Information Design/ Project 1 Instructable Poster

Leong Jia En 0348366

Bachelor of Creative Media Design (Minor)

Information Design

Project 1

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Instructions

Project 1 Instructable Poster

In project 1, we were required to design an infographic poster for one recipe selected from Pasta Grannies @ https://www.youtube.com/user/pastagrannies/videos. We need to study one video, breakdown and chunk the preparation and cooking process into an instructable poster and try to capture each Grandma’s personality and unique dish identity in our poster as part of the narrative structure.

The recipe I chose was Rosa's Chestnut Cake (Castagnaccio) because it reminded me of the chestnut cake my grandma used to make for us when I was a kid.

Fig 1.0 Pasta Grannies celebrate Christmas with Rosa's chestnut cake (28/1/2023)

First, I screenshotted some important scenes and then typed down the recipe on Google Docs and organized the different steps into sections.

Fig 1.1 Recipe breakdown (28/1/2023)

Fig 1.2 Screenshot of scenes (28/1/2023)

Then, I researched some references for layout and design style on Pinterest. The main color chosen is a warm palette that reflects the mood of the video with some minor cool color scheme to create contrast.

Fig 2.0 Moodboard (28/1/2023)

Fig 2.1 Color Palette (28/1/2023)

Here are some creative sketches of different layouts and flows. In the first sketch, I organized the steps with a snake flow. Then, I tried to reorganize the layout based on the references I found as shown in sketch #2.

Fig 3.0 Sketch #1 (28/1/2023)

Fig 3.1 Sketch #2 (28/1/2023)

Once I was satisfied with the layout, I started drawing the poster illustration in Adobe Illustrator.

Fig 4.0 Progress in Adobe Illustrator (29/1/2023)

Fig 5.0 Digitised Layout #1 (29/1/2023)

Fig 5.2 Digitised Layout #2 (29/1/2023)

The layout is designed with the L.A.T.C.H theory that we have learned.

-Location: portray chestnut cake on the table 

-Alphabet: Main steps are bigger point size, and the detail is the smaller point size.

-Time: baking time (45 minutes).

-Category: Ingredients and steps.

-Hierarchy: Organize the steps from top to bottom.

Feedback

Option 2 is better. But the instructions are quite small. The important details, like quantity or time can be made bigger than the other words so there will be a hierarchy of text. Also, the images in the center look very light and there's very little contrast with the background.

Final Outcome

Fig 6.0 Final Poster (11/2/2023)

Animated Poster

After finalizing my poster, I started to organize the layout in AI for animation production. I grouped and named the layers to make the animation process more convenient and easy. I split the scene into opening, ingredients, 6 steps, ending and credits for editing.

Fig 7.0 Assets in AI (12/2/2023)

Fig 7.1 Grouping and rename layers in AI (13/2/2023)

Fig 7.2 Progress in After Effects (14/2/2023)

Fig 8.0 Animated Poster 1st Draft (14/2/2023)

After completing the animation, I exported it and then added background music and sound effects. Here is the final outcome:

Fig 9.0 Final Animated Poster  (15/2/2023)

Reflection

Through this project, I learned that designing a good infographic requires a lot of planning. A good infographic is easy to understand and grabs the audience's attention in some way. When creating an infographic poster, I have been struggling to find ideas that meet all the necessary requirements. Especially explain the steps while keeping the required steps in the text without being too wordy. One of my observations is that chunking information is everywhere, and it's a very useful way to organize large amounts of information. At the same time, hierarchy is also an extremely important part of information design. Overall, I had a lot of fun doing this assignment and would love to design an interesting infographic again.