Presentation Idea

I have created five A1 pages with images from my book, I will cut these out and place them onto foam board to make them not curl up. Once on foam board I will hang them around my display case where my books are held to make it stand out more.

Setting up for the Show.

Now my book has been printed and made my next focus is on set design. This picture is taken from Vault49 and is along the lines of something I want to achieve.

Further research / Guide

I purchased this book the other day, it shows examples of how to present work and also shows interviews from designers so they can give advice and tips with information design work. This book also has 30 case studies which I plan to do over the Summer to continue my interest in Information Graphics and develop my skills further after the FMP.

Information is Beautiful / David McCandless

I purchased this book online and it arrived today, this book is beautiful and has me totally hooked.

There is such a variety of work and information and this will inspire some edits on my pages. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in infographics.

Alternate Front Cover - Inspired by Gerd Arntz.

This front cover was inspired by Gerd Arntz who's Isotype's have been an inspiration for some of my work in this project, just wanted to try a different front cover as the more ideas I have the better work I can create...well that's my theory anyway.

Isotype - Massive Inspiration for my project.

Isotype's have been the backbone of this project for me really, since all I've been doing is using silhouette looking images that resemble something from the time period I'm looking into. Isotype's originated in the 1930s by Austrian philosopher and curator Otto Neurath 'as a symbolic way of representing quantitative information via easily interpretable icons', early infographics basically.

Further Research Into InfoGraphics.

This is from the site informationisbeautiful, the title of this piece is 'most common words in toy adverts'. A relatively dull title but the way it has been realised in terms of graphics gives it vibrancy and life. This one is just for male toys with the more popular names larger and more noticeable. Information Graphics is something I have really come to love over the last few months and is something I want to focus on in the future.

Greek Expansion DPS.

This is my Greek Expansion DPS, as you've probably realised it's based on the vases/pots they made, as is the colour scheme. The gradient doesn't really work as a JPEG so the quality doesn't really do it justice.

A2 Poster Idea.

This is my A2 poster idea to use in the show next to my stand. It goes with the style I've used throughout my pages and I think the idea of using a dictionary style definition of the word gives it more meaning and will show people what my project is about in a simple easy to understand way, it's almost like a sub-title.

The Renaissance DPS

This is my Renaissance DPS, the left page talks about how the renaissance changed peoples views on art, thought and people so I thought it would be fitting to do the Vitruvian man by Da Vinci using just simple shapes. The right side shows an example of Renaissance architecture.

Birth Of Christianity.

This is my DPS for the Birth Of Christianity.

Typography overhaul!

I've just spent a good long while re-working the text on all of my pages, I want my text there to be read and not to be used in an artistic way which is why it is mostly in block form.

The font i've gone for is Orator STD as it fits well with the modern computerised look I've gone for. The highest point size I've used is 10 apart from titles which has given me much more negative space so I can add and move around different parts now.

Foundation of Rome.

This is my Foundation of Rome dps, the central image is based on a Roman maze that were mosaics on the floor. The mazes were loosely based on standard Roman city layouts and I think aesthetically it draws the reader in straight away. Like my other more developed dps's i've tried to keep the narrative strong and keep it in context.

Re-Working the pages.

Now I've finished every page of my DPS, my plan now is to go back over my pages and re-work, alter and edit it all to improve it as much as I can. Just browsing the web I found this tutorial specifically for Illustrator CS5 which informs you about various ways to present information and how you can go about doing that. Now time for some editing!

Third...and FINAL attempt on the Vikings.

This is my third version of the Viking DPS, you can see how it has changed looking at the previous attempts. The narrative is now much more clear and if you saw the previous boat style attempt it now looks much less disgustingly horrible. I still need to add more information but I am much more happy with the overall look of it.

Front and Back Cover.

Front and back cover idea, want to keep it in the vectored silhouette style I'm now trying to get across to give my work an more distinct over all theme.

This is my new concept for the Early Man DPS, kind of like Barnbrook's human evolutionary timeline. It shows ape evolving to modern man. I'm also sticking to a theme of using silhouettes for a lot of my pages to give it an over arching theme and style.

Updated version of Modern World DPS.

I wanted to show the good and bad sides of today's world, showing major pro's and con's that affect most people in the world in at least some small way.

Development of Modern World DPS

This is the last part of the zine I am working on, focusing on the modern world. This is what I've got so far.

Re-worked Viking DPS.

So taking on board the criticism that my Viking DPS lacked narrative I re-did it to get across the Viking narrative more but still using the triangles. As you can see I used the triangles to make the boat sail and sea and put the type going across the sail.

Maya DPS

This is my dps for the maya empire, I wanted to make it look like pixel art which I am a big fan of. I think the way the type is layed out and presented needs some work but I am happy with the overall layout and idea of it. The colour scheme works well and makes the images stand out much more.

Civil War DPS

This is my dps for the civil war, wanted to do a more literal theme for this one and create an old newspaper look for it. I think it comes across pretty well and creates a sense of style for the time period.

The beginning of Art.

So since this one is about the origins of art I wanted it to visually melt your eyes. I wanted to show a strong visual focus on colour and shape and just look visually interesting as sometimes things can look good for the sake of looking good.

World War 1+2 DPS

This is my dps for World War one and two, I only have about 4 pages out of the 30 to do now and I think having to do so many different pages has helped me with using different elements of graphic design and looking at different aspects of design.

I tried to play about with the type more on this one so your eyes would automatically be drawn to certain parts of the pages and hopefully it worked to the desired effect.

Isotype inspired DPS.

This is my DPS for Church life in Europe 1000-1200 AD. My inspiration for this design has been isotype and I think it comes across pretty well. It probably will get altered and tweaked but I am happy with the overall style of it.

Target Audience.

I haven't really said who I'm aiming my Zine at so I shall do so. I think now I've started developing my work it has defiantly become strongly focused on infographics and due to the look I'm going for I think a younger audience would be less interested in my work, I'd say my work is aimed at young adults onwards and don't really need to know anything about graphics or infographics but I hope it still looks visually interesting to them and they can learn from my work. From the people I have showed my work to who know nothing about graphics, family / friends , they have said it does look interesting and the information intriguing so it's a good start.

A look at my Viking DPS.

Here's a finished double page spread looking at the Vikings, this is my favourite so far so I thought this would be a good one to show. Also since it's a jpeg the quality probably doesn't do it justice.

Notes...Way too many notes!

These are a few of my pages from my sketchbook, including notes on the various time periods I'm looking at and also one photo shows how I worked out how I would lay out my pages and page numbers ect.

Idea for Front cover.

This was my idea for my front cover for the zine, I like the basic style of it and I think it really reflects the pages I've made for it so far.

Sketchbook Work.

For this project pretty much everything I've been doing is in my sketchbook as I prefer to use that than blogs, so when I can next use a scanner I will scan all of my work to show what research I have been doing and how I've been laying out my notes and producing ideas.

Examples of information graphics and use of shapes.

These are examples of information graphics by

Nicholas Feltron. I think the use of shapes and colour is the key to what makes it so visually interesting and is something I really need to look into, my earlier post of my first page shows I have tried to incorporate this so I will need to further improve on this in future work.

Frist chapter done on Illustrator.

This is the first page of my Zine, as you can see the layout has changed and I have simplified it much more after looking through Barnbrook's book. I like the colour scheme and the use of shapes works pretty well.

Inspiration

This book is full of information graphics and is very cutting edge, I think I've tried to over complicate my work and lose focus on graphic design so this book has been a great source of inspiration and really helped me out.

Sketching idea for page layout.

This was my idea for the layout of the page, I wanted to keep it quite simplistic so the information isn't over shadowed by imagery.

Development of first chapter.

This is the research I gathered for my first chapter on early man using various history books.

Final List of topics for Zine.

After reading through multiple history books of the world and human history and many hours of pulling my hair out I've finally made my list of topics for the Zine.

At first this list was 36 topics long, then I narrowed it down to 24 and then I got it to the nice number of 15 which is defiantly enough.

The list of subjects I will focus on for my Zine will be:-

- Early man ( Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, Aboriginals )

-Beginning of Art

-Ancient Egypt

-Foundation of Rome

-Greek Expansion

-Birth of Christianity

-Maya Empire

-Viking Culture

-Church Life 1000-1200 AD Europe

-Rise of an empire-Aztecs

-The Renaissance

-French Revolution

-U.S Civil War

-World War 1 + 2

-Modern World

All these topics will be interesting to look at how we as humans thought at the time ( religion, science, Lifestyle ) , what society was like and also look at the culture.

Research / Sources

These are some of the books I am using for my research, I am using a sketchbook to write down important information and sketches so I can figure out which parts I will use in my Zine.

Together these books cover the entire human history and civilisations so I will be getting a lot of my research from them. For the more well known civilisations I shall buy books specifically for that time period e.g. Egyptology.

At the moment the hardest task is figuring out what different time periods I will look at and which civilisations.

Creation / Evolution

I feel as though I should bring up the science vs religion debate as I'm sure people reading this will have their own views and opinions on both matters.

I would like to state that focusing on evolution for this project is in no way me trying to be anti-religious and I fully accept peoples views and opinions on both topics. For my project I plan on backing up all my work with scientific and historical evidence only so there is no conjecture or guess work involved and it is up to you whether you want to believe it or not.

Charles Darwin - The father of evolution.

Charles Darwin was a British naturalist who in 1859 wrote a very important book called the Origin of species. Darwin had realized that animals and plants change over long periods of time because they compete for food and mates. Only the 'best' or 'fittest' creatures survive, and those alive today the result of millions of years of evolution. This is called natural selection. Darwin caused a furore in 19th century England by applying his theories to humans; the discovery of Neanderthal fossils proved that humans are also the product of evolution.

The work of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution will greatly influence my first few pages of the zine.

Human Nature : We can explore space and split the atom, but we still have widespread slavery, racial discrimination, and injustice.

The world is nearly 6 billion years old. Yet the story of people like us, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, or modern humans, who have existed for only 100,000 years have shaped and changed the world in such massive ways in what is only a fraction of time in the history of the world.

Human nature is the concept that there is a set of inherent distinguishing characteristics, including ways of thinking, feeling and acting, that all humans tend to have. I intend to explore this throughout the human time line so we can see how from the earliest man we still have similar characteristics and also how we've changed and the human mind has evolved.

Proposal.

The word parent can interpreted in many different ways, I wanted to use the word as a very abstract concept. After looking up the word parent in the dictionary it says origin and ancestor. The idea of origin got me thinking about our ancient ancestors and how we ( Homo Sapiens ) have changed so much since the earliest sign of man ( Homo Habilis ). I think it will also be interesting to show how human nature stays the same, for example there has always been war, prejudice and greed within human society and different cultures show this in their own unique ways.

For my project I would like to create a timeline showing earliest man to modern day man, highlighting the different great civilisations and how we as humans have evolved and also how culture and how we think has changed.

I think it would be best to do this as a Zine so on the one page I would write information about the people of that time along with interesting facts and research. On the other page I would show a graphic illustration of what that person may look like and the surroundings would show the location and culture etc. I would want this to be a combination of infographics and cutting edge graphic design.

A follow up to this idea would be to make A2 posters showing just the imagery so it makes a large visual timeline.

This idea would require a large amount of research from books, internet sources, history programmes and other related articles but I personally would find this incredibly interesting as ancient history and Darwinian theory has always fascinated me.