How to Use Infographic Designer in Power BI

Tired of the same old bar charts and pie charts in Power BI? While those are great for standard reporting, sometimes you need something with more visual punch to tell your data's story. This is where the Infographic Designer custom visual comes in. It lets you break free from the constraints of default charts to create highly customized, engaging, and intuitive visuals that can make your reports instantly more understandable. This article will walk you through how to add and use the Infographic Designer to bring your Power BI reports to life.

What is the Infographic Designer and Why Should You Use It?

The Infographic Designer is a free custom visual available in Microsoft's AppSource marketplace for Power BI. Unlike a standard chart that has a fixed appearance, this tool is more of a design canvas. It gives you the power to use shapes, icons, and even your own images to represent data, allowing for endless customization.

So, why bother with a custom visual? Traditional charts are excellent for analysis, but they can sometimes feel sterile or uninspiring for broader audiences. Infographics are powerful for a few key reasons:

They're engaging: A visual representing employee satisfaction with happy face icons is far more engaging than a simple bar chart. This helps capture and hold your audience's attention, especially for stakeholders who aren't data experts.
They provide context instantly: Showing progress toward a goal by filling up a container shape or tracking units sold with an array of product icons makes the data's meaning immediately clear.
They improve data storytelling: Infographics allow you to translate numbers into a visual story that is easier to remember and communicate. Instead of just showing a number, you're showing what the number represents.

Getting Started: Adding Infographic Designer to Your Report

Before you can start building, you need to add the visual to your Power BI report from the marketplace. It’s a quick and simple process.

Step 1: Find the Visual in AppSource

Open your Power BI report and look at the Visualizations pane on the right. Below the standard chart icons, you'll see three dots (...). Click them and select "Get more visuals." This will open the Power BI Visuals marketplace (AppSource).

In the search bar at the top, type "Infographic Designer" and press Enter. The visual, developed by Microsoft, should appear at the top of the search results.

Step 2: Add it to Your Visualizations Pane

Click on the Infographic Designer card and then click the blue "Add" button. After a moment, you'll see a success message, and a new icon will appear in your Visualizations pane, ready to use. Now you can click that icon to add an empty Infographic Designer visual to your report canvas, just like any other chart.

Building Your First Infographic: A Step-by-Step Example

The best way to learn is by doing. Let’s build a simple infographic to track sales performance for different regions. Imagine we have this simple data: Region, Sales, and Sales Target.

Step 1: Get Your Data Ready

First, drag your data fields into the visual's designated field wells in the Visualizations pane. This tells the visual what data it needs to work with.

Drag your main category (in our case, Region) to the Category field.
Drag your primary numeric value (Sales) to the Measure field.
If you want to compare your main value to another one, like a target, drag that (Sales Target) into the Other Measure field.

At this point, you'll likely see a very basic, pre-populated column chart. Don't worry, this is just the default starting point. The real work happens inside the visual's editor.

Step 2: Open the Editor and Choose a Shape

Hover over the visual on your canvas, and a small pencil icon labeled "Edit mark" will appear in the top right corner. Click this to open the Infographic Designer's dedicated formatting interface. This is where the magic happens.

In the editor on the left, you'll see sections for Shape, Text, and more. Start with Shape. You can expand this section and choose from a huge library of built-in shapes sorted by category (for example, "People," "Technology," or "Nature"). For our sales example, let's go with a simple briefcase icon from the "Business" category.

Step 3: Map Data to Visual Properties

This is the most important concept to understand. You can link your data to almost any visual property. Let's start with the basics.

Under the "Value" section of the Shape settings, find the Fill Percentage property. By default, it's probably linked to your primary Measure (Sales). However, we want to show how much of our Sales Target we have achieved. We can do this by using a calculated percentage.

Click the "fx" button to create a DAX measure, if you haven't already:

% of Target = DIVIDE(SUM(Sales[Sales]), SUM(Sales[Sales Target]))

Drag this new measure into the Measure well. Now, the briefcase icon will automatically be filled based on the percentage of the target achieved for each region. You can then adjust the Fill Color and Background Color to match your brand or theme.

Step 4: Add and Format Text Labels

Expand the Text section in the editor. Just like with Shapes, you can link data values to text. Here you can add a label to show the percentage achievement.

For the Text: In the text box, type some static text like "Achieved:" followed by the placeholder ##. This special placeholder will dynamically display the value from your main Measure field. You'll have control to format it as a percentage here too.
Position and Styling: You can then adjust the font size, color, and position (e.g., inside center, top, bottom) to make it look clean and readable.

After adjusting the settings, click the "Back to report" button at the top left to see your new infographic in action!

Advanced Techniques for More Impactful Visuals

Once you've mastered the basics of shapes and text, you can experiment with more advanced features to create truly unique reports. Here are a few powerful techniques to try.

1. Creating Waffle Charts and Icon Arrays

Instead of filling a single shape, you can represent data as an array or grid of shapes. This is great for showing percentages or counts out of a whole. To do this, go to the "Layout" setting within the Shape design panel.

Change the arrange style from single to grid(row/col) or similar. You can now define how many shapes should appear in columns or rows. For example, to create a 10x10 waffle chart showing a 45% completion rate, you would set rows and columns to 10 each. The visual will then automatically fill 45 of the 100 shapes, providing a clear visual representation of the percentage.

2. Populating Bar Charts with Custom Icons

The Infographic Designer also allows you to make traditional charts more interesting. Select a basic column chart format inside the Designer. Go to Shape Settings then click "multiple units".

Now, instead of filling a simple rectangle, the visual will tile your chosen shape to create the bar. Imagine a chart showing website traffic from different social media channels, where the bars are made up of tiny Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn logos. This adds an immediate layer of thematic context to the data.

3. Linking Data to Multiple Properties

The Measure field isn't restricted to just Fill Percentage. You can map different data points from the Other Measure well to various properties like Size, Opacity, or even Rotation.

For example, you could create a visual where the size of an icon represents total revenue, while the color fill represents the profit margin on a green-to-red scale. This allows you to encode multiple dimensions of data into a single, highly efficient visual.

4. Using Your Own Images

Perhaps the most powerful feature is the ability to use your own images. In the Shape settings, select the "Upload Image" option to use your brand's unique assets such as logos or custom icons.

This unlocks complete creative freedom. You could visualize sales data using images of your products, show regional performance using flags, or represent team headcount with photos of the team leads. It makes the report deeply connected to your specific business context.

Final Thoughts

By leveraging the Infographic Designer custom visual, you can transform your Power BI reports from standard-issue dashboards into engaging, insightful narratives. It gives you the flexibility to move beyond default charts and create visualizations that are not only informative but also memorable and tailored directly to your audience.

Of course, building powerful dashboards from scratch, even with user-friendly tools, takes time. That's why we built Graphed . It's an AI data analyst that accelerates the entire process. Just connect your data sources like Google Analytics or your CRM, describe the dashboard you need in plain English (e.g., "Show me my marketing funnel from ad campaigns to sales for this quarter"), and we'll instantly generate a real-time, interactive dashboard for you, saving you hours of manual work.