Information Design - Project 1

20.02.2025 - 07.03.2025 / Week 03 - Week 05
Ilhan Rayan bin Khairul Anwar / 0361205
Information Design / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
Project 1 - Animated Infographic Poster

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INSTRUCTIONS

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PRACTICAL

Our Project 1 and Project 2 are intertwined together so for simplicity, both will be addressed and documented in one blog post together.

Project 1, Part 1

For project 1, we had to find an infographic poster online and redesign it in a simplified way. The poster can be any poster of our choice but would ideally have to be a poster that does not look good.

Figure 1.1: World War One Poster

For my poster of choice, I decided to redesign this poster that I found from Pinterest on World War One. The poster itself is not terrible but I felt that the way it's organized is a bit chaotic.

Figure 1.2: Reference Layout

While searching through Pinterest, I found this poster on how to create an infographic and I felt that I could use this as my reference for creating the new design.

Figure 1.3: First Steps

I started off by recreating the layout of the reference infographic and combined it using the colour scheme of the original WW1 infographic, primarily the dark blue. As for the font I went with Calisto MT as it best fit the military aesthetic.

Figure 1.4: Background Gradient

I added in a background gradient that goes from grey to white to try and mimic the very faint gradient in the original poster.

Figure 1.5: Background Images Added

Because the original WW1 poster had images of that era in it, I decided to do the same with my poster but instead, I would lower the opacity of the images and hide them behind the text as I wasn't sure how to add in the original images in the same way without messing up the arrangement of the poster. I also chose images that best fit their respective section, such as 1917 featuring a photo of American forces joining World War One.

Figure 1.6: Final Infographic Design

While looking at the poster, I felt that the sides were too empty so I simply widened the images and barriers so that it would look less clumped together.

Project 1, Part 2

For Project 2, we had to take that infographic poster and animate it into one simple static animation loop.

Something that confused me before I started was that in Project 1, it stated that we had to redesign the poster into an A4 size but for Project 2, it says we need it to be in a 1080x1920 format, which is not A4. At first I though this meant I had to go back and redo the whole design again but instead I just decided to have it remain in A4 size inside of the video format as I simply would not have enough time to go back and change the size.

When I started animating the project in Adobe After Effects, I ran into an issue where everything in the layer would move together instead of one specific object that I wanted. So to solve this issue, I decided to make an individual layer for each text box and object so that I could edit them individually in After Effects.

Figure 2.1: Separated Layers

Once I was able to manipulate each individual object, I started off by having everything be invisible at first before slowly appearing in the video. I would then repeat this pattern every second for each subsection.

Figure 2.2: Transformation Timeline Screenshot

As seen in Figure 2.2, I would have Wall 1 go from 0% opacity to 100% from 00:02:00 to 00:03:00, then with the following Wall, I would have it go from % opacity to 100% from 00:03:00 to 00:04:00. I would then repeat this pattern throughout for everything with slight variations for when they would appear.

Figure 2.3: Fade Out Screenshot

When it came to having to make this animation loop somehow, I decided to do a simple fade out by reversing the opacity way later on in the timeline. It was a simple procedure that I repeated for all the other elements in the animation. Because the animations were meant to be as simple as possible, I was content with what I had done.

Figure 2.4: Infographic Animation

Youtube Link: (Here)

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REFLECTION

I struggled with these two projects at first as I was suffering from burnout at the time so I was a bit behind when it came to this project. But besides that I found it pretty interesting to do, I enjoyed trying to redesign a poster into something simpler and while I definitely could have done better, I'm fine with what I was able to do especially since I was behind.

As for the animation, I found it surprisingly easier that I thought as I rarely use Adobe After Effects so I was pushing this project back quite a bit but when I got to do it, I completed it within a few hours which was nice and the animation is something I'm satisfied with.