Information Design / Project 1 & 2: Instructable Poster


1.18.2022 - 02.18.2022 (Week 3 - Week 7)
Audrey Gracia Djohari / 0348120
Information Design
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Taylor’s University
Instructable Infographic & Animated Infographic



INSTRUCTION






PROJECT 1: INSTRUCTABLE INFOGRAPHIC


Requirements
  • An infographic poster for ONE recipe selected from Pasta Grannies@: https://www.youtube.com/user/pastagrannies/videos
  • Poster size: 1240 × 1750 pixels or 2048 × 2048 pixels
  • Infographics should be fun, it should simplify the context, while representing information graphically.
WEEK 3:

Week 3 Instruction
  1. Identify your chosen content from Pasta Grannies YouTube channel 
  2. Study and break down the information and processes from the channel
  3. You can start assembling mood board, visual reference, art style, sketches of your poster
Chosen Pasta Granny Video
Youtube link   https://youtu.be/QhsNAU-tPXY
Title                : Pasta Grannies celebrate Christmas with an 8 shape pasta called corzetti
Granny Name : Amalia

Figure 1.0: Chosen Pasta Granny Video, Youtube

Information Breakdown

Figure 1.1: Recipe Breakdown

Visual Research

First of all, I did some visual research on Pinterest to gain the design ideas. I attached these 4 recipe illustrations that I liked the most, 2 of them were from Miss Anis. My favorite out of all of them is the blue one which shows the steps in the form of the staircase (or some sort of boxes with different heights to indicate the hierarchy).

Figure 1.2-1.4: Pasta Grannies Infographics Examples

I found these posters of drinks quite interesting when it comes to the art style. The uniqueness can be seen in the texture and color palette. They represent a vintage Italian-style poster. I'm planning to create my infographic using this style.

Figure 1.5-1.7: Visual Research

Color Palette

Figure 1.8-1.11: Pasta Granny Stills

Figure 1.12: Pasta Granny Clickbait

I was inspired by the video's clickbait. I like the Chrismas-y vibe that it radiates. I'm also planning to add Granny Amalia's cloth pattern. I decided to use the color red as the main color, with blue, light yellow, and orange as complimentary colors.

Figure 1.13: Color Palette

WEEK 4:

Week 4 Instruction

  1. Finalize sketch of the design for your poster - The poster should have a visual hierarchy, information flow, and clear directives of the recipe processes.
  2. Start working on the digital visual assets. Remember to use separate layers for assets for your motion animation in Project 2!
Sketches & Idea Exploration

These are my sketches. Basically, I divided the recipe into 2 big parts:
1. Ingredient List
2. The 4 steps in cooking Corzetti

On my 1st sketch, I used stairs as an element that shows the steps of cooking the Corzetti. The first step is the lowest stair and the next step is on the higher one. Lastly, the final outcome of the Corzetti is shown at the top which will also be the focal point of the whole design. And I put the ingredients in another bubble below the staircase.
Figure 1.14: Sketch #1, 01.27.2022

On my second sketch, the steps start from the top. I used lines to indicate the points and I made the illustration for every step. I will put the ingredients on top right of the frame.

Figure 1.15: Sketch #2, 01.27.2022
WEEK 5:

Digitization

I started illustrating on week 5.  I downloaded several new brushes from the internet which are very helpful to create the textures & gradients.


Figure 1.16-1.17: Illustrating the corzetti in AI

I did all of my design in illustrator. I started with creating the small elements and ingredients.

Figure 1.18: Elements



WEEK 6:

After I finished illustrating the objects and elements, I started to arrange it into an infographic. It took me quite long to find the best composition.

Figure 1.19: Progression

Figure 1.20: Progression

WEEK 7-8:

Outcomes

For this project, I'd like to use stairs as elements that show the hierarchy of the process. Granny Amalia's recipe is very complicated, it has 15 steps which I think is pretty difficult to be made as a simple poster. So, I chunked them into 5 big steps (symbolized by the stairs).

1. Make the DOUGH
2. Make the CORZETTI
3. Make the MEAT RAGU
4. Make the TUCCU (it's the sauce)
5. SERVE IT

This is my first outcome and original idea of the graphic poster. However, it lacks information and it doesn't show the step by step of making the Corzetti. I actually like the visual though, it's aesthetically pleasing, but I remember what I learned from FLIP Classroom: Do Not Glorify Aesthetic.

Figure 1.21: #1 Outcome

So I made this second outcome. It shows the step-by-step process for each stage. I put the title & ingredient lists on top. But I realized it will make the reader confused because they will read it from top to bottom but the stairs start from the bottom. It will make the reading flow clash in the middle.

Figure 1.22: #2 Outcome

That brought me to the #3 outcome. I switched the position of the title and the process. So now, the title and ingredients are at the bottom. And the steps are at the top. This will result in a better reading flow because all of them are in one flow. The reader will start at the bottom (title and then ingredients) to the top (stair 1 to stair 5).

I also added a small Christmas Tree on the title (letter O) to indicate the Christmas vibes that are visible in Pasta Granny video.

Figure 1.23: #3 Outcome

Figure 1.24: Reading Flow & Hierarchy

Final Outcomes

Figure 2.0: Final Outcome in JPG

Figure 2.1: Final Outcome in PDF



PROJECT 2: ANIMATED INFOGRAPHIC


Requirement
  • Max 60 seconds infographic video 720p: 1280x720 pixels (H26/mp4) published on YouTube.
  • Capture the aesthetics and narrative of the poster with movements, SFX, and music.
  • Example: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1x4pZUE9ms 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wsa1kmCk4k


Timeline Plan
  • Opening Title : 3 s
  • Ingredients 1 : 2 s
  • Ingredients 2 : 2 s
  • Stair 1: Make the dough 1.5 s
  • (3 steps): 7.5 s
  • Stair 2: Make the corzetti 1.5 s
  • (4 steps): 10 s
  • Stair 3: Make the Meat Ragu 1.5 s
  • (4 steps):10 s
  • Stair 4: Make The Tuccu 1.5 s
  • (4 steps): 10 s
  • Stair 5: Serve It 1.5 s
  • (2 steps): 5 s
  • Final Outcome + Pasta Grannies Credit: 3 s
Total: 60 seconds


Illustration Process

I used the same illustration from the static graphic poster. However, I decided to illustrate Granny Amalia herself because I want to make her as the narrator of the video. I found her character really cute and she has a warm attitude. I want to capture that in my animation video.

 
Figure 3.0-3.1: Granny Amalia Stills

This is Granny Amalia illustration that I created in Adobe Illustrator. She will be the one who explains the steps

Figure 3.3: Granny Amalia Illustration

For the scenes, I made 1 AI files for each frame. I separated every elements that would be animated into layers.

Figure 3.4: AI files for Animation02.25.2022



Animation Process

It took me about 12 hours to finish the whole animation. These are the effects & tools that I used:
  • Scale
  • Opacity
  • Rotation
  • Position
  • Null Object
  • Trim Paths
  • Distort Effects (with perspective)

Figure 3.5: AE Process #1,  02.26.2022

Figure 3.6: AE Process #2, 02.27.2022


Final Outcome

Google Drive Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1uTc_0d3X-P9h-oeYDF5NxJWu51-I1Axl

Figure 3.7: Final Animation in Youtube, 02.27.2022

Figure 3.8: Final Animation Scenes in PDF, 02.27.2022


Original Video & Recipe by Pasta Grannies: https://youtu.be/QhsNAU-tPXY
Background Music by Audio Beat Official: https://youtu.be/ZU6ich_pQ2I



FEEDBACK

Personal Feedback
(Poster) When I showed Miss Anis my poster, she didn't suggest any revision, which made me so happy! She only said, "good design thinking there". So I decided to go with the #3 outcome because it has a better reading flow and hierarchy.

Figure 4.0: Poster Feedback on Discord



REFLECTION


Experience
For me, his project was quite challenging but fun at the same time. I really enjoyed the process from chunking the information to animating the steps in making pasta. And I'm also quite happy with the final outcomes. However, I spent more time finishing other projects especially the Sex Education animation, so I really felt I could do better if I had more time. I was so grateful when Miss Anis extended the deadline, so I was able to finish my work just on time.

Observations
I observed that applying chunking method in this project was very helpful. Granny Amalia's pasta is a bit more complicated than the others because it has several steps that  requires going back to the previous steps. But chunking it into 5 big steps was a breakthrough to me. I could make the complex steps become a simpler form. I also couldfit all the informations into 60 seconds duration which is super short. 

Findings
I found that designing an information is all about making everything simpler and easier to understand. I really love the idea of learning this method through analyzing and designing recipe. And I realized that when designing a video with many informations to be presented, pre determining the timing and storyboard was crucial. I tried to see my video from a first-time-watcher point of view and it really helped me to recompose the duration of each scene to make it more communicative.




FURTHER READING

- The Practical Guide to Information Design

Figure 5.0: The Practical Guide to Information Design, by Wiley, 2007

Reference:
Lipton, R., “The Practical Guide to Information Design”. Wiley. 2007.

PART 2: Body/mind basics: How the eye/brain sees, perceives, reads (Pg 30-33)


How we perceive words: The eye/brain case for legible type

We don’t read letter by letter, or even necessarily, word by word. Instead, the eye moves through text in a series of eye jumps (or saccades), stops (or fixations), and backtracking steps (regressions, which account for 10–15 percent of our reading time). Each saccade covers seven to nine letters of text, according to “The Science of Word Recognition,” by Kevin Larson of Microsoft. 

The implications: Support a consistent, comprehensible reading (jumping) pace with consistent, legible type, especially using appropriate contrast and word and line spacing.

How we perceive color

We see the range of visible colors (similar to the way only three colors produce many more colors on a computer monitor). The wavelength, a color’s position on the visible spectrum, relates to color temperature. Red (a warm color, along with orange and yellow) has the longest wavelength; blue (a cool color, along with green and violet) has one of the shortest wavelengths.

Blue’s shorter wavelength makes it focus in front of the retina, flattening the lens and making the color look farther away and smaller. So, for reasons of perception, red tends to work best in foregrounds, and blue’s best in backgrounds.

How we perceive symbols

Some symbols are used and understood almost universally. But the very use of the word language—whether it refers to a verbal language or a pictorial one—suggests something that has to be learned, “because that’s the characteristic of a language. It’s a man-made thing. Even an arrow is a man-made thing” whose meaning must be learned, Mijksenaar says. 

Until people in some remote tribes were regularly exposed to arrows in graphic and product design, they understood the symbols only as representing things to shoot with bows.


Figure 5.1: How we perceive symbols, Pg 33

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