What's in a week? Part two: critique

DID THE THING. In class we had a rather different version of critique than normal. Instead of having the entire class critique everyones project, we split off into groups of three (ok there was one group of four, but that's not important). My group included Mandie and Toonky. (psst, if you click their names, you'll end up on their blogs…) 

And so we set up a thingy that looked like this:

(++)

(+)

(o)

( - )

(- -)

The ++ being what we thought was the best thing going on in the project. O was our overall opinion on it. And -- was what needed the most improvement.

This is what mine ended up!

(++)    Organization of it was easy to follow

(+)      It was personal

(o)      Overall they seemed to like it, said it was "really nice" and colorful

( - )     The words need work. Suggestion of using hierarchy? Maybe stacking them

(- -)     Words need to be bigger

What's in a week? Part One:

So! Our version one's of our current project, the info graphic, was due today in class. So, here I am with my info graph, in class! Our project was to make an info graph on how we spend our time in an average week. To start out we logged in time on excel in thirty minute segments. Whatever activity we were doing in that time we put down. Since some events were not set in stone for each week, I generalized different activities as one big one. For example in mine: sleep / other/ teenage miscreant deeds is one whole section. For the visual part of it, I decided to use pages in a book to represent my time after I realized that I spend so much time reading.

I now present part one!

P.S. have another

There's this super cool info graph of the Periodic Table of Artists I found. I love it, although one small problem I found: Van Gogh should definitely have been under miserable white men. No question.

Helvetica: A film

In preparation for working with type, we're watching Helvetica in class. These are the notes taken (I feel it only acceptable to from here on switch to Helvetica):

Fun Facts:

- First known use in early Mesopotamian civilization before 3,000 B.C.

-The terms "uppercase" and "lowercase" originated when people set print by hand. The lowercase letters were stored in the bottom, or lower case, and the uppercase letters were store right above, in the uppercase. 

Give words a certain coloring

"Graphic design is the communication network in which the way the world reaches us"
Artists have a visual disease, it's what fuels us.

Type isn't black, it's white, it's the spaces between.

We believe there are not that many good type faces.

When helvetica came about we were ready for it
1950's
 In post war period there was a feeling of idealism. The design is part of that need to rebuild and reconstruct. Sense of social responsibility. Early experiments of type.
Swiss designers really drive it along. Helvetica emerged in 1957, from a need for rational type faces that could be used for anything and could be presented in a legible way.

"Creating order is typography"
Helvetica was a real step for 19th century typeface. It got rid of the manual details in it, and it made it more neutral. There should be no meaning in itself, only in the words themselves.

Serifs on the bottoms of letters, the little feet

Swiss paid more attention to the background so that the spaces between really hold the letters. 

About the font itself:

- developed for the Haas Type Foundry by Max Miedinger and Edüard Hoffmann in 1957

- they wanted an updated sans-serif

- helvetica was originally named Neue Haas Grotesk

- Later changed to Helvetia, which is the Latin name for Switzerland, by German companies Stempel and Linotype

Helvetica was overused so much
Just because something is legible doesn't mean it communicates

Hella cool info graphics

So obviously you can see by my last post (and the title of this post) that we're doing INFO GRAPHICS(!) now, and as I was perusing the internet I stumbled across some 3D sculptural info graphs! As a sculpture major, I though these were pretty cool. I can dig these. I'd like to make a 3D info graph for mine, but alas, this is a class called "digital" foundations.
They frown upon not using computers in this class.

Here's the graphs by the way:

(psst...here's a link to where I found these…)

Infograaaaaphs

So. Info graphs. Pretty cool huh. Info graphs. INfo graphs. Innnnfograph. Infographinfographinfograph. info GRAPH. INFO graph. Info graph.

OK. Infographs are basically graphs that have been turned into images that represent information. These can be obvious or kinda vague. A vendiagram, for example, is an info graph. Pie charts, theres another. Or it could be something completely different, for example, this giant arrow:

See, giant arrow. Now this info graph gives us information about space and out atmospheres surrounding earth. I'm a fan of this one, primarily because there's a really big arrow. But also the varying shades of blue and the way that they used different textures to relate back to the information they're trying to convey. Pretty cool. 

Here's another one for you! As a whole, I rather like this one. It's got nice structure, it's easily readable, and it's a topic I can relate to. And it conveys info through little images, I like that. Well done.

 Here's an example on how info graphs can look like anything! In this case, our graph is a cup of coffee showing how however many shots of espresso can affect you. I like this one because there's not any black bold lines separating the different sections, they all just sit nicely side by side. Or rather, one atop the other. Now, I'd probably like this one a little more if I actually liked coffee. But that's just too bad.

Some info graphs, such as this one, utilize the cunning placement of arrows to get their point across. I'm a fan of these ones, they remind me of a maze. You've got to dedicate some time to getting from the graphics to the info. Labor, for reward. 

This is the last one I'll show you guys, and as the last one, I figured hey, let's make it educational! So here we have an info graph about allergies across the US. Out of the five I've showed you so far, this is my least favorite. Although I like the aesthetics of the circle, it's a little uncomfortable to have to crane your neck to try and get to the info on the bottom. Not a great idea there. But for the most part, I like the presentation of it. Plenty of spacing in between things, so it's not all bunched or cluttered. Props.