Project 1: Identifying Communication Design
Ineffective Design:
For ineffective communication, I chose this pictograph from this month’s issue of National Geographic magazine. It documents the number extinct birds over the world and the reasons for their extinction.
It took me a while to understand this graph; I felt that there was too much going on for it to be easily readable. They are trying to convey a lot of information — the geographical area, reasons for extinction, and the number of extinct birds — in a small space. Although the page isn’t cluttered, the legend for the graph is spread about in multiple places. The geography key is on the top, the species count is at the bottom and the reason for extinction is on the right. In addition, the fonts used for the legends are small and not bold, making it easy to miss it.
Further, the pictures of birds as examples over the page is very distracting, especially the ones big enough that they overlap two or more reasons. For example, the Canadian Oystercatcher is spread over other and climate change, even though it is perched on the line for other category. I was unsure if this means that both are drivers for extinction or the picture is big because the birds are drawn almost to scale.
Effective Design
For effective design, I chose this tin of ground coffee. I was drawn to the clean, simple design of the box. The packaging only uses few bold colours, which contrast well with each other as well as the aluminium.
The red bands on the top and bottom focus your attention to the text. There is a hierarchy where you see the big, red Illy logo first followed by what the product actually is which is in black text. The rest of the text is in red, which draws a distinction from the black text: the red is more detailed and descriptive. The small diagram in the bottom centre was very helpful to me since I knew instantly that it was for a drip coffee machine without needing to read all the text. The negative space helps direct your focus to the text as well.
The use of aluminium stood out to me compared to the other plastic bag packaging from other brands. It made this brand seem more premium.
