Information Design : Project 1

Week 3 - Week 5 : 18 Jan 2022 - 6 Feb 2022

Tan Yi Yun
0345559
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Project 1/Instructable Infographics Poster

LECTURE

Week 4

America's Misinformation Crisis 

Misformation : False information that is held or spread, regardless of intent.
Disinformation : False information that is spread with the internet to mislead. 

Demand Side : Although human psychology hasn't changed, party polarisation has heightened demand for misinformation and our response to it.
Supply Side : Rise of partisan and social media and breakdown of norms against lying have resulted in a dramatic increase in the supply of misinformation.

As a designer, we are not only to create pretty designs that can catch people's attention, but we have the responsibility to distribute the right information to the audience.

Reasons of the Rise of Misinformation
- The widening partisan divide

Why polarization matters
Party polarisation heightens : 
- cue-taking : our tendency to accept at face value claims made by our party leaders and by like-minded media sources
- confirmation bias : our psychological tendency to interpret claims in ways that fit our partisan beliefs and biases. 

Consequences of low-choice system
- an "information commons"
- rising level of information
- "depolarisation"

The power of fake to attract our attention : fake stories travel 6 times faster on social media than true stories.

Fixing our misinformation problem :
- We could hold political leaders to account for lying, but we don't detect it when our side's leaders say it, and we don't value truth enough to base our vote on it.
- We could get our information from reliable sources, but many of us prefer sources that tell us what we want to believe - there's high demand for confirming information.
- We could hold ourselves to a higher standard, but confirmation bias is ingrained - we don't know when we're wrong and tend to reject conflicting information.

INSTRUCTIONS

PROJECT 1 : Instructable Infographics Poster 

We are required to choose 1 video from Pasta Grannies to turn it into an infographic. I picked one of the oldest granny of that channel, Concettina from Morano Calabro. She is demonstrating how to make Raschiatelli in the video below: 


I think further study is necessary because I want to know more about this dish. I also take note of the differences of Concettina's recipe and other recipes I found online. The types of pasta mentioned in the video are also a little different than what I have discovered. Here are the links that I referred to: 

Figure 1.1, Breakdown of information and processes, Week 3 (23/1/2022)

Visual research

What makes a good instructable infographics :
- transmit a message
- present large amounts of information in a compact and easy to understand way.
- reveal the data
- periodically monitor the evolution of certain parameters.

The mood board below is the visual references that I found them aesthetic-looking and have applied chunking of information. 

Figure 1.2, Visual research, Week 4 (28/1/2022)

Rough sketch

I want to use the steam of the dish to act as a guiding line that connects each chunks of information and leads to the final dish. For the art style, I do not want to make it realistic nor vector that has no outlines. I decided to go for the comic style with consistent thickness of strokes. 

I divided up the steps into 4 sections : preparation of dough, 3 types of pasta, preparation of tomato sauce, and serving of pasta. 

Figure 1.3, Rough sketch, Week 4 (28/1/2022)


Illustration

Initially I plan to draw in Photoshop, however, for some reasons my eraser tool in Ps is lagging and it annoys me. So I switched to use Clip Studio Paint Pro instead. 

Figure 1.4, Work in progress - line art, Week 4 (28/1/2022)

Figure 1.5, Work in progress - base colours, Week 4 (28/1/2022)

Figure 1.6, Work in progress - shadings, Week 4 (28/1/2022)

Figure 1.7, Work in progress - highlights and details, Week 4 (28/1/2022)
Illustration Assets in PDF - Week 5 (2/2/2022)
Composition

The typefaces I used are Little Comet Demo Version and Arial Rounded MT Bold. I chose these two typefaces because of the rounded edge and smooth looking that suits the "comic style" of my illustrations. The title is in red as it is the colour that comes to my mind when I first looked at this dish (since it is tomato flavour). The background colour is in beige (more to red hue, muted colours). I referred to the colour of the Morano Calabro town. 
Figure 1.8, Arrangement and composition in Adobe Illustrator, Week 5 (4/2/2022)

Figure 1.9, Use of rulers in Adobe Illustrator, Week 5 (4/2/2022)

In the final stage, I used a textured brush in Adobe Photoshop to draw the town at the corner of my poster. I also overlaid an old paper texture by adjusting the opacity and blending mode. 

Figure 2.1, Illustrating Morano Calabro , Week 6 (6/2/2022)

Final Instructable Poster
Figure 2.2, Final Instructable Poster, Week 6 (8/2/2022)

Final Instructable Poster in PDF, Week 6 (8/2/2022)

REFLECTION

I have learned to convey a series of information in a way that is easy to digest. I have used visuals to aid the understanding of the messages more quickly and accurately. The most challenging part is to breakdown the process into chunks and to organise them well in a limited size and space of a poster. I enjoyed illustrating the Raschiatelli the most and it makes me hungry every time I opened my working file (including now when I am blogging!).