Stuck for ideas. Any help is good help! Informational design

shiibbyy

New Member
Hello, my name is Kieran and i am a uni student in the UK. I have been given a project about 2 weeks ago where my final outcome is to make an A2 poster in the style of a "Informational Design" (for those of you who havent seen these or dont know what they are, here is a link to an amazing website Information Is Beautiful | Ideas, issues, knowledge, data - visualized! )

So the problem is that i have to pick a subject that i can research easily into its statistics and turn them into ratios... yes ratios. Thats the reason why im finding it hard. So for example i was going to do the music industry, i was thinking i could do the ratio of illegal downloaded tracks compared to bought ones, now ofcourse my A2 poster has to have more then one ratio on it so another could be cds per person per household. but rthere isnt much i can go on that is highly related or intresting.

Can you guys think of ANYTHING. i mean anything.... my friend in class is doing it on guitars... so ratio of acoustic to electric, bass to electric etc etc.

Anything will help, thanks!
 
I did a project like on ratio at uni. I think I did mine on pick-a-mix sweets and just made it all up.

I remember someone did it the ratio between alcohol and mixers, ie gin and tonic, rum and coke etc..
 
Yep. Information graphics. It really doesn't matter subject you pick. The idea of the brief is to get the information/stats designed in a nice way.
 
Always an old chestnut... male/female. If you wanted to do music you could do ...likes/dislikes of genres/bands ... CD/MP3/Vinyl
 
Just take something that you're the most interested in and then work out as many possible ratios to that question that you can think off?

So like Kate said, for music:

CD's/MP3/Vinyl/Casette Tapes
iPod owners to not iPod owners
download legally/download illegally

There's a lot of possibilities if you put your mind to it. If you think of a subject you want to spend the time exploring, then let us all know, we'll be able to help further!
 
You could add sales/downloads of UK artists compared to the rest of the world. This could then be compared against certain years, as I am pretty sure the growth in downloading and the way we access / hear of music and artists will have changed significantly. One would assume the proportion of music outwith the UK would have grown.
 
Surely what is being looked at here is the artwork conveying the information, not the actually stats...


Well yes but that isnt the problem i am struggling with. I have an idea of simple block colours and im most likely going to screen print them for a nice texture. I am just really struggling picking a theme/subject to discuss. I may do music as some people extended upon but i am finding it hard to find the statistics on some things.

I really like the alcohol idea. I may have to look into that i mean, i just have to find recipes and turn them into ratios. GREAT!

Anything else people can think of? Also if any final images pop into your head let me know, i love sharing ideas.
 
Just take something that you're the most interested in and then work out as many possible ratios to that question that you can think off?

So like Kate said, for music:

CD's/MP3/Vinyl/Casette Tapes
iPod owners to not iPod owners
download legally/download illegally

There's a lot of possibilities if you put your mind to it. If you think of a subject you want to spend the time exploring, then let us all know, we'll be able to help further!

The problem i am having with the music subject is they kind of drift away from each other and seem unrelated after a few stages. I really want something where I can have for example if i were to do male/female. I could just have loads of blue men shaped images and then loads of pink girl shaped images. It would look clean and simple, the kind of effect i want.

Any ideas at all? I mean I dont really mind what the subject is... I wont find that part intresting but the part where i actually get to design... would be aawesome.
 
My first thought was army statistics. So how many people out of the country join on avg.. make a ratio from that. How many quit how many get shipped out, how many die (out of them on field or later from injuries) How many return home hurt:fine etc but i thought for a project this is a bit to.... extreme? I mean it may look a bit disturbing.

I then thought of music, illegal to legal downloads, cds-mp3, ipod-other mp3, etc but all them on music seem a bit distant and slowly get unrelated from the original topic.

After being stuck not thinking of anything i came here and asked for some ideas. I have been looking on the drink idea, seems good and i can think of a really good idea for it. But as for other thoughts i was thinking along the line of maybe thinkiong outside the box... and talking about the golden ratio in design? hit them with a ratio they didnt expect? But as for what information to lay across... i cant think of anything.

As for the design.. when i thought of the army i thought of using the kind of men signs on a male bathroom and stacking them up in a ratio. Then when i talk about injured.. stick a bandage on thier head. With the dead ones, use a coffin not a person... I really do like the milatary idea and would go with it if people agree and say it isnt disturbing? It could me more of a .... shock tactic? A way of getting acroos what actually happens in a war?
 
Ah golden ratio. About 5 people did that in my class. All of them used history of art, Da Vinci, old paintings etc..

The army one sounds good. You could simplify it a bit. Take all the major conflicts since WW1 for example, and do the ratios of alive to killed or something like that.
 
I really like the major conflicts idea... "Major conflicts of history" i shall havea quick look at some stats for that :) see how much depth i can go into.
 
If you're looking at ratios could you not base the project on The Budget and that gives a whole range of comparisons. Prices before, after... ratio of money people were spending on blah 50 years ago compared to doday. Yestareday cigarettes went up by 37p, the ratio of people who are likely to buy less now / this is what they were spendign last week, this is what they will be spending next week. Petrol prices, God it's pretty limitless and gives you a broad spectrum.
 
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