ORGANISATION, CATERGORIZATION & REPRESENTATION I Found that David McCandless’ work helped me find an interesting direction to go in, when it came to designing my Info Graphics. His use of colour stood out for me along with his imagery. I wanted to steer clear of the standard, dull and boring graphs and charts and try to create something that represents what data I am looking into. It makes it more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. His “Left Wing & Right Wing” Graphics inspired me to create a simple yet close replication of an iPod, as McCandless has done with buildings, people etc. As you can see with my sketches I started off with doodling out general graphs and charts, but realised they weren’t that interesting. So from looking at McCandless’ work and my continuous doodling of ideas I manage to come up with concepts that I enjoyed. From visiting the Pitt Rivers Museum I realised the various ways you can organise and catergorize your objects. And inspired other ways I got group different objects. Had this been something I saw prior to already deciding upon my data I may have found different information to display.
Playing around with ideas for presenting the data. Starting off with general graphs and charts and then moving on to a more graphic approach with using imagery relating to the data I have. Having the theme around iPods was my favourite idea, so I just kept drawing them until I found the best outcomes. I quite liked the sketch where the data was shown in the screen of the iPod, as if you were scrolling through your iPod just looking at data.
The mapping idea stuck for quite a bit, I couldn’t shake it from my head. The first was intended to be more of a tree, but I found that it got a bit to cluttered with the artist names and song titles. I tried making space by inverting the shape of the tree. But it ended up looking too much like a timeline for my liking. The next one is a more based around the branches with the headphones lining up much better in my eyes. It just needed to look less box like.
I used Illustrator to create my two Info Graphics and although it took quite a while to finish, I really enjoyed the process, as I am quite used to working with Illustrator. It was fairly straight forward in trying to create the style of design I was aiming for, simple yet being able to display numerous data.
These had a more tree like feel to them and to me it started looking like it could be a poster for a gig and less like a schematic or diagram, which I quite liked. I started on the headphones and how I would show the text for the artists, song titles and plays. This is where I wanted to bring in colour to show which song belonged in which genre. Originally set on the idea to have a circle behind the text, I had the idea of having the number of plays behind the text in the colour of genre. Unfortunately when it came to creating this on Illustrator it made the text hard to see, so I decided to keep the number of plays in the colour of the genre, but just make them smaller and sit them under the artist and song title.
TOP 25 MOST PLAYED SONGS ON MY iPOD
GENRES
JURASSIC 5 WORK IT OUT
MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA PALE BLACK EYE
38
TEGAN & SARA
REBEL
31
38
THE NAKED AND FAMOUS
33
ARCTIC MONKEYS BRICK BY BRICK
30
ALLIGATOR
30 PERTH
28
PHOENIX
LONG DISTANCE CALL
28
TOO YOUNG
26
CONCRETE SCHOOLYARD
31
TEGAN & SARA NINETEEN
31
LOWER THAN ATLANTIS
30
LOWER THAN ATLANTIS
29
DEADLIEST CATCH
TEGAN & SARA
27
THE CON
26
DANANANANAYKROYD
25
L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N
25
ALT. ROCK INDIE ROCK BRITPOP POWER POP FOLK ROCK HIP HOP INDIE
IN MY HEAD
29
28
28
TEGAN & SARA
QUEENS OF THE STONEAGE
WALKING WITH A GHOST
BON IVER
THINK AND FEEL
NOAH & THE WHALE
JURASSIC 5
VIVA BROTHER DAVID
PHOENIX
36
TOWERS
(MOTOR)WAY OF LIFE
TEGAN & SARA
BON IVER
BON IVER
BURN YOUR LIFE DOWN
YOUNG BLOOD
TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS
43
HOLOCENE
THE EAGLES
27
TAKE IT EASY
BON IVER
MINNESOTA, WI
25
DANGER MOUSE & DANIELE LUPPI PROBLEM
25
ALTERNATIVE ROCK POP HIP HOP INDIE ELECTRIC ACOUSTIC/FOLK METAL R’N’B/SOUL OTHER PUNK UNKNOWN REGGAE/SKA BLUES
3397 2127 572 348 304 236 214 188 177 127 103 88 75 73
POP PUNK SOUNDTRACK JAZZ CHRISTMAS DANCE/DRUM & BASS WORLD INSTRUMENTAL BRITPOP CLASSIC ROCK COUNTRY
54 53 52 49 34 33 22 18 13 11