Information Design

This class was a fun change on what I had already learned about design. Although the initial project in the class had a production method that was already very familiar to me (show up to class, present your work, critique, then head home), the final project proved to be a bit more intellectually challenging.

UAE DATA VISUALIZATION

I was assigned a country at random and tasked with displaying over a dozen pieces of information about its data. This included population density, items related to the economy, and significant historical events.

The final product is intended to be displayed as a large-format poster; below, I have included close-up slides of each section.

I opted to utilize only the colors of the nation’s flag—a smooth green background, with a striking red standing out in the visual hierarchy as a section header.

Since I was only focusing on one country, I chose to limit the variation in the labeling of other elements on the bar vertical bar charts.

I knew red would stand out the strongest in my color palette, so I used it for the smallest and hardest-to-spot areas on this map of the individual emirates. Not all labels needed to be abbreviated, thankfully, which lessened reliance on the key.

Small spaces are added as a buffer between each shape, which I deemed necessary given the complexity of the map; with multiple emirates being discontinuous, it would challenging to otherwise recognize the fill color for smaller areas.

Iconography becomes a significant feature in the “Society” section, where the data being presented allows it.