Information Design - Project 1&2

03/02/2025 - 11/03/2025  / Week 1 - Week 5

Velicia Raquel Dewi Setiawan | 0369188 | Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media

Information Design

JUMPLINK:

1. Lecture
2. Instruction
3. Animated Infographic Poster
• Infographic Poster
• Minimal Animated Infographic
4. Feedback
5. Reflection

1. LECTURE

2. INSTRUCTION

3. ANIMATED INFOGRAPHIC POSTER

DESCRIPTION: 

After time exploring media and learning about information design, you will now develop an infographic that presents a series of different processes as visuals rather than text.

REQUIREMENT:

Your main intention is to analyse the “delivery mechanism’s” that affect the outcomes of your infographics. Though content is important, however the aim of this presentation is too look at what makes an infographic presentation work or does not work. This includes content but only as one of the many components of an infographic:

1. PART 1: Infographic poster (20%)                     

Instruction:

1. Choose 1 infographic poster reference from Internet (Please consult before proceed)
2. Redesign the poster into A4 size. Sketch the idea and process
3. Redesign and simplify the poster based on visual hierarchy & typography
4. Simplify the poster's design based on color, shape & pattern
5. Attach your final poster on E-Portfolio with an explanation and reflective writing

1. Original Poster Reference

First, I looked for poster references on the internet. Since I was already doing a bird topic from Exercise One and Two, I thought I might as well do it for this one too. So, I found five posters online that I thought could be improved to show to Sir and choose one to work on.

Sir settled on the second poster about the endangered albatross. Sir originally suggested using the same image graphics from the poster and simply moving the text information around.

Fig 3.1 Poster, Week 5 (04/03/2025)

Fig 3.2 Bird Poster, Week 5 (04/03/2025)

2. Progress

So, I attempted it first on Illustrator. I tried to pull the images apart and see what the information was about so I could redesign it into something easier to consume. But even after pondering for a while, I couldn't find a clear direction I wanted to go with this. The image placement was already a bit wonky to rearrange, especially to crop and move around. Also, if I decided to go with the existing images now, I didn't think I could find another art style like this one.

Fig 3.3 Illustration Graphic, Week 5 (04/03/2025)

Fig 3.4 Illustration Progress, Week 5 (04/03/2025)

So, in the end, I decided to ditch this and look at Pinterest for references. 

Fig 3.5 Pinterest References, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

The image below is the style I'm going for. Since the albatross is a water bird, I thought the paper background, reminiscent of a map, and splashes of blue suited it quite well.

Fig 3.6 Pinterest References, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

I also moved my design to Canva instead, as it's easier to find the image graphics I wanted since they are already provided on Canva, unlike Illustrator, where I would have to find those images individually on the internet and then still need to crop or remove the background. I won’t lie, it sorta hurt my pride as a designer—using Canva feels like cheating. But I was really burnt out these last few weeks and decided to give myself some slack. And this is an information design class, not an illustration class, as Sir said.

Fig 3.7 Canva Progress, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

From Canva, I pulled black-and-white illustrations of a compass and an albatross bird and lowered the opacity to mimic the old paper map style from the reference. I also added the main subject, in this case, the albatross, with splashes of blue behind it.

Fig 3.8 Canva Progress, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

I tried adding black into it to symbolize spilled ink, but it didn’t look good, so I kept it blue.

Fig 3.9 Canva Progress, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

For the actual text information, I mostly took inspiration from this poster of an elephant. I mostly followed how they did their graphics and how they organized the information and tried to implement it in my poster.

Fig 3.10 Pinterst References, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

It took a lot of experimenting in the beginning, but after I got the style down, everything went smoothly. The original text information from the reference poster got heavily reduced but still kept the main points. The info was mostly paragraphs of text, so people needed to read them thoroughly to understand. From the inspiration poster, I could see immediately which info was important and could make my own deduction from it without reading the whole thing.

Fig 3.11 Canva Progress, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

I tried to use graphics, font size, and color to help highlight the important information. For the graphics, I used simple silhouettes with a combination of red and blue, with blue as the main color and red as a general danger indicator since the color red is generally perceived as a warning or something that endangers the albatross.

Fig 3.12 Canva Progress, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

Lastly, I added black lines to further help separate the information, rearranged some graphics, and it was done.

Fig 3.13 Canva Progress, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

Fig 3.14 Canva Progress, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

3. Final Result

Fig 3.15 Canva Progress, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

2. PART 2: Minimal animated infographic (20%)   

Instruction:

1. Animate your infographic poster into one static loop animation page
2. Loop duration in between 15-30 second
3. Size: 1080 x 1920 px (Vertical Video) upload to your own Youtube channel

Submission:

1. Digital upload into your Google Drive.
2. Online posts in your E-Portfolio and your reflective writing.
3. (Please attach the E-Portfolio link here for submission.)

1. Animation

For the animation part, I’m glad I used Canva, as I could do the animation straight up here instead of using AE, where I would probably need to relearn how to do a lot of the animation. 

Fig 3.16 Animation Options, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

Sir did say that we didn’t need to do much animation for this, so I kept it simple. I used the pulsate and blinking animation for most of it and added the going-in and going-out transitions. I also added a simple opening animation for the title and a spinning animation for the compass behind the albatross.

2. Final Result

Project 1&2 - Google Drive

Fig 3.11 Canva Progress, Week 6 (11/03/2025)

4. Feedback

Week 4: 

Specific Feedback:

• Sir said that poster 2 is good as a reference, and I can start by blocking the background with the same color as the original poster and organizing the info.

5. Reflection

1. Experience 

The experience was a mix of trial and error. I started with Illustrator but struggled to make the existing elements work, so I switched to Canva for efficiency. It felt a bit like cheating, but given the circumstances, it was the best choice. Once I settled on a style, everything flowed better, and I could focus on organizing the information clearly.

2. Observation

The observation was that the original poster had too much text, making it hard to quickly understand the key points. The new design focused on simplifying the content using visuals, typography, and color to highlight the most important information. The reference poster helped a lot in figuring out how to structure the layout in a more effective way.

3. Findings

The findings showed that using the right tools for the task makes a huge difference. Illustrator gave me more control but took too much effort for this project, while Canva made things more efficient. Animation-wise, keeping it simple worked best, and adding small movements helped make the information more engaging without being distracting.