ias13 infographic assignment

Assignment Overview

As you have so well demonstrated through your #iamondays tweets, Infographics are (and have been) on the rise, and, according to an infographic created by the marketing firm, Nowsourcing, outpace traditional posts when shared on Twitter, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon. They are quickly becoming a legitimate and respected way to provide information in a condensed space, advocate for a particular issue, and/or market a product. They could also serve quite well as conference posters.

We are going to engage Tufte’s and Lupton’s ideas on evidence presentation, design, and topography, by creating our own information-, data-, and statistics-driven infographics using the user-friendly online infographic creator, Piktochart. Here’s a little video about Piktochart:

Piktochart has an excellent overview page, a growing FAQs page, and clear video tutorials. I encourage you to check them out before starting and while working on your project. While the first version seemed to have some hiccups, the new version, dubbed Magic, seems much more robust and stable.

Assignment Specifics

To complete this assignment each student will chose a topic or issue to be presented in their infographic. The goal of the infographic can be to just present some fun information about something in popular culture or can be more serious and advocate for a particular issue or can showcase how things have changed over time, like computing, a particular word, pants designs, and so on. The choice is yours. Regardless of topic and infographic goal, the design and presentation decisions you make must be informed by Tufte’s and Lupton’s ideas.

Each infographic must meet the following requirements:

  • 600px or 800px wide (800px is preferred)
  • have at least 3 blocks added to the length
  • include a combination of words, images, graphics, and numbers (the amount of each will be determined by your topic and goals)
  • employ Tufte’s ideas on evidence presentation and Lupton’s ideas on letter, text, and grid when making design decisions (and not as an afterthought where you try to match the theories to your final product)
  • use fonts in 3 hierarchical levels (as described by Lupton)
  • include substantial adjustments to the default theme layouts
  • include images or graphics that you have uploaded (all photos found online must have a creative commons license)
  • employ icons and graphics which enhance the infographic’s visual metaphors
  • include links at the bottom to add material cited and images used
  • include creative commons license of your choice

All information you find to inform the creation of your infographic must come from an online source. Please make sure the source is reliable and the information up to date. Depending on your topic, some places to find data and statistics are:

Of course, you can use them in combination or you don’t need to use an of these datasets. You can simply search for the topic or issue you want and can create your infographic from what you find. While you are required to have a combination of words, numbers, and images, they do not need to be solely stats-driven. One way to get started thinking about topics is to put them into the Wolfram|Alpha search engine. Watching the results appear is just as amazing as seeing the kinds of results it gives.

Reflections

Please compose two reflections:

  1. Discuss the goals of the infographic. What is your objective for creative the infographic. Are you, for example, trying to build awareness, advocate for change, or something else? What parts of the infographic do you see enhancing your ability to do just that? What did you want to do infographically to help your goals that you were unable to do as a result of limitations in the system and/or your own design skill limitations? 450 – 500 words
  2.  Discuss how you applied (or attempted to apply) Tufte’s and Lupton’s theories on information design. Be a specific as you can be, citing the texts where necessary. Point to at least 3 places (2 Tufte-related and 1 Lupton-related). 750 – 900 words

Due Dates

3/21: Tweet your infographic topic by this date with #inarchs13 and #infographic hashtags
3/28: Rough draft of infograhic due as a blog post (rough draft should be as complete as possible, almost a final draft)
4/5 (Friday): Final draft of infographic and reflections due as blog posts by 11:00pm

One Response to ias13 infographic assignment

  1. Pingback: Infographic – Bill Wolff | Stolen Projects

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