Year: 2015

This semester I think I have made progression; both in techniques and creative approach and I think I have managed to come up with some nice designs over the past 12 weeks. Personally I think that my typography work came out quite impressively and I achieved more than I originally thought I was capable of. I think this is partly due to my approach being influenced by a particular art style which I found fascinating enough to research. This I think is an approach I may re-try in these future projects to come. For example if I choose to do the facial hair companies brochure campaign I may try something based around Art Neuvo or if I do the investing company I’d probably aim for something more modernist.

As for the infographic considering that this was my first infographic ever I was quite satisfied with the end result as it was nice and clear with the information. This task I definitely had difficulties with; not any design issues per say but more understanding the information I had to explain in infographic format. Teaching myself Einstein was quite a big task which unfortunately ate into my design time. If I was able to do this again I would try to learn the content a lot sooner. Had I given myself more time this may have increased the quality of the end result. Other than this regret I can say I am pleased with what I produced. Perhaps if I had my infographic to learn from learning the theory would be quite a stretch easier. Still, I look forward to more designing next semester.

In this final week before deadline I have made all my adjustments as suggested to me in the workshop last week. Some of which were easier than others. To resolve the issue with some of my text not being visible, I opted for brighter colours to stick out more. The green colour is now a vivid bright green and the purple has now been replaced with bright orange. My main task in terms of the infographic this week was to add variation to my Einstein character. For this I produced 3 more variants in different positions:

This I think will make the infographic much less repetitive. Having the original Einstein made this a lot easier as this acted as my puppet so I could position Einstein into different positions.

Other than a few other minor bits of tidying up I’m hoping that it all should be good to go before the Friday deadline.

 

Checklist:

Submit before Friday 16:00 !!!!!!!!!!!

Check for more amendments

The presentation seemed to go really well (I will include this as a link later) and I received some pretty constructive feedback. The font seemed to go down a treat, my only suggestion was that when I display it, I should separate my upper and lower case and display them separately. I have already tried this as I was curious to see how this looked however I didn’t find it more effective. This is because some of my lower case letters are directly influenced and inspired by the upper case and separating them makes it hard to distinguish this. It is a shame but I am glad I investigated this first. Most of my criticism was towards the Infographic which I am quite glad of as I overlooked a few issues with it. Some of my colours were too dark on the black background; particularly the greens and purples. Fortunately this is an easy fix as all I needed to do was select a brighter colour. I have selected a brighter green and have replaced my purple with orange. The orange I feel is much better as orange is quite a popular chalk colour for chalk boards.

Another important criticism is that my character doesn’t really show movement in the infographic. To combat this, I aim to spend the final week before hand in making this character a few more positions to variate between. Some of them are fine as is however the one which has him moving with the shooting star could easily adopt some form of Super Man-esque position. We shall see how this goes before hand in.

Checklist:

Change green and purple text colour

Create more Einstein’s in different poses

Try putting lower and upper case separate

Amend letter A, it didn’t save last time

Remove circle from bag mock up

Check for anything missing

Double check vectors on different formats

 

This week to give myself chance to produce a decent presentation, I had a big push to get all the infographic work finished. To do this, I first scrapped my initial portrait approach for a landscape, comic strip style layout. I kept the black background to maintain the blackboard feel and presented the content as if it was chalk (with the exception of the Einstein stickman). This I feel is quite playful and would engage my younger audience. Here is what the A2 layout would look like:

At this point I feel this explains the theory at a basic level quite successfully however I’m eager to get input later this week. The phone layout will have the same content however the layout will be one long, scrollable image. When looking at content on phones, people are used to scrolling downwards so I feel this would be the best approach. Here’s how it would look:

Finally, I made the web edition more like an online slideshow to be accessed by teachers who want to use the information in a lesson. To do this I essentially took the A2 format model and chopped the 6 sections of information into 6 slides. The slides would look like this:

I actually think this is the clearest way of viewing the infographic and would probably benefit the most from this format. We will see from the feedback how successful these are.

Checklist:

PRESENTATION!!!!!

Await feedback and recommendations

When I approach new projects which I’m unsure about I often look at examples to point me in the right direction and try and pick out the conventions that stick out to me. In the case of infographics, a lot of the ones I see use of cartoon people quite often. Although this isn’t the case for all infographics, the ones that stick out for me certainly do. This one for example about work related stress I think does a great job at illustrating the information about work related stress:

Bearing this in mind, I have come up with my own character to help get my point across. For an infographic about Einstein, it seems pretty obvious to include some sort of image of Einstein. Considering this is going to be placed in a classroom, I want it to fit in nicely with what is already on display in a science classroom. If my memory serves me correctly, science classrooms in my high school were covered in warning symbols. These are great for illustrating points and will also be a familiar sight for my infographic’s audience. To make it look like Einstein however, I decided to chop up a picture of his face and only leave his moustache, hair and iconic glasses. This was then applied to a stick figure commonly seen in warning signs. To dress the stickman, I also gave him a lab coat which I based off the warning sign indicating that lab coats must be worn. The end result I feel is quite a fun and playful image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Checklist:

Tweak outer edges, they appear blurry on Illustrator

Progress with infographic

Make more formats for Infographic, Iphone and web

Research into more warning signs in case any more can be used for visuals