Final Posters

Since the final critiques on Tuesday, I have working on making the few small changes to my posters, before going and getting them printed. Today, I headed down to Ink Digital on Marion Street to get each poster professionally printed at full A2 scale, so that they will be ready for Tuesday's class. Below, I have attached JPEGs of my final posters:

Above, is poster one, which I only needed to make a few slight changes to. In this poster (as well as Posters 2 and 3, I made the top horizontal bar graphs the same width as the bar graphs below, in order to keep them consistent. I also changed the title of the bottom section so 'School of Design' was first, and did the same in the key below it. The text inside the donut graphs were made slightly smaller, while the y-axis labels on the bar graph were altered so that they are the same font size as the x-axis labels.

In this poster, there were a few minor changes to make, which didn't take too long at all. I changed the colour of the stripes in the top horizontal bar graphs, so that they are more easily identifiable with their respective sections, and can be differentiated from one another. I also left justified the heading for the larger bar graph to fit in with the left justification of my other headings. In the bottom section, I swapped the order of the small graphs, so that the Design graph was before the Art graph, again to follow with my posters consistency. I also changed the text colour of the donut graph labels to black, rather than having them coloured differently which was creating an unnecessary hierarchy amongst the text.

In the above poster, poster three, I again made a few slight changes. I altered the stripe pattern, making it thinner stripes, so that it still tied in with Poster Two, but it is easy to differentiated between the two of them. Therefore the smaller stripes replaced the larger stripes in every graph. In order to fill in some of the negative space in the middle section, I added in a small map of New Zealand, making sure it still followed the grid system I had been applying all along, and coloured in the Wellington region with the striped pattern to show where the College of Creative Arts campus is in New Zealand.

Overall I am extremely happy with the outcome of my posters, and I feel like they look really clean and crisp, especially once professionally printed out in A2. I will bring these to Tuesday's class, and I am also looking forward to seeing how everyone else's posters turn out, and then looking at what we will be doing next term. I have really enjoyed this paper, as it has been extremely helpful in getting us to practice making things easily communicate certain stats, without over complicating the design. Printing out in full scale on a regular basis has definitely helped with the steady development of my designs, and it's interesting to see just how much my designs have developed from the initial critique to the final critique.

Week 5: Final Class Critique

Today's class was again focused on doing class critiques on everyone's developed posters. In terms of my own design, I am very pleased with how it is developing, and I have been making sure to consistently work on refining it so that it was at a near-finished stage for today's critique, so there are only a small number of minor adjustments needed before printing. It was quite surprising actually to see the number of people who hadn't actually completed all three posters yet, or were yet to place in grid systems or print in A2, considering there is only one week til the final hand-in.

I was very happy with the critique of my poster, there were only a small number of adjustments to make, such as changing the dashes to 'en dashes', changing the colour of certain text/percentages etc, and adding a map of New Zealand or other subtle feature into the negative space on poster 3. Overall the teachers seemed extremely happy with how my posters have been consistently developing and improving each week.

For the last 45 minutes of the class, once most of the critiques were finished, I began working on these changes and got most of them finished. There are only a few small changes to make before I head in to get my posters properly printed for hand-in. Once I make these changes, I will first print out a mock-up A2 version (just 2x A3's each) so that I can make sure everything is perfectly refined before going to get it printed. I will update my blog again once all of the necessary adjustments have been made to my poster.

Poster Developments

Over the past few days, since Tuesday's class critique, I have been working on developing each one of my three posters. A lot of the changes that were suggested at the class critique I have changed, as well as making a few compositional changes to my posters. Along with these changes, I have focused more on getting horizontal relationships between the three posters, while working with an identical grid system on each individual poster. I also began working on some micro details like the tracking of the text, leading, and the individual kerning of certain letter froms. I have attached the three developed posters below:

For the above poster, I made quite a lot of significant changes, which are quite obvious, with the main one being to the overall composition of the page. Instead of opting for one large donut graph and two medium sized bar graphs, I changed the sizing of the graphs and visually interpreted the data slightly different, so that it would create a more appealing, asymmetrical layout. The layout of this poster has a whole lot of horizontal relationships with the other two posters as well. 

The main changes I have made to poster two, involve switching the placement of the donut and bar graph, as well as playing around with the scale of the graphs, in order to more effectively utilize the negative space. Instead of using a green colour in the top horizontal bar graphs, I have opted for a striped pattern, which makes it easier to realise that it is representing a combination of School of Art and the School of Design.

Poster three has a similar appearance in terms of layout, although I played around with the scale of the main donut graph, as well as adding in a horizontal bar chart at the top of the poster to create more distinctive relationships with the other two partnering posters. Again, I have traded the green colour for the striped pattern, which helps tie together the School of Art and the School of Design and visually represent the College of Creative Arts.

Overall, there have been quite a lot of significant adjustments following Tuesday's class critique, and I have been working steadily to continue refining each macro and micro aspect of the poster set. Later tonight, I am going to print each poster out at A2 size, so that I can see how they will look in full scale, and this will make it easier to see what needs changing, as it looks a lot different blown up to full scale in comparison to on a laptop screen. Overall I'm really happy with how these posters are developing, and I feel that I am making steady progress towards a quality final outcome. I'll continue to update my blog with further developments and critiques.

Week 4 Critique

In today's class, we were required to pin up our set of three posters at A2 size (each poster two A3's stuck together) in order to get another critique on our developmental shifts from last week. Personally, I think my posters have come a long way since last week, as I have begun focusing on colour coding, using grid systems, and playing around with hierarchies. However, there are still lots of changes to be made. I have attached the three posters below, followed by some annotations (more in-depth annotations and critiques have been drawn onto the print-outs inside of my physical workbook):

Following the critique from peers, I had extra time to speak with just the teachers about my posters, and get down to all of the finest of details on which to improve and develop. Some of the major changes were based around utilising negative space, and decreasing the scale of some of my graphs and text, as they all turned out quite large. It's crazy how much different all of the spaces look once printed at A2 compared to being on the screen. Small changes like removing the slight gradient in the donut graphs are needed, as it slightly distorts the information, and they're not actually necessary. On poster three, I'm going to play around with changing the greenish tints to grey tints (except for the bold creative arts green), to really make that pop. One of the suggestions from Belinda was to try out a gradient from yellow to blue (as used on poster 2) in place of the bright green on poster 3, as this might be easier for the viewers to realise that it's symbolising a combination of the two. There is still some annotations missing out, such as the titles of the donut graphs which I need to put in, and other minor adjustments like that. On top of this, I'm going to look at changing the scale of a lot of the content, and once it has been scaled down I will reposition it to make sure it still follows my intended grid system. I am going to look at creating visual hierarchies between the headings and subheadings, rather than all being the same size font. I will also continue to work on developing horizontal relationships across the posters. More annotations have been included in my physical workbook.

Overall, the feedback from Annette and Belinda was extremely helpful, and having the one on one time to discuss each poster in depth and possible changes to improve the design was very important, and I feel like this is going to help me improve the posters greatly, and also clarified exactly what they are looking for in a poster, all of the macro and micro aspects. After spending an hour or two going around and listening to Annette and Belinda critique each set of posters, I drew a whole lot of valuable information to use over the course of this paper, as hearing feedback to others work and answers to their questions helped clarify anything I may have not been completely sure of, or hearing the feedback for ideas that I may have been considering trying. The final hour was spent making adjustments and refinements to our posters, based on the prior critiques. By next week, we have been asked to have these posters even more refined, considering it will be the final lesson before hand-in in Week 6. I'm feeling quite happy with the progress of my posters so far, as they have come along way even in the last week, and I am confident that they'll only continue to improve a great deal over the next two weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing how these turn out, and will continue to update my blog as these ideas are developed. I am hoping to get them to a stage, by next week, where I feel there will mainly only be micro/minor changes and adjustments to make, rather than needing to change compositions, hierarchies and all of those larger macro aspects of the information design posters.

Working With Grids: Development

Over the past few days I have been working on developing my set of three posters, in order to refine them for Tuesday's next critique. I have taken the feedback on board, as well as my own self-critiques, and have been working on improving each poster. Last week at the critique I presented three posters, although they lacked effective and consistent grid systems.

However, I applied grids to each of my posters, and have been using these to create more dynamic, visually appealing information design posters. I have been basing each composition off of a 5 column grid. I have also been playing around with colour coding across the three posters, and trying to get some balance with the colours, while making sure they're still recognisable and not confused with other similar tints/shades in other graphs. I have attached some snips below:

Above, are some screenshots showing the grid structure I have used. I used 5 columns, and then have used a lot of smaller horizontal sections, which will allow me to create some horizontal relationships across the posters. I will continue to refine each of these posters and then will present them during Tuesday's critique. On Tuesday, I will upload JPEGs of each poster onto my blog. They can also be seen printed out in my physical workbook.