Educational Infographic
The content conveyed in the infographic is how to arrange items inside a backpack for camping. The arrangement of the items is based on their weight and their location in the pack. The backpack is divided into four sections. The bottom and the top of the backpack contain mid-weight items. The middle area of the back includes the heaviest things next to the wearer's back. The lightest things are closer to the outer edge of the pack. Included in the infographic is a breakdown of the most common items that go into each backpack area based on their weight and necessity.This is pertinent information for an infographic because the pack, the items, and where they go are all easily shown visually. In a concise amount of time, the user can easily understand and implement the information in the infographic.
Tools used: Procreate, Canva, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe IllustratorThe target audience would be first-time campers or hikers who have never used a hiking pack before or relative newcomers to camping who need a reminder of what items to pack.
The context here can be both educational and performance. It is educational in providing new hikers a knowledge of how to pack their backpacks in terms of the significant weight-class items and where they should go in the pack. It can also be used as a just-in-time guide for someone when packing their backpack. The box next to each item can be used as a checklist to ensure the user includes the necessary items while camping.
The main elements of the infographic are text, color-coded clip art, and several checklists.
Text:
The text included in the infographic is the main title, four sections with their heading, and a short list of items.
Picture (clip art):
The picture in the center of the infographic is a color-coded hiking backpack. Each color is aligned with an area of the pack and the relevant weight class and list.
Checklist:
Each list doubles as a checklist to mark off the items when packing.
The idea for the content was decided, and a rough sketch was drawn on an iPad using Procreate. The main components were the image of the backpack and the four areas of the backpack for the different weighted items.
The color scheme was chosen while creating the infographic in Canva. A picture of a person hiking was uploaded into https://color.adobe.com, and a color palette was extracted, as shown below. The idea was that a color pallet matching the outdoors would be a good fit for an camping related infographic.
Shown here is the first idea created in Canva. The clip art image of the backpack had not yet been found in Canva, and the general idea was to show the color-coded pack, drawn as a side profile, and the corresponding weight areas.This idea was rejected because the text took up too much space, and there was alack of coherence between the elements.
Some sketches were drawn to think about how to arrange the elements differently.
The general idea and color scheme was applied in Adobe Illustrator with clip art of a backpack from Canva. The pack was filled in different colors in Adobe Photoshop using the quick selection and bucket tools.
After usability testing, the background was changed to better contrast with the other colors and the white font. The title was also changed to avoid confusion between day hiking and camping. Also, the layout was changed to better align with design principles, which provided the final version.
When designing the infographic, there was much consideration given to fundamental design principles. It was essential for the text and image to be clear and to clearly distinguish the figure and the ground. During the development process, the background color was changed to allow for more contrast between the main elements of the background, the text boxes, and the image of the pack. Another aspect of figure-ground was using a clip art backpack instead of an actual photo. This principle of selection allows the user to easily select and see the different parts of the backpack due to the lack of extraneous information.
The content shown in the infographic was easily separated and allowed for the chunking of the content into the relevant parts of the backpack. It should be apparent to the user where different items in the backpack should go.The information is easier to absorb and integrate due to being chunked in this way.
The hierarchy of the text is clearly seen with a large sized main title, and smaller sized body text. The hierarchy designed in the infographic aligns with how one should pack the backpack. The hierarchy is from top left to right, followed by the lower left to right. Each section has its title, whose font is bold and different to distinguish it from the listed items below.
The entire layout of the infographic follows a quadrant grid system.Separating the pack into four areas and creating four distinct regions reduces cognitive load so important information can be easily understood by the user.
Despite a clear hierarchy and a color-coded scheme visually connecting each box to a separate area of the backpack, numbers were added to each textbox to guide the user through the information and ideally pack their backpack in the order shown.
