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.