Today we had a great lecture on Information design, we were taught about the history of Information design and the ket things we need to consider when designing. Information design is the skill and practice of preparing information so people can use it with an efficiency and effectiveness. One of the first uses was in London Graphic Design Consultancy Pentagram and then it was used within the industry since then. However, it was used before Pentagram one of the example is London Underground Map in 1931 by Harry Beck. The iconic design is gives us a clear information design on how to use the tube in London. The aims of Information design is to have clarity, understanding and effectiveness. The final deliverable should provide the greatest possible degree of understand. It was must be open to any and every discipline of field of throughout.
Information design must also encourage and participate in research that it creates our understanding of information and the effect that it has on the audience.
Infographics– Infographics guides the audience to the conclusions with the information it gives to the audience.
Data Visualisation – Data visualisation allows the audience to draw their own conclusion.
Infographics– The visual representation of facts, numbers and events that reflect patterns and align to a story. It is best for letting a premeditated story and offer a subjectivity. It is also great got guiding the audience to a conclusion and point out a relationship. It is also created manually by one set a data.
Data Visualisation – A visual representation of data abstracted into a schematic form so that the audience can more easily process the information and get a clear idea about the data at glance. It is best for allowing the audience make their won conclusion about the information. It’s also for some people more interesting to look at as they are using imagery symbols to create the information. Visuals are really important as it should represent the fact or the data.
I think the lecture allowed me to understand the importance of information and how you visualise is also very important. Especially in example David gave us in the lecture about voting ballots, because the design of the papers was very poorly people were voting for the wrong person. This changed the result of the voting which can have very serious implications and also shows how important the design systems for users.
The next step is to create a infographics myself for the 6 frame workshop using the Family Fun brief. The first step I will be doing it analysing the brief, highlighting areas which the brief is answering the questions on purpose. Once I have the facts I will be designing it into a infographics.
Analysing the brief
As my job in the team was to focus on Purpose frame I went through the brief to look for the answers. I created a key which I highlighted parts of the brief I thought that was answering the key questions. The brief was full of information that will be useful to us to understand what are we trying to communicate and who are we doing it for. I think through out the brief it is very useful to understand the how much less people living in poor areas so less exercise, there are some shocking facts such as majority of the adults who do lowest activity levels are living in poverty. Some households have as little as £2.55 to spend on recreational activities. Only 15% of population in Cardiff meet all four healthy behaviours. Those figures are really low and especially for people living in poverty which don’t have extra money to spend on gym memberships or other activities are doing less activity. I think understanding the information is very important to connect to the brief and understanding the reason for this campaign. As if you connect, you will be able to answer the brief and create outcomes which will fit and be useful to the people. The second question I highlighted was why do we need this information.
In the brief, it tells us clearly that there are few reasons why some people can’t exercise as much as other people in society. The reasons could be the very obvious lack of income but also maybe social isolation, maybe they don’t feel comfortable to exercise at a gym or lack confidence. In addition, mental health is also a key factor when it comes to doing things and being productive can also be very challenging. In the brief, it says physically active parents have physically active children. I believe this is very true, the main focus of the brief should be focusing on parents to try and encourage them to do some exercise which then they will bring their kids along and do these activities with them. The other question was what information do people need?. I answered this question as what information do we need as a designer reading the brief. I believe one of the way the brief lacks the perspective of people they are targeting at. We don’t have information from people living in poverty or people who do less exercise what kind of things they would want to do or what do they think would help their community. There are a lot of information about them but it was very vague and kind of only focuses on lack of income. We also don’t have much personal information of people we are targeting.
Infographic
To create the infographic I wanted to keep it simple and easy to understand. I used a heart warming colour scheme to keep it light and bright. I didn’t want to have so much information on the page as it would be very crowded. The brief was full of information regarding many key things however I didn’t want to add everything on it to so in some designs too much information is just confusing. I think I found it hard to visualise the diagram including the general health behaviors in the brief. As it is very early in the brief I believe this is an area I should research more and develop my skills. I still gave it a go and tried to design something which people can understand easily. As I was struggling I used typography to create hierarchy and statistics to the eye catchy. I used three questions in the frame and used key information as possible. As some information is repeated few times. I think this workshop helped me more than I thought as to understand the brief anf why they are doing this campaign.
The feedback
Today we had to go into the studio to present our work. We realised we were all suppose to do 6 frames each but we all focused on one frame.However, David was happy with our outcomes and it was all positive feedback. He also gave me few ideas on things we should consider when answering this brief. He suggested we should also consider social and political side of these issues as well and have a language which doesn’t blame these individuals but encourage and motivate. The language should be friendly and welcoming. David suggested we should look more at community in the brief and research agencies which work on social issues in society such as Think Public in London. Participatory campaigns are also something he said we should research on which will give us ideas for the next stage in the project.
Busra Yildiz 