In the Data translation project we were asked to carry out a data investigation and represent this data in a unique and graphic way. My subject/data collection was to be carried out on social media and how large they would be ranked in the world if they were countries. At first I was going to use mobile phone addiction as my subject and I had even carried out a survey into asking friends how many hours they would spend per day on thier mobiles. However I felt it would be best to save this choice for the Campaign project that would be the week after. Using the data I found online about current social media population I looked into different ways on how this could be visualised. At first I thought typography could be quite useful however this would make it too type based and I wanted it to be a very visual piece with interesting elements. Looking at a map of the world comparing the populations to those of real countries could be very interesting to have mapped out. However after playing with the idea I found a graph comparing those populations to pictures of countries with the same population could be quite visually impacting. Through this I thought a very interesting way of recording data could be through comparing of countires and how they would rank in population against these social media sites, and also by using a mathemtical approach of seeing how males and females each shared a certain percentage of a social media site. Past examples of data representations that I found on places such as deviantArt, behance and google also influenced my work to have a final outcome which would look very modern and not like an old style simple graph or similar.
Reflecting:
Throughout the week I was slowed down in this project mainly due to carrying out an investigation and then changing the subject mid week. Because of this I was very pressed for time and still haden't reached a final outcome. owever when lookinh into the work of Jonathan Barnbrook I found that a very simplistic way that I could represent my data could be through the use of counters instead of typography, which would create a coloured distinction between male and female users, and at the same time show what social media site the datat was respresenting. The very tricky part of this project for me was converting my data into counters, which were represented by one being equal to 10 million men or women. The counter design was also inspired by Jonathan Barnbrook, and the use of hot pink and blue created a very vivid final outcome displayed on a black background. Being a previous A-level maths student also helped me to calculate how many counters would represent my data and also how to work out male and female percentages. If I was to change anything with this project it would be my mathematics of the counters representing however many people. Due to some social media sites having extremely low populations when compared to others, it was much more difficult to create the logos for the media sites using the counters without some of them looking too big or possibly even too small. Future improvements would definately include another revised way of trying to put in as much counters as possible for my key yet not so many that it becomes difficult to show without confusing the image.
Contextualising:
This project was very difficult to find contextual inspirations for however an earlier visit to the Saachi gallery provided me with some very small scale but quite interesting illustrations on technology and its effect upon the world. This would help also along with my next project of Campaigning but with mobile phones instead of social networks being the main topic at hand. In addition the work of Jonathan Barnbrook was very influential in how my type was directly related to the issue of my campaign, and also how the campaign and design in general should be used as a movement for social change within society.
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