Gordon G Final Project Description

Information Design ~ Day 9 ~ In class today during our table groupthink, we all shared our final project ideas within the pod. I found the immediate feedback from my classmates to be very helpful. I was also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to bounce my project concept, rough layout and research findings off of Kelley Linehan – UWM Associate Lecturer and practicing graphic designer. While some may not see the value in focus groups, I find that bouncing ideas off of other noggins and testing concepts before its too late are valuable practices in the creative process. Tweak, tweak and then tweak some more.

I am planning on including both the written and a visual component in my final project. I have chosen the topic of 2009 Wine Sales in the U.S. as my Information Design focus. I recently designed a company identity program for a wine consultant. That piqued my interest on the wine industry along with the fact that I enjoy drinking it! I wanted to paint a broad picture of the overall sales volume so I chose to highlight sales within the top 20 states. I plan on creating a strong graphic to communicate those numbers and will revisit some of Tufte’s examples on layering and separation to keep the illustration clean. I plan on also showing the sales volume for each of the 12 months of 2009. This time-series element will give an indication of seasonality, holiday spikes and consumer patterns. I will then add a final layer of relational graphics to showcase the top producing wineries. This would be an ideal spot for potentially skewing the data ~ if I had an agenda or was being paid by one of the wineries. Since I am unfortunately not being compensated, the information design and topic data will be straight forward in my representation of the numbers.

I will use color, value, shape and size where appropriate. I think my chart will appeal to a fairly wide audience based on the shared experience of wine drinking. Individuals may find common patterns similar to their own within the calendar statistics. Industry people will most likely find the information visually stimulating while equally substantiating the “known” norms. These should satisfy the humanity element within the information design content of my graph. My ultimate goal on this final project is for my chart to be pleasing to the eye and stimulating to the brain.