Sketches & Concept

Building the Concept and Drafting the Design

The goal of this Phase is to figure out what information you have and how best to present it. The goal of  each project should be too:

• Enhance comprehension of complex concepts
• Strengthen the persuasiveness of claims
  
• Make key insights more memorable

Finalize Your Content

• Your project should have one main focused thesis:
  • What’s the core message?
  • What’s the main question being answered?
• Organize your content into a clear outline
• Use bullet points to organize details for each section
• Gather the right data to support your thesis.

References and Inspiration materials

• Pintrest – create a board for yourself of inspiring examples
• Gather images from a variety of sources that help to inspire and guide you
• Identify at least three designers who have successfully completed work that is inspiring and perhaps related to aspects of your project

Organize your Data – Graphs or Charts

Read through your data – what will be the most clear way to visualize your data.

• • • Inform: convey a single important message or data point that doesn’t require much context to understand
      (Big Number, Donut Chart, Pictogram)
      
    • Compare: show similarities or differences among values or parts of a whole (Bar Chart, Bubble Chart, Pie Chart, Stacked Bar Chart, Bubble Cloud, TreeMap, Word Cloud)
      
    • Show Change: visualize trends over time or space
      (Line Chart, Area Chart, Timeline, Map Chart)
      
    • Organize: show groups, patterns, rank or order
      (Lists, Flow Chart, Mind Map, Pyramid Diagram, Table, Ordered Bar Chart)
    • Reveal Relationships: show correlations among variables or values
      (Scatter Plot, Histogram, Multi-Series Chart)

Sketching

Develop concept and refine sketches (charts and graphs)

1. Create at least 10 sketches of your layout and related ideas
2. Each sketch MUST have a border around it, in proportion to the actual final work in order to clearly specify the dimensions of the space. Sketches can be scaled much smaller.
3. Sketches should give you a sense the of the space you are working with and show how you might organize the content to fit. Reference your outline from your content document. Work within a grid.

Typeface Selection

Carefully select (no more than 2) typefaces you would like to work with for your project. Do your research and show your research.

• Study the typefaces available to you in the FONT folder on the computers in class
• Choose two different typefaces that compliment each other, perhaps a serif and a sans serif
• Try to choose typefaces that come with a large variety of of fonts: Light, Condensed, Heavy, Extended, etc.