I realize my secondary information on my poster could be treated a bit better. As some of my classmates pointed out in critique, I could separate the lines of information so that some of it would align with the next little block of white in the middle of the page. Grounding my secondary text would fix the whole “floaty” feeling it has. It’s just kinda hovering there. It needs to be tied to something.

A designer’s work is never done!

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I’ve changed my electric chartreuse to a darker, gold color. It definitely helps with legibility and gives the whole system a more mature feel.

My processor infograph needed some more space, so I made it twice as wide. This allowed me to give my “processors” some breathing room.

One of my timelines was just begging to be vertical, so I changed it around to give the text some more room. The information all fits in there a lot nicer now, especially since I’m using a consistent width for my blocks of text.

My first round of posters aren’t much to look at, because I was still figuring some things out (like what size my infographs should be). Now that I’ve got a better grasp on what needs to be done, I’m sure next time will be a lot better.

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Here is the previous round of infograph(ic)s I did. I fixed a lot of issues since I did these guys.

Here are my newest ones. I decided to stop using black and that weird green color, and just keep it to the original blue and yellowish. I think I’m using my colors a lot better now. Although I could darken my yellow a bit. It ends up printing really light.

Some people had difficulty linking processor power to the scale of my icons (they thought that maybe the size of the icons were the size of the processors themselves, which is not the case), so I ended up using repetition instead of scale to illustrate the difference in power. It comes across much easier now. More icons = more power. No one’s confused anymore.

My use of lines to link information to image reflect the way circuits look in a circuit board. They also easily direct the viewer’s eye along a path through groups of information.

The timelines look a lot cleaner now. I still need to make some changes, but they’re well on their way to being awesome.

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This round of posters isn’t the greatest, but it comes with a surprise!

Postcards

So, the surprise is that the above postcard will end up being my poster! Flip it around 90 degrees, and there it is!

See? It’s better than my other posters. Nice!

I obviously need to make a few tweaks here & there… (The title of the show is upside-down! …in addition to a few other things…) But I’m sure it will end up pretty great. I’m excited about it! Yay!

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Last time, I had some trouble with holding onto my concept. This time, I brought it back!

The two vector posters come back to my concept because they allude to Strausfeld’s love of simplicity. Her name on the left one acts as a backbone to the building, which speaks to her structured way of designing.

The left one is my favorite. I’m moving forward with that one, but integrating some aspects of the one on the right, like the placement of the building in the frame.

The one above is an attempt at an infographic kind of idea. While it’s not the most successful of these posters, I do like the introduction of the red type (using the brick color from the vectors). That will probably carry over to my next round of posters.

These all come back to the idea of simplicity and recognizable/identifiable shapes. Strausfeld is great at keeping things simple and accessible, so I tried to work with that in mind. I like the idea that the text can become an extension of the building, activating the space around it and integrating the type and image to create the illusion of one form (or at least multiple unified forms).

Admittedly, I am a bit bummed that I don’t get to use my more iconic view of Vanderslice. I really like that photo. Maybe it’ll be useful in another project. Oh well.

Sidenote: I love how my work has progressed throughout this project so far. Looking at my first poster ideas, I definitely see how there was potential for improvement. I’m very happy to see that I’m starting to utilize that potential and improve upon my work. Yay, growth!

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Finally putting information with my pictograms.

I had a pretty good idea of what my pictograms could represent, so I didn’t have too much trouble putting them into context with the information/data that I have.

This is the framework I’ve got so far for my infographics. Ta-da!

Issues: Smaller CPUs are too dang tiny. So I’m either going to do a call-out, zoom-in type of thing that makes them easier to see, or I’ll simplify my icons even more (only at the smaller sizes) so they’re easier to read when they’re super-small.

The timeline’s dates should be spaced out in proportion to the timespan that they represent. For example, all the 1980s dates will be closer to each other than to 1965. Also, I’ll be using the timeline’s “spine” differently, whether that be a solid line or something else. I’ll play around with it and see what works the best.

My Venn diagram needs the labeling outside of the circles. And a suggestion from my critique partner was to use the shapes in the icons themselves as the frame for the diagram. Ooh! Fancy!

The ethernet idea is solid, but the information is so low-contrast in comparison with the white background… I need to make it darker. And the ethernet plug should be smaller. As close to actual size as possible. Boo-yah! And same thing with spacing out the dates according to relation to each other in time. Gonna fix that too.

Soldering iron cords should grow longer (instead of whole icon growing larger) to reflect the number of members in each online community. Shorter cord = fewer members. Yep. Simple as that.

Hard drive pie chart has some problems. First of all, my data is referring to the overall usage share among average people. It should reference the l33t crowd specifically, which would have a much higher number of Linux users (and make for a nicer-looking graph!). So, the first thing would be to find a good statistic for hacker/modder operating systems. Yeah, Windows will still prevail (as lots of hacker-types are also PC gamers), but I want the information to be more relevant to my specific culture. (Hackers love their Linux, don’tcha know?)

As for the color in the pie chart, that will definitely change. This rough “skeleton” of visual data is admittedly sloppy. I didn’t have time to cut out each little piece of negative space, so I just set the blending mode to “overlay” or something similar, and that changed the color from what I had in mind. It will be fixed soon. Although, the overall color (especially the green) will change a bit, anyway. So none of this is set in stone at the moment.

Next step is to pick the ones that work well at communicating, and explore those options like crazy.

Wish me luck!

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I’m thinking about getting rid of the sky (making the background white, perhaps?) to emphasize the shape of the building, and to give me more options for placement (as I wouldn’t have a squared-off sky to worry about). I’ll probably try that next time around.

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Top 5 typography compositions: Now with axis lines!

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From rough scratchy charcoal sketch to sharpie iterations to refined color vector:

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