During the pandemic, I created a “Sopranos Trivia” fan page on Instagram and Facebook. I wanted to learn Canva and Facebook/Instagram advertising. I created pictures and videos, and got good at it. Parenthood and hating The Many Saints of Newark film ended the project.
I started using ChatGPT in early 2023 and saw its integration with Canva. Due to time constraints and lack of inspiration, I haven’t experimented much. This is my first attempt at sharing something I’ve created. The goal was to complete it as quickly as possible, without zero prior planning.
I’m passionate about linguistics and demographics and have written several posts on these topics. I enjoy learning about trends like population aging and decline, and language loss due to immigration and assimilation. It’s interesting how circumstances we take for granted can change within our lifetimes.
Classifying Endangered Languages
According to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), a language dies every 14 days. Language death occurs with the loss of all native and second-language speakers. Over half of the world’s languages have 10,000 or fewer speakers, and hundreds have fewer than a dozen. India, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, and Cameroon have half of world’s endangered languages.
This is an “infographic” made by the European Parliamentary Research Service about the different levels of language endangerment, from safe to extinct. Let’s see how I make a much better one using Canva and ChatGPT.
Creating The Infographic
I’m not going to document every step with screenshots because it would take forever, with even minor revisions. But I’ll provide a brief step-by-step overview of what I did. The goal is to make an infographic that’s visually appealing and interesting to anyone, regardless of their knowledge of endangered languages.
Written Content
Using the original infographic and several others, I combined the language to make everything more understandable and less academic. I used ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini for editing. I’m really liking Gemini’s editing abilities, which I got free for a year with my Chromebook Plus purchase
I found language examples for each stage from this article. I wanted to use ChatGPT’s web search, but the results weren’t helpful for several reasons. ChatGPT even warned me: “Identifying specific languages for each endangerment category can be challenging due to varying data sources and the dynamic nature of language vitality.” I picked four of the most widely recognizable examples for each stage. Naturally, the more endangered a language, the less recognizable it will be.
Infographic Creation
I used Canva GPT, which has a mediocre rating of 3.1/5 from 100K+ ratings. I asked it to create an infographic based on my text. The templates I was given aren’t great, but I’ll work with them:
To create the images, I used Canva’s AI image generator and ChatGPT’s Dall-E. I used the infographic text for the image prompts to save time, though I could have spent more time refining them for better results. Canva’s generator gave me four image options, while Dall-E only provided one; however, Canva was worse at following instructions. Ultimately, I only used Canva for the “Severely Endangered” section.
Completed Infographic & Thoughts
While I was able to create this infographic in under an hour, it’s far from perfect. If I only make a few infographics a year, I prefer hiring a freelancer on Fiverr. For example, I had this infographic made for under $100 in less than a week. The most time-consuming part was writing the text, which AI now makes so much easier. Hiring a designer was worth it for the artwork quality alone.
I’ve used Canva for over five years and ChatGPT since February–March 2023. Canva’s integration with ChatGPT didn’t help much beyond suggesting templates. I couldn’t create the desired image “on demand,” at least as I define it. So, how could someone without my experience in both platforms do this easily? They can’t simply type what they want and get results in a single try. I only saved time because I compromised with serious design issues I disliked.
Creating a good image requires iterative prompting for ChatGPT to generate content and a solid understanding of Canva’s interface for design. In my experience, Canva is easy to learn but hard to master.
Image Alt Text
I’m not satisfied with this infographic, but I want Google (ally Google Images) to index it as soon as possible. Despite its design flaws, it’s more fun to look at than other infographics on the same subject. To help the image get found faster, I created the image alt tag using Gemini, and it passed an AI detector (always do this). If it seems overly AI-generated, Google might not rank the image. Hopefully, someone will improve it in the future.
Here’s how to do it in 1 prompt in Gemini:
