Infographic Final Blog Post + Artist Statement

Final Blog Post Requirements

When you are done with your infographic, create a final blog post with the following:

• a PDF of your finished project
• a PNG of your finished project (so we can see the image in the blog post).
  To create a PNG from Illustrator, click File -> Save for Web & Devices -> PNG-24
• a minimum 150-word artist statement about your project. An artist statement (minimum 150 words) about our project. Not sure what to write? Start by answering the following questions:
  • Describe your artwork
    • What does your artwork look like?
    • What art elements or principles are most obvious in your work?
  • What is the big idea behind your artwork?
    • Who or what inspired your artwork?
    • What is your artwork about?
    • How do you want people to feel when they view your artwork?
  • How did you create your art?
    • What media is your artwork made from?
    • Describe the process or steps you took to create your artwork.
  • Overall thoughts
    • What did you learn from creating this artwork?
    • Is the final piece what you imagined? How so?
    • What did you do well? What could you have done better?

Today we will:

• Create our final blog posts with both PDFs and PNG of our final projects, and a 150-word artist statement about the project

Unity & Contrast

Today’s essential question: How can I simultaneously create unity and contrast in my infographic?

Andrew has successfully created both unity and contrast in his infographic.
What are some ways he has done this?
Examine color scheme, typography, shapes, graphics.

After today, we will only have two more classes to finish our infographics and write an artist statement about our project. This is means:

• If you are stuck on what to do to finish your infographic, please call Ms. Lawson over for help THIS CLASS
• If you do not think you will be able to finish your infographic in time, please schedule a time to work in the art room during lunch or Advisement.

Today we will:

• Continue working on our infographic projects
• Create a new blog post with our progress. Include:
  • a PDF of your project
  • a PNG of your project
  • a few sentences explaining how your infographic uses alignment and proximity, or how you can improve the layout by using these principles

Infographics about Infographics

Excellent job with last class’s peer critique! I was impressed with the feedback you gave each other.
Remember to consult this feedback as you continue to work on your projects.

Today we will flex our metacognitive thinking skills by looking at some infographics about infographics.
Click on any given infographic to view it larger:

Infographics don’t necessarily need to be serious:

Today we will:

• Continue working on our infographic projects
• Create a new blog post with our progress. Include:
  • a PDF of your project
  • a PNG of your project
  • a few sentences explaining how your infographic uses alignment and proximity, or how you can improve the layout by using these principles

In-Process Critique

Today’s essential questions: What is working on my infographic? What could be improved?

Today we will break into two small groups and critique our infographics so far. As the group is giving you feedback on your infographic, you should be writing their feedback in a new blog post. You should then reference this blog post when you resume working on your infographic, as it will serve as a list of suggestions/changes to make to your infographic.

Here is a sample infographic I made to show the potential changes that could be made through a peer critique:

Peer Critique Questions

Evaluate the infographic on the following categories.
State what is working and what could be improved:

• Visual Hierarchy
• Alignment
• Proximity/Grouping
• Typography
• Color Scheme
• Graphics

Today we will:

• conduct a model critqiue at the Smart Board as a class
• break into two groups, and critique each group member’s current infographic
• publish a new blog post with the feedback received during today’s critique
• continue working on our infographics, incorporating the feedback from today’s critique
• add a PDF and PNG of our progress to the blog post with the critique feedback

Alignment & Proximity

Today’s essential question: How can improve the scan-ability of my infographic through alignment and proximity?

You can make your infographic appear less cluttered and help viewers scan important information quickly by lining things up and grouping like pieces of information together.

How do the examples below utilize alignment and proximity?

Pay special attention to the use of shape, line, color, and text:

Here are some more concrete examples of alignment and proximity:

Today we will:

• Continue working on our infographic projects
• Create a new blog post with our progress. Include:
  • a PDF of your project
  • a PNG of your project
  • a few sentences explaining how your infographic uses alignment and proximity, or how you can improve the layout by using these principles

Picking a Cohesive Color Scheme

Today’s essential question: How can I balance similarly saturated colors with neutrals to create a cohesive color scheme?

Look at the infographics below. Each infographic has a few dominant colors of equal saturation or brightness, as well as some neutrals. What purpose do the neutrals serve? What might the dominant colors for your infographic be? Why is it important to conscientiously limit your color palette?

The coolors website is a great resource for picking color schemes.

Today we will:

• Continue working on our infographic projects
• Create a new blog post with our progress. Include:
  • a PDF of your project
  • a PNG of your project
  • a few sentences explaining what has been easy and what is still challenging

Creating a Unified Style Across both Text and Graphics

Today’s essential question: How can I coordinate my text with my graphics to create a cohesive style throughout my infographic?

We are really limited with the typefaces that are installed on these computers. For best results, I’d recommend searching dafont.com for a few interesting typefaces to use for your headings, previewing the wording, and using the snipping tool to take a screen shot of each heading written in that typeface. Then place the screen shot in Illustrator and trace over the text with the pen tool.

Notice what a difference custom lettering has made in the examples below. How does the style of the text coordinate with the style of the graphics?

Image Credit: Tina

Image Credit: Carla

Incomplete Project Proposals

The following people never submitted complete project proposals: Aiden, Narionna, Andrew, Brandon.

A complete project proposal should include the following:

• a few sentences describing your concept
• any text you plan to use in your infographic (including body text or text that will be bulleted below the headings)
• the photograph of your layout (many people only included this and are missing the first two components)

Today we will:

• Continue working on our infographic projects
• Create a new blog post with our progress. Include:
  • a PDF of your project
  • a PNG of your project
  • a few sentences explaining what has been easy and what is still challenging