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Series Zines: Boston Climate Change & Correlations Process Book
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Research / Data
At the beginning of this project, we were directed to start finding data on the NOAA database (which is predominantly climate and weather related data. In the beginning, I was really interested in data driven to my home-state, Massachusetts; MA has really interesting weather patterns, most residents can relate with me in saying the New England weather experience is truly one of a kind. I very quickly found that I needed to get data from one consistent point rather than across the state as western MA is drastically different from coastal regions. I wanted to play on my experiences as a child as playing outside in shorts and a teeshirt in January and wearing a winter jacket well into May. My data was derived (especially in the beginning) of annual averages and hourly averages - I decidedly moved to annuals later on.
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Story
I was inspired by my own experiences as a Bostonian and decided to dig into the history behind it and see if science upheld what history and current politics were telling us What I found was striking. Weather was not only becoming warmer - it was clearly showing it was less stable and that our extremes were more harsh and catastrophic. When I dug into my experience in environmental history (not gonna brag, but I got a 4 on the AP Environmental Science exam haha) I remembered the causes of climate change and I wanted to look into America’s CO2 emissions. CO2 and climate change became a whole different story in looking into our ecological footprint. I ended up separating this in my “series” but in the findings - my research created a whole new part of my story.
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Sketches and Tableau
When I began sketching I was really interested in a story based on time. I knew my research lead me to separating my pieces into stories so rather than having 1 or 2 really large graphs, I made plans to make several smaller graphs to support my story. I really tried to push some area graphs but found it wasn’t reading the way i was telling. I decided to move a lot more towards scatter plots and line graphs. They told the story of time and the changes that were taking place. I also decided at this point I wanted to do zines - inspired by PROPS zines, I knew that zines could be a different form to present to my main audience aim which is millennials.
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Zines Component
Noreasters
Bli zza rd s
And Hurricanes
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Tracking climate in Boston from the 1890s to the present Growing up in the Greater Boston Area, I’ve always be cognizant of the rapidly changing climate; within one week, you can be in a blizzard, be wearing shorts, and be at risk of flooding your basement (again!). Boston is located in a curious spot. Being a coastal city, Boston is often at risk of unpredictable weather. Many Boston natives can comment on the the major storms that have hit the region: nor'easters, blizzards, and hurricanes/tropical storms. With a temperature range upwards of 91 degrees, New Englanders are ready for anything when it comes to weather. But this begs the question, is it solely based on location, or does this extreme weather and climate correlate with the impact of industrialization and greenhouse gases?
My first drafts of zines had a wide variety of issues, the first being the designs were far too drastic and didn’t emphasize enough on the story of my research. They had misleading titles and the images didn’t relate to the extreme weather patterns I was following. What was sufficient at this level was I had good data - I just needed to figure out how to harness in a way that was effective and as powerful as the data itself.
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A home for all four seasons Slowly my zine began to take more shape in it’s aesthetic and visual voice. It was edgy with an informational voice and the typography was beginning to become more refined and narrow.
and then some
Additionally my images began to speak to the voice of the zines and they were progressively becoming what I aimed for them to be: staying to the spirit of a zine, but informational and visually appealing. At this stage I was tweaking the images, scale and what kinds of graphs and at what scale i was using my graphs.
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Boston is often at risk of unpredictable weather Growing up in the Greater Boston Area, I’ve always be cognizant of the rapidly changing climate; within one week, you can be in a blizzard, be wearing shorts, and be at risk of flooding your basement (again!).
New Englanders are ready for anything when it comes to weather. Extreme Tempuratures
100 80 60 40 20
Extreme minimum temperature
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0
-10
-20 1906
1926
1946 Year
1966
1986
2006
Boston is located in a curious spot. Being a coastal city, Boston is often at risk of unpredictable weather. Many Boston natives can comment on the the major storms that have hit the region: nor'easters, blizzards, and hurricanes/tropical storms. With a temperature range upwards of 91 degrees, New Englanders are ready for anything when it comes to weather. But this begs the question, is it solely based on location, or does this extreme weather and climate correlate with the impact of industrialization and greenhouse gases?
does this extreme weather and climate correlate with the impact of industrialization and greenhouse gases?
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My final designs were cohesive with integrated logo and information on the front with the title and title images and the backside provided the story (read in a series) with informational graphs and diagrams. The colors were used to emphasize the urgency and extremeness that is behind the subject matter. Images are set to bit-tones to ease printing and images are pulled in to prevent bleeds to lower the print costs as a zine would.
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Interface Component
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For the interface portion of the project I wanted to build a website that the information provided in the zines could exist online while also providing more information like videos or podcasts, etc. I became really inspired by the PBS Newshour website by Upstatement and began looking at more news websites like VICE and Broadly on how different generations approach news, information and articles in general. I also was inspired by the interactive infographics being used by the Washington Post and wanted to integrate that kind of experience into my interface. My wireframes really emphasized on the experience of hover points and “extra” information. The print experience is more in the handling of the zine itself while the interface features this surprise and aha moment while maintaining it’s educational perspective
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Given my limited experience with designing motion graphics and the new software available, I wanted to expand my knowledge of software and decided to work in the beta invision studio. This provided me the opportunity to work on the wireframes and the animations in the same environment without syncing and moving from software to software. I was even able to test my prototype in invision studio as well! While I did encounter some glitchiness, I was able to really achieve what I aimed to do and integrate some animation to make the website more bouncy and exciting.
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Given the short period for designing the interface, I wanted to make it clean and precise and provide a good canvas to grow upon. The article is broken up and the type was fixed (type on images on the computer was hard to read). The most important part of this stage was learning how to really take advantage of my animations and fix the glitches being caused by renaming objects.