Lessons My Infographic Taught Me

So this was infographic week in my J452 class and I can pretty confidently say everyone struggled with this one. I never thought trying to make several pictures tell a story would be so difficult. What looks interesting to one person looks weird to another. It seems that no infographic is actually perfect to every person that looks at it.

When designing my infographic I ran into several difficulties. The subject in which I was working on was the MLB Draft and the success of high school versus college students. This is a concept that in which not everyone understands what is important and not important to potential recruits looking at colleges.

Then and there I knew my main goal of my infographic needed to be that my design was both informative and understandable for people of all baseball backgrounds and those with lack thereof. I started by simplifying my design and removing several items in order to draw the eye to other places on the page. I then continued resizing things that I still had on the page as well as rearranging items experimenting with different designs.

The last hurdle I had to jump over was the difference in web versus print presentation. When looking at the design on a computer screen the colors were brilliant and the sizing was perceived to be correct, but when the infographic was in print the differences could be seen. When looking at the design as a print I found several pieces of the design that needed to be adjusted. Such items included the enlargement of the title and the downsizing of several graphs on the page.

My final infographic can be seen below.  I ultimately decided to have two separate versions of my infographic. One will be used for online purposes and will have extra wording for information. When looking at the design online people are able to take their time while looking through each piece. As for the print format it needs to be big and bold so that it can be seen quickly and from a distance.

MLB infographic

Sources:

http://www.baseballamerica.com/

http://www.baseball-reference.com/