Class 1
This course opened a new world for me and i found that boring Info graphics could be a real challenge for design. Following the instructions of Marcs really good video and the additional ones in the live classes i started to create my infographic. From the beginning i knew i will do my own research. I love researching and googeling and in the last month i had a lot to do on my websites concerning the new Data protection law (GDPR) in Europe that actually effects globally. Mostly i was interested how many people really take this serious. I always thought infographic is just about numbers and i found that it actually is about any information presented in a visual way.
I started with creating shapes etc...learning the Illustrator masterclass from Yes i am a designer right now i found there a real good video about charts that is available for free on you tube (the masterclass for Illustrator i bought and each chapter is worse its money) . Martin describes the chart panel inside of Illustrator. So i did use this- its a huge time saver because you don t need to create all from the scratch and bringing Data inside is much more accurate. Its even possible to import a txt. file from exel!
I wanted to keep my Infopaper simple and clean and focus on getting the information as fast and eye catching as possible. Being a lot in the internet with tons of information i think an infographic is a great way to bring a lot of information into a real short and beautiful designed excerpt. For me this type of design will be something i want to develop in future. Thanks for this course that gave me a new direction to focus on combining my love for research and simple design.
Besides the graph tool to visualize percentages i took my base color blue to Indesign and chose in the same percentage the color value with the tint option. In the end i did use this site for percentage i couldn't find how to add a HEX in the choosing color panel in Illustrator... 90% number is 90% of this blue.
Working a lot in Indesign (why in Illustrator all has his own place and not like Photoshop and Indesign quit similar? ) it took me a long time to find Paragraph styles- a textbox that i can make bigger to insert more text - mine did scale all the text with the box .... Took me a long time where to define a proportional number in styles too. And its so hard to move things all is connected and i feel out of control...But i am starting to see the plusses Illustrator has.
Concerning Infographic itself i learned that it is in a way similar to Logodesign: All needs to be necessary, in place and styled with rules, that connect form, color and content. And i think it should have not only information but a little bit of humor or emotion as well to break the taffy nature of pure information. Obviously there are many jokes about GDPR in the internet. I choose the Knock knock because this was in one of the video courses -i would have done then the video on this variation...but nobody speaks of GDPR half a year ago even if it exists since 2016. Just close to the actual date that one will be punished not to be conform (25.5.2018) starts a big panic all over... at least for those that have european clients. And i choose a joke from school that is pretty good for pupils...Cant wait for the next life class!!
And here is my first Infographic i ever did
Still needs a lot to improve specially on the map all is vector so in the vector file its possible to scale up to see better but in Spark it is possible only png and jpg files. So its a little blurry...
Second Class
For this class i did what i usually dont do: make the assignment before live class... I really start to enjoy infographics and yesterday i saw an amazing report about a little druze boy in Israel, immidiatly i knew i will do my info on his story. Its not exactly the theme of the class but still involved in childs environement. In Israel almost everybody has a second language because people came here from all over the world. I wasn't surprised to find out that Israel ist the first top in bilingual children.
I did learn a lot about illustrator and i start to see its advantages. I would like to learn more about the graph tool.
I still have problems with the text frames and dont know to choose scalable or resizable ones. All concerning font is much less comfortable the it is in indesign. Or may be its because i am very familiar with text in Indesign and not at all in Illustrator.
I used pics from pixabay, bought fonts and assets and my own ones.
Tried to bring together the info and the design. That wasn't easy and still i need to work on it. I struggeled a lot to design the graphs but i really like this tool and will learn all about it.
After getting a really good comment on the edex that i did use to many words and after watching life classes i decided to built my infographic again. I did focus more on statistic information and took the case away from any esoteric touch that may be a word like xenoglossis has. Its important to me and i think for infographics in general to collect information as objective as possible. I leave the first version in order to see the improvement.
Final Reflection
This was one of the best courses i did - it changed my preferences in design and i really want to learn all about it and integrate it into my work also while not teaching. I think Infographics together with digital documents can be a really good combination and combines in a perfect way Illustrator and Indesign. I did suscribe to the course with no further thoughts and almost didn't start it. I started the Character animantion one and did not connect to it so i just went to this course. Unfortunally i can't do two courses same time... And sometimes its hard to decide what to choose. This time my choice more or less by mistake was a big discovery, i never thought that infographic will be something that interests me and i don't like excel at all... Illustrator is the solution for me to avoid excel.
I enjoyed all the classes the very good tutors and helpers the help and feedback from fellow students and watching so many so beautiful results and reflections.
After two years struggeling with Illustrator this course made the final push to really love it . I hope there will be more courses in Illustrator and i really would like a long course about infographics . The past year so many courses were around animation and Video, i did do some, but its not what i really like. My preferences are Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator. There is so much to learn and i feel i need to go with what i like.
Thanks a lot for another great course and thanks for having all this possibilities with Adobe and on the EDEX. See you in the next course!!
Credits:
Pixabay