color schemes generator.
Colour lovers
Community where people from around the world create and share colors and palettes.
Data Color Picker, powered by Learn UI Designpowered by Learn UI Design
Tool for creating data visualisation palettes.
Google Art Palette
Pull out colors from your picture, from a piece of art or browse for inspiration. Google AI experiment.
Graphical User Interface for Choosing HCL Color Palettes
A graphical user interface (GUI) for viewing, manipulating, and choosing HCL color palettes.
Data visualization
Dexmen
Finnish startup with dataviz solutions.
Google Charts
Powerful, simple to use, and free.
RAWGraphs
The missing link between spreadsheets and data visualisation.
Spark
The world’s first code-free sparkline typeface.
Tableau Public
Visualise and share your data in minutes.
Qlik
Lets you create visualisations, dashboards and apps.
Diagrams
Creately
50+ types of diagrams with features to help you draw faster and better.
Diagrammer™ by Duarte
More than 4,000 customisable diagrams.
Edraw
Cross-platform diagram software.
Simple Diagrams
A desktop app for creating sketches of problems, processes, workflows or ideas.
Vizzlo
Great-looking charts and business graphics.
Graphic tools
Gravit Designer
Free vector design app right at your fingertips.
Inkscape
Free and open source vector graphics editor.
Photoscape
Fun and Easy Photo Editor.
Voxel Builder
Easy cube-based 3D design with DIY 2D/3D printing.
Amaziograph
Applies symmetries to everything you draw.
ScreenToGif
Screen, webcam and sketchboard recorder with an editor.
Icons
Creative Nerds free icon sets
Nice community site for creatives, with occasional freebies.
Infographics
Free infographic-templates for Powerpoint by Hubspot
Inspiration & Ideas
Data Viz Project by Ferdio
Find the right visualisation and get inspired how to make them.
45 Ways to Communicate Two Quantities by Visual.ly
22 free ebooks for designers and artists by Creative Bloq
50 meticulous style guides every startup should see before launching by Canva
33 graphic design tips for beginner designers by Pixel Whizz
21 Mind-Blowing Map Examples from the Web by Infogram
Law by design by Margaret Hagan (ebook about legal design & service design)
Periodic table of visualisation methods by Visual Literacy
Qualitative chart chooser by Stephanie Evergreen
Visual facilitation cookbook (Published by Estonian UNESCO Youth Association)
Visual vocabulary -poster by Financial Times
Viz Health – Scientifically vetted style guide for communicating health data
Web font inspiration by Typ.io
Map tools
Editable World Map for PowerPoint from PPT POP
Map in Seconds
Turns your spreadsheet data into maps.
Story Maps
combine your maps with narrative text, images, and multimedia.
QGis
A Free and Open Source Geographic Information System.
Mind maps
Coggle
The clear way to share complex information
Mindmup
Free online mind mapping
Sketchboard
Not only for mind maps, but team sketching as well. Finnish startup.
Network maps
Graph Commons
Map networks, together.
Presentation graphics
Creative Market
Ready-to-use design assets from 27,214 independent creators.
Info Diagram
Predesigned editable slides.
Slide Team
Library of easy-to-edit PowerPoint slides.
18+ Business Timeline Infographics in Creative Vivid
Visualize me
Visualise your CV/resume.
Photos & Images
Always check the copyright & licenses yourself before using a photo, even if it’s from a ”free” service. Terms of uses do vary.
Beautiful pixel gradient maker in Glitch
Europeana Collections – artwork from 3500 galleries, museums and archives across Europe
Helsinkikuvia – Picures from Helsinki
Kuvia Suomesta – Photos from Finland
You can use the photos as you want as long as you do not download pictures to other photo stocks for free, or for sale.
O-Dan – High-quality Free Stock Photos Search
UnDraw – collection of beautiful free svg images
Timelines
Timeline Storyteller
Open-source visual storytelling environment for presenting timelines in the browser or in Microsoft Power BI.
Office Timeline
Free PowerPoint timeline template
Tiki-Toki
Web-based software for creating interactive timelines that you can share on the internet.
Sutori
Presentations for the classroom in a unique timeline format.
Videos & Animations
Apple Clips
App to create videos on iPhone and iPad.
Explain Everything
Interactive whiteboard platform.
Lumen 5
Easy videos for social media.
Ripl
Animated videos for social media.
Stop Motion Studio
App to get you into stop motion moviemaking.
Vittle
Whiteboard videos.
Word Clouds
Answer Garden
Nice feedback-tool that creates word clouds from the participants answers.
Word Art
Online word cloud art creator.
Tagxedo
Word cloud with styles
Wordclouds
Free online Wordcloud generator