Petersen-Infographic



The final product of this unit was an infographic containing the information that was given about a certain aspect of Pewaukee High School. The topic I chose was the PHS Literacy Center. There was tons of information to read through about the program this year, what teachers are doing in their classrooms that differs from the past, and what might be done in the future. I summarized that information into a sketchbook so I knew what to do when the time came to make my own infographic about it. I chose a general design and layout for my infographic, decided on a size for the “paper,” and started the infographic.

A color scheme was fairly easy to choose once I decided I didn’t want to format the infographic as a different shape than just rectangular. I wanted to keep it simple, informative, and aesthetically pleasing to the eye: like most infographics are supposed to be. I used a light background so that any text or images don’t blend in or get lost in the colors. I even added a dark purple border to the page for a sense of unity; it wasn’t black, but there was a border there that helped. I ended up using more text than I had originally planned, but I found it hard to incorporate images into every piece of information I found. The colors are brighter and more bold rather than faded; this brings out the images but they don’t get lost in the text. Black text was the easiest option in this case because of my bright background. I used a colorful pie chart for one section of my infographic; I find them to be quite helpful in imagining certain situations that might be described by the infographic. I also added some text to each section so that the viewer would know what I was talking about without having to decipher random images spread across the infographic. Each ‘section’ was divided up: the eye follows exactly where the infographic is leading down. There’s also the factor that there’s always somewhere for the eye to look: it’s not too busy to make things confusing but there aren’t any large blank spaces. I drew my own images for the books, which relate to literacy, and the trees and flowers. The “Greenhouse” is the term that is used for the literacy center because it’s “growing readers,” therefore I wanted to include some sort of plants or nature into the bottom portion of the infographic, which I didn’t have much trouble drawing. The check mark was made out of large lines, as were the people. I had to find some images such as the turnitin.com logo from the internet because I obviously can’t recreate the exact logo, but I wanted to use it for the image part of the infographic.

I made the numbers big and differently colored on the right side of my infographic so that people can understand that those numbers are important to the message that is being conveyed. Even though I think I did well getting the information I needed onto this infographic, there is definitely room for improvement, such as maybe making the spacing of larger elements more even so that it’s more of an infographic than one big poster. I also could lessen the amount of text, or at least change up the font sizing so everything isn’t the same all the way through. There could also be more color and matching colors in some items such as the images I drew to create more unity.

Throughout this semester, I obviously learned many things. I had never taken any class such as this before, so it was a journey that lead me to find out what I like and what I don’t like. With every piece I created these past few terms, I have been able to produce good work and also pick out things that I could improve on: that’s what makes a good artist. I would say that the most helpful thing I have learned in this class is that one needs to be flexible to adjustments. Even though a graphic designer has freedom to create whatever he or she wants, there are also guidelines to how far one can go. For instance, during the corporate identity project, I did a logo for the Crayola company. This also included a business letterhead, business envelope, business cards, and a product of theirs. Even though I thought that my work looked fine, some of the things I did ended up being too busy and didn’t work at all with what the company is about. Redesigning is one thing, but taking it too far could be the result of forgetting the reason you’re doing the project in the first place.

At the beginning of the semester, my work was based on whatever came out of my mind. The shape project was the main example of this because I thought that arranging various shades of pink triangles could become a rose. However, throughout the semester, as we focused our work on things related to what clients might ask for, my work became more formal and centered around the “client’s” needs. The guidelines and expectations are completely different from a regular art class versus a graphic design class where there are set rules with flexibility. There is always room for creativity, but one must be considerate of the client’s needs, which is what happened to my work throughout each unit. Overall, I truly believe I did well on my projects, but there’s always room for improvements, as I learned by completing each project.

WIKI RESEARCH ABOUT INFOGRAPHICS: here

