Infographic Redesign
Initial Design
My Initial Design
We have learned so much since creating our initial infographic design. Although I initially utilized a template, there were many aspects that I wanted to change because I was not satisfied. Upon going through the templates, I liked how clean they looked, but once I put it together with my information, it looked dull and boring because it was just one color. I decided to pick pink and baby blue colors to alternate throughout the initial design for the fonts and accents and leave the background white.
Ultimately, I was not completely satisfied with it, but I thought that it looked okay. After learning everything that we have and analyzing other images based on this knowledge, I was extremely embarrassed looking back at it. While it detailed most of the information about me, it followed very few of the principles of design that we learned about this semester and the color scheme was just not designed in a way that would draw attention.
Final Design
What I Changed for the Redesign and Why
According to Principles of Design by Joe Moxley, The initial design showed utilization of white space and the alignment helped support the structure of the elements by separating the various sections, however I feel like there is more white space than needed. The proximity of similar items assisted in this separation, as well. The provided information was easy to find, but I feel it lacked in creativity. I felt that my initial design contained quite a few principles that were detailed in the Ten Design Principles and When to Violate Them article by Geoff Hart. It was minimal, thorough, understandable, unobtrusive, honest and useful. Comparing it to this article, I can definitely see where it was lacking in being innovative or esthetically pleasing. To correct this, I added a paintbrush type look to my picture. I am not really good at putting images together and making it look creative, without overdoing it, but I felt that added that small touch added a slight uniqueness to the design, without making it obtrusive. Following what we learned in the Visual Design Basics reading, I felt that this simple technique applied a sense of dominance to the picture and my name next to it. Then, following this same reading, I kept the flow of information in this hierarchical order by maintaining a balance throughout by keeping a long, black section at the top and bottom and separating it into two in the middle. I felt this made the design look much better and assisted in the flow of the viewer’s eye.
I wanted to keep the flow of direction that I wanted the design to provide for the viewer, as compared to the article Visual Design and Usability Yellow Brick Road by Tammy Guy. There was a lack of contrasting elements in the initial design that would assist in maintaining the focus of the viewer. I felt keeping the color scheme simpler by using black and white as the main colors and different accent colors, would assist in this as well. I did not follow the Color Theory for Designers, Part 1: The Meaning of Color because I knew that I would not be satisfied and start adding too many colors.
The week that we read about persuasive cartography definitely offered a new level of insight that I wanted to implement into my redesign. While I know that my artistic qualities are not up to par, or anywhere close to, the great cartographers, such as Arnold Hillen Ziegfeld, James Francis Horrabin or Richard Edes Harrison, I wanted to implement a stronger level of creativity into this new design to make it stand out quite a bit more. While I had some very interesting mentor designs, I could not come up with something as artistic as theirs, so I kept it very simple. I would have loved to do so much to my redesign, but I feel like I am not as creative as I wish I was. Simplicity was something I remembered from Peter Vukovic’s 6 rules for packaging design that will shine on the shelf. Keeping it simple seemed to be my best approach and applying what I have learned to ensure that the small changes I made to the redesign truly made a difference in its appeal.
