W4 Reflection: Infographics: Planning and Wireframing

This week, I decided to checkout the Lynda.com tutorials on Infographics, to help me prepare to create my first infographic. I found that there are actually three tutorials on Infographics, so I decided to start with the Planning and Wireframing tutorial.

The presenter, Shane Snow, starts by showing some examples of Infographics he has published, and discusses some of the considerations he had when making his design decisions to develop these Infographics.

Then, he dives right into how he organizes his data. I was surprised to see that these highly visual designs actually start out in Microsoft Excel! He explains how it is important to start in Excel so that you can clearly organize the data and easily visualize the outliers (far from norm numbers), trends (a gradual movement of data), and counterintuitive facts (things you didn't expect to see).

Then he covers choosing the right visualizations, by explaining that with Infographics, one should:

• not illustrate something that can be easily explained in words
• always choose the one that best illustrates the data clearly

Some common types of visual representations on an infographic and their purposes
Bar charts - basic types of comparisons
Pie charts - good for showing comparison (when the sum of all parts add up to 100%).
Donut charts - ^^Pie charts with holes
Scatter charts - Good for showing trends
Line graphics - Also good for showing trends
Area charts - Useful when comparing the size of different things (usually over time)
Bubble diagram - Used often on maps to show relations
Time lines - illustrating events
Venn Diagrams - show comparison relationships
Glyphs - the pictures you see on infographics
Flow charts - useful for depicting evolution or relationships

Next, Shane addresses the considerations for deciding dimensions of your infographic.

• If on the web - what is the width of the blog? Is their a height constraint
• Info graphics for textbooks - should fit the page (8.5 x 11?)
• If you have no constraints, make it fit the story you want to tell
• Always consider that your infographic may be made into a poster at some point, so think of those dimensions.
• Always draw in highresolution/vector, so you can make it bigger if/when you need.

The next lesson is a mini lesson in Photoshop. This part was really less interesting to me, as I didn't really learn anything new about Photoshop. However, it was interesting to see that you design the basic layout (or wireframe) of the infographic begins with a layer of blank boxes with some text. And that throughout the design process, one should toggle back and forth between this wireframe and the more visual design.

Overall, I thought the information present was well organized and clear. As a learner, I was aware of the learning objectives set forth, and felt his explanations along with use of examples and non-examples were clear.

I will most likely also complete his other two tutorials on infographics before I complete my own! :)