Week Three Critique

Today in class we had another critique session in small groups, where we went through and pointed out what was working and what wasn't working so well. It was quite helpful seeing how people had approached all three posters, with everyone having a lot of different ideas.

In terms of my posters, as shown in my most recent blog post, I hadn't really looked at adding all of the colour coding just yet, as I was looking to get a basic structure working. One of the pieces of feedback I recieved on my poster was to make sure there is the exact same grid structure which runs across all three of the posters. With this in mind, I will go back into InDesign and set up a grid and duplicate it across to each of the posters, and begin working to craft them to work with the grid composition. There were a few other small bits of feedback, such as working with my yellow horizontal lines, making them extend and fit to a grid composition, and I was also given the recommendation to remove the Massey University logo, because apparently both of the teachers think it's not a very good logo!! On poster one, I will also look to replace the paintbrush logo with another icon that more or less suits Fine Arts and Design, rather than just Fine Arts, as the teacher quite liked this idea.

I found it helpful that we went around the class and analysing a whole range of posters, as it was a good way of the class sharing their ideas with one another, and also ways to learn from others mistakes and feedback they were given on their work. I find that the class critiques are quite an effective way to develop your work, as you not only learn from your own work, but also from the work of others. We had a whole group discussion on general things that the whole class needs to consider when they develop their posters, which involved things such as clear grid structures, precise colour coding, and the use of hierarchy and typography in an organised manner.

I'll continue to work on and improve my posters over the next week, and aim to get a better grid structure across all three of them. I will also look at brainstorming on a few more icons that I could possibly use, and will also look at various other ways I could plot the data, especially the data on Poster Two and Three, since this is the most recent data I have been working with, and am most unfamiliar with. In class I came up with a few ideas on how to plot these sets of data, so I will give these ideas a go when developing my posters. I will keep my blog updated over the course of the next week with each of my refinements.

First Set of Three Posters

Over the past few days, I have been working on coming up with my first set of all three posters. Poster One, a refined version of my initial concepts, while creating my initial concepts for Poster's Two and Three. I have attached my most recent attempts at the posters to this blog post below:

Some individual critiquing I have for my own posters is that they don't really have a grid structure that stretches across all three posters, each sort of has their own grid. In terms of Poster 3, I didn't spend much time on that, I was just looking at some basic ways of visualizing these newer sets of data. The data on the third poster is more suited to Pie Graphs or the use of icons, rather than Bar Charts, as each of the sets of data has been given in percentages rather than whole numbers. I will take these posters to the critiquie on Tuesday and get some more feedback, and then I can continue to develop each of these posters to a more refined stage. 

Lesson Two - Poster One Critique

Following what I had read in the brief, and hearing about our homework over the last week, I had prepared 4 full scale A2 posters (each printed as 2x A3 sheets) for today's presentation. However, once arriving in class, it seemed that a lot of the class hadn't even looked at mocking up a proper poster digitally, and had more focussed on printing out a few graphs on their own. With this being said, it didn't bother me too much as I had quite a few concepts printed out that I was able to get valuable feedback on. I have included the images, along with annotations, below:

The above poster was my initial design, which was more just looking at getting some graphs on the page and look at creating some sense of hierachy between the text and graphs. I quite like getting an asymmetrical feel within the page, which can't be done to the full extent with only two graphs, so as I create more concepts I will definitely have a minimum of three graphs, that way you can create a more visually effective poster. In terms of the graphs, I would be better off to use the same style of graph to directly compare the School of Design with the School of Art, as it's difficult to tell with a pie chart vs a bar graph.

In the graph above, I added a third graph, and made sure I directly compared the same style of graph for the Art vs Design. I also tried adding a picture frame icon to add a bit of interest, although it didn't turn out quite as effective as I had planned, although still did add some intrigue to the design. With this in mind, I'll definitely continue to experiment with some infographics etc in order to 'spice up' the page, while still keeping it both simple and visually appealing to the audience and viewers.

My third initial idea for the poster layout has been attached above. It is reasonably similar to the second idea, although I removed the picture frame icon, and played around with the gold lines being placed on top of the text to create divisions rather than alongside them. This gives the lines more of a functional purpose as well, rather than being an addition just for aesthetic purposes. I quite like the layout and hierachy I've created within this poster layout, with the three graphs creating more of an asymmetrical feel. After hearing feedback from the teachers, I will look to change the top pie chart graph, as although the teachers thought it looked quite nice, it may be seen as slightly distorting the information (as 2014 might appear to have far more people in comparison to 2010). With the feedback I received, I will be able to continue to make changes and develop my ideas by next week.

My final idea consisted of playing around with some infographics to create a more aesthetically interesting poster. I really like this layout, and I was complimented on the hierachy of the text down the left hand side. One thing I need to consider will be which information I want to stand out, and which I want to be secondary, as at the moment 2014 seems super important due to it's scale in the "School of Art" division. I will look at changing the graphics as well, as the camera hints that the School of Art is all about Photography, while the lower third implies that the School of Design is based on film making, so I need to find graphics which apply to all fields of art and design respectively.

After the feedback in today's class, and also seeing some feedback that a few other students got for their graphs they printed, I have a few more ideas on how to develop and refine this poster. By next week, I am aiming to have a far more refined Poster One, and also a basic Poster Two and Poster Three at the very least. By having all three, even if the second and third are quite basic at this point, it will allow me to negotiate and manage horizontal relationships of grids and compositions across all three posters. I really enjoyed last week, creating the posters and playing around with various graphing tools, and I'. looking forward to having all three posters printed out in full scale A2 for next weeks critique.

Creating Symbols and Data Visualization

Over the past few days, I have been creating a whole bunch of icons and symbols which I would be able to use in my graphs, as a way of presenting and visualizing various forms of data. These can be seen in my physical workbook, which I am using hand in hand with this online blog.

I have also been looking at ways of playing around with the graphs and plotting data, while trying to familiarize myself with the graphing tools made available to us on Adobe Illustrator, which I wasn't too familiar with before hand. However, I have been playing around with it and have come to terms with how to plot all of the data efficiently, and how to edit certain variables on the graphs such as column widths etc.

Over the next couple of days, before class on Tuesday, I will create a couple of posters for Poster One, which will allow me to get an early critique and some valuable feedback. Although it will still only be week two, the earlier I get feedback the better, and I can then use the next week to make a lot of developmental shifts and refinements before the next critique. The earlier I get some concepts printed out in full scale the better, especially since I only have this class once a week, it allows me to make the most of the time I have with both Annette and Belinda.

Introduction to 222.248 Information Design

Today's session consisted of being introduced to the brief, having some small discussions on what we think 'Information Design' is and consists of, and then continued to have some small discussions in groups of 4 in order to try and come up with certain symbols that we could use to represent or visualize data in a simpler form.

To me, the brief seems really interesting, and I feel like this project will be a massive help in the future, learning to use infographics and other useful ways to represent statistics in a more exciting yet simple way. We were shown examples of the projects towards the end of class, and it was good to see the brief in action, which helped us visualize roughly what we are required to do. I'm quite looking forward to the fact that we need to create three posters which are related and have horizontal working relationships between them, which al combine to represent a larger set of data.

We also had a sneak peek at what we will be doing for assessment two, next term, which was a book with is capable of folding out into a large A2 poster, which I can't wait to do, it looks so cool! By next week, I will continue with my research, look at developing symbols, themes, ideas and other ways to visualize sets of data, and create a few conceptual posters to take to class on Tuesday.