Brief
Our second project in IXD104 is about creating infographics which is a way that allows you to visual data since people taken in more information through an image or visual mark than they do through a written format. Just like the previous project we were given creative freedom over what type of data we wanted to visualise as long as it had to do with the world around us.
Paul explained in that in previous years that this is the project that more darker subjects were covered such as illness and diseases, birth and death rates and more. Since I enjoy learning about these dark subjects I knew that I would throughly enjoy this project.
Research
The first thing I had to do was figure out what subject I would be focusing on for this project and I began by jotting down a few ideas and for ideas I thought about my interests for example I’m very interested about the tragic incident of Chernobyl and how it came to happen. Another interest of mine is coffee and so a possible topic I could cover is how much coffee is drank yearly. After some thinking I finally decided that the topic I would cover will be “How much crime is committed yearly?” I feel like this would be a great topic to cover as it is something I’m already interested in.
My next step was to research crime in the UK and find trustworthy sites in which I could get reliable information from that I would be able to use. I was lucky enough to find a range of statistics about specific crime committed in the year ending of March 2021 all in a single website. It is from the official government website and and this reassured me that all the information provided with true and up to date. I created another post which details all the research I conducted from these websites for my infographics and I will leave a link to it here:
I did find other articles about crime statistics in the UK on other websites however, I didn’t completely trust them and since this is the governments official webpage where other similarly important data is presented to the public, I believe this is the most trustworthy website to use.
Wireframe, Icons and Graphs
After I had collected all my statistics it was time to sketch out my wireframe for my infographics and I began by looking at other infographics such as previous students and I found that they have them considerable long and thin and so that was the foundation of my wireframe. It works well as it feels like you are traveling through information.
I then created a basic wireframe of my infographics just so that I could visualise who the information sit as I have never worked with a thin width and long project so I needed to see how I would place my information.
Then came my favourite part which was designing my icons. I began by writing down all the icons that I will need and this list included: outlined bodies, graphs, various weapons, various crimes and more. I the found some reference icons and began drawing out ideas and once I had them drawn it was time to recreate them in Figma and I did find that I was having some trouble with creating them. Some of the icons had hands in them and I find trying to design hands or arms quite difficult and sometimes the designs just didn’t look right once I had designed them in Figma. However, I continued on a created my icon set which I was happy at the end with as each icon was clear it what crime it was representing.
