Lobbying Infographic Poster
In this project our goal was to incorperate one household object. This object needed to be apart and have a research topic related to the object itself. In my case I did a poster related to lobbying in Congress. My goal was to provide a clear and informative poster and tried to keep the it balance and use the bill in the poster.
Tools used
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe After Effects
Isolated Shapes
Image tracing the bill helped me isolate the shapes, but I needed make adjustments as image trace while useful doesn’t always get the shapes right. I eliminated everything that blended too much from the bill and change the colors to add more shadows. Landing on this version and used it in the first draft of my poster.
Original Form
This project revolved around having to make use of one household obejct. So long as the object was common and can be held your hand you’d be able to us it. In my case was the dollar bill. Part of exploration was using the general shape of the bill to get the flow and direction where the bill moves to
Clean up
After getting the dollars shape into a state I’m satisfied with, however some clean up was needed. I made adjustments to the general shape, by sharpening the corners, got rid some distracting elements, and brought back some other details to still maintain the look of the dollar bill. After trial and error I came up with this final version and would make use of it in my next versions of the infographic.
First Draft
This poster is the first draft I made for it. I made use of the curve of the bill to use the seating arrangement of the house of representatives. Three primary colors were used here with Blue, Red, and Purple. Grey was used in two places, the infographic’s title and for representation of congress members who were not influenced. One key issue that I came across with this first iteration, was that it came across as being too busy with the colors fighting for attention and the text being difficult to read.
Refined Version
This second iteration was what I came up with following public feedback. I rearranged the text at the bottom and aligned it much better than it was previously. I also reduced the competing colors and unified it to be much more concise. The bills shaped also got touched up and got an update to reduce the visual clutter. While I was satisfied with the results of the dollar remake, I still felt that there was some missing information. So I went back and expand and added more relevant data.
Final Version
The end results weren’t quiet there in the previous version so I went back an added more information to the poster. With more information added I had to move around the text, add data elements, and adjust the sizes of the text. I organized the text and added subheadings to make viewer navigation much better. I also noticed that there was too much negative space in the previous version of the poster and thus took more elements of the dollar bill and spread them thorughout the infographic. The bill itself was also reduced as to not compete with the information while also still being prelevant. I added more symbols to provide more clarity for people when they read the information such clearly defined democrat and republican members.
