DMA 384: Reflecting on Project 3
This is a part of a series, consisting of reflections and analysis of work created in the Digital Media Arts 384: Typography Course at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY.
The final project in Typography has come upon us, and asked students to recreate an old and poorly designed chart from a book in the library. I chose a chart that displayed Noise, air pollutants and traffic: Continuous measurement and correlation at a high-traffic location in New York City. The amount of information contained within the chart is high, and the readability was poor. I have managed to recreate the chart with all of the original information, in a way that is much more readable and accessible. I used a cross between swiss modernist, and Neo-grotesque styles using the Roboto font which is both readable and pleasureable to the eye. Most information in charts is overwhelming to the eye, as well as gives off a cold, hard, data feeling, which I wanted to avoid. The result is a chart that incorporates simple type, simple hierarchy, clean lines, and methodical positioning to better display what the data represents. One of the flagship features of my chart recreation, is the inclusion of 95 confidence interval data, which shows the range that the rho (correlation) could be, within a 95% confidence. The data is displayed on either side of the rho data, visually displaying the range without becoming confusing or intrustive. The chart is completely readable without getting in the way of itself. The hierarchy of the chart is simple, however one change may throw some viewers off guard for a moment. In this chart, the time values are on the Y-axis, as opposed to the standard X-axis. This was a risky decision, however, I feel it was warranted. The X-axis contains 6 data points, while the Y-axis only contains 3, and these time points are simply ranges of week day times. I feel that reading a chart is much easier when displayed horizontally, like standard literary books, and thus that this change is for the better.
Overall, I thought the project was a challenging, yet overwhelmingly strong learning experience, especially when asked to reflect on the styles of the data and chart. I look forward to Professor Dunkle’s comments.
