Planning My Infographic
Infographics and information design in general is a completely new topic to me and is something I have never really considered when it comes to design as I’ve been heavily focused on more generic forms of graphic design like poster design and UI/UX design, as this is completely new to me I really need to look into how some of these infographics are create in order to visualise data and information successfully.
As I have never created an infographic before I wanted to revisit some of the content we had covered in our previous lectures, to give me a good insight into what I need to do to create a successful infographic I took another look at the step-by-step guide that was featured in our Week 08 lecture. I have included these steps below for easy reference throughout this project:
- Process The Data
- Check Your Sources
- Create A Wireframe
- Have A Story
- Set The Tone
- Consider Your Type
- Control Colour
- Utilise White Space
- Take A Break
- Proof Read, Proof Read & Proof Read Again
- Test Along The Way
- Make Revisions
Before I start to plan and design my infographic I took another look at the design brief for this project to ensure that I know what direction I need to take my design and what my infographic should be based on. We were given some possible topics that we could cover for this project to give us an idea on what we should be creating, personally I would be interested in basing my project around disease and illness as I think this would give me a wide range of content to include in my infographic.
I have included some of the possible approaches we could cover for our infographic design below.
- Births and deaths in world – past and/or present
- Population figures specific to country
- Population in the last 50, 100 years (future?)
- By religion
- By environment
- Climate change
- Disease / Illness
Choosing A Topic
We were given a few ideas for potential topics that we could cover for our infographic project, as this project is heavily researched based I want to choose a topic that interests me in addition to having accessible data and statistics about the topic. As I mentioned before I was swaying more towards disease and illness I wanted to consider some ideas that I could base my infographic on, this could be on a range of topics like flu’s, health conditions and mental health either globally or in a single country. Below are few ideas that I would be interested in covering for my infographic project either due to sharing experiences with a certain topic or in being an interesting topic to research:
- COVID Pandemic
- Spanish Flu
- Bird Flu
- The Black Plague
- Eating Disorders
- Mental Health & Depression
I was really interested in the mental health topic for this project but I felt like this topic would be a little triggering for me due to battling with mental health issues and depression in the past, I think conducting heavy research into this topic will really bring to light on how many people suffer the same daily battles and I don’t think this is something I would like to create. This is similar to eating disorders except I think this topic would be extremely hard to gather research and data due to it being such a sensitive and extremely private subject that people would prefer to keep to themselves.
After further consideration in decided to go with the COVID-19 pandemic as I feel like there is a huge amount of data and information available around this topic which would make it a lot easier for me to conduct my research and gather information, this topic is also extremely recent and had a huge impact globally which will give me more directions in which I can take my design, this could be in terms of how many people have been vaccinated, the death count from the virus, who is more vulnerable to the virus and how long each country spent in lockdown in addition to a handful of other subject areas within the pandemic. This topic is also extremely conspiracy theory heavily which is something I may try to include throughout the project as I am very open-minded when it comes to some of these wild theories and ideas, I will have to ensure I fact check these to ensure the information is correct but this could help set the tone of my infographic by having it informative but also witty and humorous as the same time.
Creating A Story
My infographic should have some form of storyline the viewer can follow in order to digest the information and data being displayed, as I was going to choose the COVID-19 pandemic for my infographic project I wanted to come up with some ideas that I could use for my storyline. This could be on a range of things like how long the virus takes to infect the body and what sort of symptom you can expect in a certain time period, how long each country was in a nationwide lockdown for or what sort of global impact was caused from the virus.
After considering what sort of storyline I want my infographic design to have I ultimately wanted it to be informative and bring awareness to the public about the subject, as I want this as my main focus I want to include a wide range of data and information to bring awareness. As this doesn’t exactly have a story behind it I wanted to consider how I could base a story around the COVID-19 pandemic as a whole and the overall timeline of the global pandemic, as an additional story line within the design I want to create an infographic that explains how the body if infected by the virus and what your should expect on a certain timeframe in terms of symptoms.
Decide How To Visualise Data
After getting the basic foundations for my infographic in place I wanted to consider what types of infographics I could use in order to display the data and information I collect around the COVID-19 pandemic. As the topic is a global pandemic with an affect on almost every country around the world I want to include some form of map illustration to allow me to present data in a creative way, I also want to include some information about how the virus affects the human body so I want to use some form of body illustration where I can illustrate how the virus works over a certain time period. As there will be a lot of stats and figures for the subject area I have chosen I will mostly like be using a lot of diagrammatic methods of displaying data like charts and graphics in addition to displaying a lot of my information through typography.