Designing The News

Well here’s the first couple of experiments. The headline was taken from the Guardian newspaper on beer consumption in the UK. Only the second part of the headline was used as it had some really great words in it that made for some excellent pictograms.

“Do we think we’ve had enough? Beer sales plunge as Britons stay at home” - The Guardian

The first experiment was to create clear, simple, distinguishable pictograms that replaced the words. The words ‘as’ and ‘at’ were omitted as they were unnecessary to the readability of the headline.

As a second experiment, the outlined images were textured with photographic textures to enhance the symbols. I think doing this really makes them jump off the page.

So those were my first experiments with infographics. All together it took around 12 hours or so to do, with creating the templates for future experiments and easing myself back into Illustrator after a year of absence taking up about a quarter. A little more practice and I should have no trouble halving that time. At 1280x1024 they are pretty much wallpaper size, if you’re so inclined. Enjoy.

Also there’s a little more of the theme coming into play here and there. I’d appreciate it if you let me know what you think.