Mogwai Infographic

I chose the band, Mogwai, because after listening to a couple of their tracks I really liked the atmospheric sound they gave and soon I was downloading a lot of their music because I wanted to listen to them, not because I had to do an infographic poster on the band.

As I found out quite early on in my project, Mogwai's album and track names are completely random and are just things that may have happened to them or makes them laugh. This means that the track names have nothing to do with the music of the track and I couldn't focus any designs around the names as I wanted to focus on just their music also.

After mainly listening to their 5th album, Mr Beast, I found that their music was very uplifting, motivational and inspirational. They hardly include vocals and use a lot of instruments including instruments hooked up to the computer to make more electronic/robotic sounds. Other tracks can be more relaxing and atmospheric and I wanted to include this idea also.

From initial ideas and sketches, I started to think of how the music would look like visually and looked at how the music was gradually building up, whether it was the level of sound or the amount of instruments being used. My sketches looked like line graphs and when I added more tracks to my graph, I noticed that it started to look like a Scottish, hilly landscape and I really liked this idea because Mogwai are a Scottish based band, they include the Scottish countryside in some of their music videos, and when you listen to their music, you can imagine standing in the Scottish countryside looking at all of the scenery. The colour of each graph represents what colours I think of when listening to the music, and it also looks like the cover of each album.

The font that I used for the infographic is Levinim MT. I chose this because I wanted to use a sans-serif typeface that wasn't too bold. I really like the typography used on Mogwai's most recent album "Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will" as I think it suits their style and music, so I wanted to get as close to this as possible.

Rip it up and start again!

This infographic is not easy to understand because there is a lot of information and I found that I didn't know where to start. I think that it looks too busy and a bit squashed and this doesn't look clear. You can tell that it is comparing royal weddings through the images and large text but need to read the small print to gat what it actually means.

I did learn from the infographic but it is not really important information, it is more trivial. The information about royal wedding dresses is easier to understand because it is about length , and they have used a horizontal bar graph to show how long the dress is. It is simple and effective, and it is not busy which helps to make it stand out.





The target user is people who are interested in the royals, people who watched the wedding all over the world. The user knows that it is British from the colours and get a hint of what each information will be from the images next to the small print.

The hierarchy of the infographic is simple and clear to begin with: title, heading, sub-headings, body of text. However this is abandoned half way through and their is information under sub-headings that has got nothing to do with it and a banner which looks like it should be a sub-heading, turns out to be information and has a lot of text.

The typography used in the infographic suits the fact that it is trivial and is not so serious. However, it does communicate anything about there being a wedding or being royal. They have used the same type all the way through the infographic which I don't know whether it would look better using a different font, but the fact that the title and sub-headings are the same size and font doesn't look good. I would think that a script font is assosiated with weddings and could have used this to make the title stand out.

The images used in the infographic are simple, sillhouette that is clear to what the thing is without using a lot of detail. I think the images are the best thing on the infographic as you can tell what they are clearly talking about, its simple yet fun, and they use the same colours as the rest of the design.

Colour is important in the infographic as it only uses red, whte, blue and gold. This makes it very clear that it is British and the gold adds to the fact that it is regal.

Type and imagery work well together. I think that the imagery helps the type a lot because you see the image and know what they are going to talk about in the small text. There is a clear link between both, the image is also a hint and the text holds more information.

I interperit the infographic as being very simple, average, cheap and not very stylish. This does not suit the design style of royal weddings at all. You could imagine the royal wedding to be dreamlike (princesses), out of this world, classical, traditional, victorian? The royal wedding always has an awe about it as it is out of the ordinary, a special occasion, a moment in history, and this is just not.

For this infographic they would have to do a lot of research on William and Kate aswell as other royal weddings. This would be things like statistics but more gossip like and not so strict so it focused on fashion or money. You would then design your infogrphic based around the inormation you have gathered and also the royal weeding itself and what people think of when they hear "royal" or "wedding". They would then have to choose images if they wanted to use them and how it tied in with their information. Finally, they need to use hierarchy to show information that they think is most important and what they want to stand out more than others.







How do I get there?



My journey starts off by waiting on the bus on a very cold and dark morning. When the bus eventually comes I see the lights that are far too bright at this time in the morning and is hard to read, however the X76 jumps out at me so I know that it is my bus. I get on the bus and usually fall asleep or rest my eyes until the bus reaches kilmarnock bus station. It is still peaceful though and I feel more awake now. When we get on the motorway, the bus is travelling pretty fast and I get glimpses of the words and numbers from the signs, some stick out more than others. It is then a journey of starting and stopping, constantly and you see a flood of red lights infront of you. Now to the most important part of the journey - trying to get in to Glasgow. This is when the journey becomes alive with people moaning, shouting or laughing on the bus, now that everyone is awake. It seems as if there are cars coming from hundreds of different roads, all trying to get on the one road. This seems to be a lot of start and stop also which gets me frustrated, aswel as probably the drivers. Eventually, we enter Glasgow in a bright yet grey morning. I notice the amount of tall buildings around me as the bus stops every so often to let passengers off. It is not long before I get to Buchanan bus station and across the road to uni.

Helvetica

After watching the film Helvetica, I feel that I am much more interested in type, and also inspired in design and visual communication. I really enjoyed the film and all the different views and opinions of the designers that were interviewed in the film.

I also feel that I have learned a lot from the film, not only about type and Helvetica, but also about design and visually communicating yoour design to other people. I never knew how big Helvetica really is in terms of typographic design. When it first appeared in the late 50's, everyone raved about it and everyone started to use it in their design because it was neutral but also looked good. Then, in the 70's there was a sense for the need for change and designers started to rebel against Helvetica and were more creative with typefaces in a way to communicate emotion or feeling. After this, in the 90's, designers wanted to go back to the design styles of the 60's, when Helvetica was massively popular, but add or change the typefaces in a way to create a style that suited them, or the mood of the design they were creating it for.

Some of things that surprised me about the film were some of the views and opinions about some of the designers that were being interviewed. It was clear that each of them were passionate aboute typography and design but they all saw this in different ways. One designer said that the role of the graphic designer is to "cure visual disease" which I found to be an intersesting and odd way to think of it because I never really thought of design in this way - makes it sound so serious and takes away the fun of designing I think. I also found it really surprising as to how many designers love Helvetica because I never noticed that it was so popular just because I see it used on everyday design.

The things I found most funny from the film were comments from the designers on Helvetica and also design. One designer compared Helvetica to previous typefaces as "slating crud off old things and poloshing them" and having a "mouth full of dust and then being offered a glass of fresh water". Whereas another designer simple says that it would "bore the shit out of you".

Their were a couple of new designers in the film which I hadn't heard of before which I would like to learn more about. I was intruiged by them mostly again of their strong views and opinions of design. One of these designers was Stefan Segmiester. I can remember seeing some of his work before but now I seem more interested because of how he spoke of design and his way of designing also. He is very creative and his work is quite shocking. He said that Helvetica was boring and when he sees it he hears "don't read me". Another new designer that I had discovered was Micheal Place. I really liked the look of the designs that I had saw in the film and also how he interpreted design - he says that he is not a classical typographer, he is not really intersested in the anatomy of the type but the emotional response that the design produce - which I also feel strongly about.

David Carson was one of the designers that influenced my last project who was interviewed in the film. I feel as though I learned more about his character and also his design style. He basically threw any typographic styles out of the window and never planned his work because he din't know how to - he was an amatuer who was just being creative and experimenting. Some of the things that he said that really stood out to me were "don't confuse legibillity with communication" and there is a "fine line between simple, clean, and powerful with simple, clean, and boring.

The designers in the film had many different views of the Helvetica typeface - some loved, some hated and some didn't really feel anything from it. Designers who loved the type said that it was a "real step from 19th century typeface", "timeless", it "seems like air, seems like gravity", and "invites open interpretation", a "landslide waiting to go down a slope". Designers who hated the typeface mainly said that it was boring - it would "bore the shit out of you" and it says "don't read me". Other designers said that they "accept that its just there" and that anyone could use it and it would look good but not very interesting. Their comments obviously showed their opinion but also their emotional response to the typeface.

I took a lot of confidence from the way that the designers spoke about typefaces that encourages me to also speak about my emotional responce to a typeface rather that how it has been designed and its anatomy. This means that your view can be totally different to someone elses but this is what design and visual communication is about.

This film definetly made me think more about Helvetica. I think I am going to notice more of it now which will do my head in, but in terms of design, I think I need to work more with the typeface to come to a conclusion to whether I am for or against Helvetica. I would say though that I do like the idea of taking something old and experimenting with it.

I'm not sure what my relationship with Helvetica is. I don't know whether I have grown up with it and just havn't noticed it until recently. I think that because it is used for almost every design on the street, it maybe just blended in and disappeared.

I think if I was to use Helvetica now, I would use it in something which was being designed for everyone because it is neutral and not too out there that it would divide too much opinion. However, I like the idea of designing to provoke an emotional response, which I don't really think Helvetica does, in which case I would probably avoid or experiment with Helvetica.

That font sure is saucy

Grids

Getting Around

Font choice: The font used on a stagecoach bus ticket looks like the dottie font by Robert Schenk but instead of using dots or squares it is lines. This font was designed for showing text in electronic devices such as computers e.g the old macintosh computers. The font isn't the easiest to read but then again it is not hard to read either. The more important information on the ticket is more readable because it is larger and a thicker line weight. I think this font was chosen because it is printed out electronically and it is meant to look like a physical representation of the information on the computer or the electronic device (a reciept). It is not fun or interesting - only used to hold information that may be important. The hierarchy used is appropriate in terms of the differnce of weight and scale of the text as the more important information (date, expiry date, price, type of ticket) are all in a larger scale and are in bold. However, I think the placement could maybe be improved on as it seems quite random.

Usabillity: the people who would use this ticket would be basically everyone - People who travel to work, students, teenagers, famillies, older people. If the ticket isn't important to them anymore ie. they don't need it to get back home for example, people just throw them away. I think that older people or people with bad eye sight may struggle slightly with them because the smaller text is quite small and crammed together, it is also quite thin which means that they might not be able to pick up on the letters as clearly.

&&&&&&&&& What?

- sans serif typeface
- all on baseline, no overhang
- like a silhouette broken into shapes
- thick and bold
- wide set width
- no difference in set line weight - not sharp
- no use of line - more shapes.


The & symbol that I have chosen made me think of the breast cancer ribbon. Mainly because of the area at the bottom right of the & looks like the edges of the ribbon but also it is a similar shape, but the & is a more geometric shape. This makes me think that this & shape is meant to unify people when they need the most help and support from family, friends, people in same experience. The & looks quite like a fun and bold typeface so this adds to my original thought in that people should think positive and be strong.

If it were a person I think that it would be strong, confident, friendly and outgoing. If it were a relationship I would say again that it was strong, trustworthy, unbreakable and reliable.

Hierarchy

Alignment

Long Lists

Inappropriate typography

When I first started to look for inappropriate typography, I looked at typogrophy used for logos, shop names etc. I found that in Glasgow it was a struggle because I couldn,t find any typefaces used that were inappropriate. I then opted for the Yellow Books to look at amatuer companys and hopefully find more amatuer design,.

I found this ad for a plasterer, R M Plastering.

For this ad, he has used Monotype Corsiva throughout the whole design. I think the type looks too messy and unattractive even in the company name which is bigger text, rather than using it again in everything else including the small body of text. I think he chose this design because he wanted his ad to stand out against other companys, which it does, but for the wrong reasons. This typeface doesn't suit what it it is designing for because it too playful, carefree and unproffesional, which is not what you want this type of company to be if you were to hire them. Because he has used the same typeface throughout the whole of the text, this makes the design look sloppy and careless. Some areas of text don't stand out as much e.g. FREE ESTIMATE, because he has used the same font throughout the whole design. This is what I would do with the text.

For the company name I chose lithus pro because I thought it clearly showed the text and still looked different from regular fonts. The contact details is Papyrus. I chose this font because it looks different but still looks kind of similar to the company name font. The last font I chose was Segeo Print for the body of text, but in bold caps for text at the bottom. I think the design still stands out against other ads of similar companys, it looks fun and more personal, which it should as it is this man's own company, and overall it looks cleaner, tidier and more professional.