Project description: "The goal of this project was to make things easy to read, navigate and understand. The foundation for creating an clear informational structure is a a strong typographic hierarchy. Type size, weight, and color are the the first steps. Graphic elements (lines, arrows, grids) and page structure are often used to aid in establishing a clear hierarchy."
Content: The timeline must have had a range of dates, intro text, each point in time must have had a date and each point of time must have had at least one sentence. Images, icons, graphic elements were optional.
Challenge: How can I visualize the content? How can the audience get a quick understanding about the topic? How are they pulled into the content to find out more?
Project Overview: I found this project to be a very fast project. It was a totally different process than the first project. I felt that this project did not need as much time to complete but at the same time I felt that it was an extremely short amount of time. I struggled a lot in the beginning on whether I should create a book or a poster. I wanted to do a book because I wanted something different from my other posters that I have created. In the end, I created a poster. The main reason for this was because it was difficult to create an interesting book when the dates and events had such large gaps between one another. I felt that the poster was a lot more effective in showing time and was more visually pleasing. The only thing that I did not like about the project is that that this blog post is the process book. I like having an actual process book rather than have a digital one. I can understand why we did not do one instead of the blog because there is hardly anything to put in one. Overall I liked the project and also learned a thing or to about important events that happened millions of years ago.
First Round: The first round of timelines that I created were not thought out very well and would not successfully show 'time' very well. I began by first designing a timeline that would fold out into a large poster-like timeline. Each era would be a separate color and there would be more fold outs depending on how long the era was. The second concept was another book that folded out horizontally and each era would line up together either at the top or at the bottom but at the same time the entire book would look staggered. Again, each era would be longer depending on the length of it. The third idea was a poster that showed time by an arch form. This was the least successful of the three designs and the idea was to fit different images into the arches but this would be difficult because the image would be small and distorted, making it a challenge to understand what the poster was all about.
Idea One:
Idea Two:
Second Round: For the second round I decided to get rid of the poster idea and work with the books. I added in rough dates and lengths of the periods to see how the book would lay out. Overall, horizontally, the book layouts seemed to work out fairly well. The problem that I had with the staggered timeline was that some of the pages were different widths and would not fold very neatly. I then began thinking about making little tabs on each page to show a peek of what would be on the next page. I would also make the pages the same width so they would fold together better. The other idea was to create pull out tabs that showed images of the different species of life while the dates and descriptions of what happened during that time inside the book. This would make the timeline more organized and at the same time it would also add another element. This idea backfired...
Third Round: For round three I decided to place the actual type that I will be using in instead of the images that were filling up the space. This was also important because this timline needed to be more type-heavy. I changed the color palette and thought that it would be more effective to turn the entire book vertical so that it would be easier to show time as it passed. When you look at it, when it is not folded up, the timeline effectively shows the evolution of time but as I folded it up into the booklet I found that I would be looking at many blank pages because of how much time elapses between the different eras. The idea of the book went down hill and I decided that it was not a good idea to push it any further.
Fourth Round: For the fourth round I decided to scratch the entire book idea. I created a poster instead. I feel that it showed time just as well and there was a decent amount of negative space without leaving an overwhelming amount. I placed all of the dates and events on a circular grid so that the viewer can read the events from the bottom right up to the top left. I then placed the era names next to all of the dates so that they would connect to the sub eras that were placed horizontally at the top. The problem with this idea is that it is difficult to see how the sub eras relate to the main eras. I added a white strip with different sections to try and help this problem but it is still hard to show how the top of the poster relates to the bottom dates and events. I thought that the texture was also a good idea, but when printed out it seemed to look cheesey and did not work with the concept.
Fifth Round: For round five I got rid of the textured background completely and added the names of the eras on the top, white strip so that it was easier to see what sub eras fit in each era. I also took the dates of the events and changed them to the color of the sub era that they fit into. This helped a lot and made the poster feel a lot more connected. The title was changed to and emphasizes the word 'evolution' instead of 'life.' The title is smaller and gives the viewer another feeling of time passing.
Final Round: For the final poster I evened out the width of the white strip so that it was the same as the strip of sub eras. I then increased the size of the text so that more of the negative space was filled up and it would be easier to read the events. I tweak the curve of the type and adjusted the opacities of the few dates that were difficult to read. Overall, a lot did not change between the fifth and final round.
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