GRAPHICS PATHWAY - DATA TRANSLATION

This week's project was focused around ways to solve visual design problems in an effective way. We had to communicate information and data in as visually interesting and graphic a manner as possible. We tried to represent the data in a fresh, imaginative and unique way avoiding the obvious but nevertheless being clear and effective. I had many ideas at the very start of the project and was unsure which path to follow. I wanted to make the project unique to myself so I thought about ways I could do this. I looked at data in my passions: music and football. I thought about representing the most popular genres of music in current times, best selling albums and artists. In relation to football I looked at the highest goalscorers of all time in the premier league. It was then a question of choosing a way to represent this data and importantly how I could make it interesting and clear for football enthusiasts as well as those who are not so interested in football.

 I researched into infographics and a lot of what I found was circular or involved circles in some way because of their natural shape and versatility, I looked into this further and eventually decided to base the top ten goalscorers of all time in the premier league around a circular design. I experimented with width and colour which helped me discover that I could represent the number of goals scored by the width of the circle in mm or cm for example. Centimetres were too big however millimetres were perfect as 1 mm could represent 10 goals, I then realised that I could use the same system for appearances so the goals/appearances could both be shown together. I made the appearances circle slightly transparent as they are not the main focus of the data and the goals circle a solid colour to show clearly the amount of goals scored in comparison to the appearances. I thought this worked well as it was a clear comparison, making the background black I feel also makes the colour stand out even more. 

Overall, I feel it is a simple but clear and effective design, I also wanted to try something different to what I usually do as I tend to favour more illustrative imagery, this is something slightly different and somewhat out of my comfort zone. However, I have enjoyed this project and I am happy with my final outcome.

Final Design, original size A2

Images - Author's Own 17/01/14