Final Project!

Well my group has pretty much covered all the logistical stuff -- everything went smoothly and we had a certain visual interplay that was completely non-verbal that I'm still a bit astonished from.

For my work I focused mainly on how to get a fair amount of information across without being too wordy or clunky. I worked hard at eliminating words from the posters and representing the information visually without focusing on one single part of an issue. This approach worked best on my "Price of Pleasure" poster:I wanted to juxtapose pleasant, summery colors associated with vacations with the ridiculous amount of waste created by cruise ships to make the information all the more jarring. I think it turned out well.

Right before my group decided on a topic I was working on a research project on Puget Sound pollution for an oceanography. I came across lots of information that was compelling but very dry. I then had turn the info into a pithy little assignment that didn't do it justice but with this project I felt like my group did justice to presenting the information, at the very least.

Back to design. For my other poster I wanted to focus on the overlap of endangered species and serious pollution and suggest that there was some connectedness between the issues. I kept the species to a minimum because there are 29 threatened or endangered species in Washington and something like 40 Superfund sites, each of which has a different kind of pollution so I abstracted it a bit to show overlap. To keep the design from being too abstract I had to get some cute, cuddly little animals (the pygmy rabbit) and some iconic Washington animals (whales, salmon). The end result was:


I am less happy with this design, though it accomplished the goals I had in mind. There is a bit too much open space and segmentation going on at the top of the design that I didn't really know how to fix. I also ran into trouble figuring out which fonts to use -- which fonts would best capture the tone I was looking for. I like the way the map turned out and the colors work in the design, I think.

Overall, it was a good final project and my group was pretty awesome, though I think any possible permutation of group members would have been great since the class in general was pretty great.

HAVE A GREAT SUMMER!