Canva vs. Piktochart: Infographic Wars – Tech 4 School Librarians

As a visual learner myself, I appreciate being able to see visual representations of text, data, and so much more. As a learner I am better able to digest information. I am a librarian so I love to read for pleasure but I find nonfiction information can be daunting at times for students to comprehend. It appears that an infographic can convey information more quickly and with less space than other means of communication. However, creating the most effective infographic can be difficult. Thankfully there are a couple of tech tools that make the process so much easier. My favorite two tools are Canva and Piktochart. Which is better? That is a tough choice. They both have their strengths and weaknesses which I will go into.

Piktochart

Piktochart is “web-based graphic design tool and infographic maker which allows users without intensive experience as graphic designers to easily create visuals, including infographics, reports, presentations, posters, flyers, and social media graphics, using customizable templates (Wikipedia).” Overall I really like this product due to its ease of use and excellent templates. When creating my end of the year report for my library I have used Piktochart because it made creating an infographic quick and painless. I found that Canva just gave me too many options and was better served for items such as flyers, social media images, etc. Although the free account is limited I have not found it to be a barrier to creating my reports and students to use. I have not yet tried to gain an Ed Law 2D contract so I am unclear on the challenges with that process with Piktochart.

Canva

Canva is a Australian graphic design platform which is primarily used to create social media graphics, presentations, and posters (canva.com). Their templates are amazing. If you have an educator account (FREE) you gain access to all premium features including a background remover. I love Canva for a lot of things. I use it for all my social media posts and flyers. It is an amazing GIF creator that ups my professional game. Although it is very intuitive there is a lot to learn. Not for the beginner if you want to utilize all the tools. The free version has a lot of limitations and it is hard to tell what portions are free and what are paid. Here is an infographic example I created using Canva. There were almost too many options that I had to be very thoughtful on how to tell the story of this information. I still feel it is a bit wordy. But that is not the fault of Canva. They are challenging to gain an Ed Law 2D contract which makes it difficult to use with students in NYS.

Conclusion

Both products do a really good job of representing information in a visual way. Depending on your level of experience both tools will do the job of creating Infographics. If I were doing a project with students I would start with Piktochart and then move towards Canva once they had the tool down. I highly recommend both products if you are creating infographics. They help students create vibrant and creative projects.