Upon receiving the brief for the third assignment, I immediately thought about doing an infographic that is targeted towards children. Although charts and data are essential to our work, studies and even the very media that we consume, children often do not have a strong basic understanding of reading data. Therefore, I felt that I wanted to design something that was meant for kids and visually designed specifically for them.
As such, I decided to work on the topic of Foster Care in Singapore and will design it for children who are put into the foster care system. Foster care can be a huge and impactful part of a child's life. Yet, I feel that this sector is rarely discussed or understood by many in Singapore, thus children especially would be rather confused and disoriented when they first chance upon the system. I hope that the infographic will be able to visually represent the information that is needed for children to successfully understand and integrate into the foster care system.
Problem Space & Developmental Phase
Normally, a lot of information is presented visually and in ways that we were taught how to read them. The challenge here is: what if these kids (the target demographic) are literate but have never been taught how to read a chart?
Researching on this, I found out that researchers posit that making explicit what charts actually represent can help kids to understand and learn how to read information and data in a more palatable way. Here, it is important that I make the information bite-sized and clear so that the children can see the relationship between certain data and information. Hence, I came up with 2 personal goals for this assignment:
(1) to make information easy for kids to understand and
(2) to make the information fun/engaging for them to read.
With that in mind, I came up with a few ideas on how to visually present information in an unconventional but easy-to-read way.
Sketch #1
In the first developmental process, I drew a sketch of the information that I wanted to illustrate. I presented the information in simple graphs and presented it as it is. To aid in easier visualization, I made icons for the "how to get help" section so that kids can easily understand the process for it.
However, I still very unsatisfied with how the sketch turned out. I felt that the charts were still difficult to comprehend. Thus, I went back to sketching again. This time, I decided to add a greeting section with the main mascot. I hoped that this would not only make the information more engaging for the kids but also make them feel more welcoming to the foster care system. After all, kids who first enter the foster care system are usually from complicated backgrounds; a more welcoming approach to this information graphic would be suitable.
Then, I also had an idea to make the "reasons for foster care" easier to understand but explicitly drawing out characters who represent each variable. For instance, the statistic for the number of physical abuse will be drawn with a malevolent character, emotional abuse with a harsh character shushing, and neglect as a scared character.
Illustrated example on Adobe for the "reasons for foster care" idea
Then, I decided on my typography and colour palette. Opting for softer colours, I wanted to choose colours that would typically present in children's books. Hence, I used a softer colour palette with bright colours such as green, blue, pink and yellow. I also chose the typeface and font with a similar idea in mind. I chose Chantal because of the way it mimics a kid's handwriting (i.e. the descent is shorter and the height of each letter is irregular) and Brandon Grotesque because it was legible.
However, to make my design successful, I needed to become more adept in using the pen tool in Illustrator. I started by drawing the main mascot for the infographic using the pen tool and curvature tool. Then, I laid out the colour blocks, title and information for the first section.
Using the pen and curvature tool to draw the character(s)
Afterwards, I moved on to the "you are not alone" section, where I used the combination of the curvature tool and pen tool once again to create the pink section. Then, I used the shape tool to make out the points in the graph by drawing circles and outlining them white for emphasis. I used the line function to draw lines for the lowest and highest numbers to show how there has been an increase.
I used similar techniques to achieve the other types of information graphics as well. In conclusion, the entire infographic turned out to be quite time-consuming as I drew everything from scratch through the pen tool and curvature tool. However, at the end of the process, I was definitely more adept and faster in using these tools for illustrating! :')
The final design for the critique session
Critique
Here, I received feedback that while the colours, fonts and idea of using cute mascot characters/illustrations were a suitable choice when targeting children, the layout may be a visual and mental overload for children. In fact, I could have just focused on one chart/infographic instead of mixing a few which makes the design complicated.
I felt that good and persuasive points were made. Even after colour-blocking, the design still remains quite cluttered. In fact, some information also seemed redundant after re-visiting the infographic. For example, the "reasons for child protective services" may not be as important for kids and might have been quite traumatizing as it may remind them of the complicated situation with their biological family. Thus, I went back to the sketch board again and made a few revisions.
Improvements
Here, I minimalised the amount of information presented in the design to just the "what will happen now" that the child is put into the foster care system. I chose this because I felt that this information was the most crucial for the children in that situation. Another suggestion that was made during the tutorial was that I could make the mascot character bigger as the main focus of the infographic so that the overall composition of the design would provide more structure overall.
I decided to opt for an HDB block design that would symbolize "home" and "family" but also provide the structure for the timeline. Each window will show a different process in the timeline and only the most crucial words/captions will be written on the left, as follows:
Sketch #3 (revised after the critique)
Subsequently, I went back to using Adobe Illustrator. Firstly, I decided to improve on my mascot. As the character would be the main focus of the design, I wanted to provide more details and create a sharper, neater drawing. To do this efficiently, I applied what I've learnt in assignment 1 (abstraction) to lay out the basic shapes for the character and then pieced them together.
Using 3 different shapes and the curvature tool to make up the mascot character
Secondly, I laid out the background, title and wave design (using the curvature tool).
Artboard with the basic structure added
Then, I pieced the different layers together as such and added in more details like the contact and email information.
Piecing together the layers
Through these repeated methods, I slowly drew up the different illustrations, the building and the clouds to visually represent the "what will happen" in the foster care system and how each event can be like. For instance, for the first illustration, I drew a foster mother and child spending time together happily thanks to the MSF. I also wanted to show that the children will be provided for in a loving and caring environment, hence I drew the heart shape under MSF and the mother physically taking care of the foster child.
Through this, I came up with the final infographic design and submitted it.
Comments
Post a Comment