Festoon tutorials: Research poster design: an infographic approach

Section 3: Moodboarding & Visual Language

This section really focus’s on ideas for layout, composition and visual subject matter that we are going to use within our graphic to produce the poster. We’re sure to consider what needs to be covered and represented from each key section, so we can choose the best overall design idea. In section 4, we’ll look at how this will be translated into design.

1. Context: Why climate apps?

So we’ve looked at this in the previous section, where we explored how the visual statistics could be communicated. I think what would be useful to take from this section, is that we need to make sure we’re visually communicating that we’re talking about apps somewhere within the graphic. This may seem obvious, but is an easy thing to forget, especially when working with other visual analogies.

2. Theory

This looks at research fields but doesn't currently mention a huge amount of information around them. I think it’s important that these will be represented, so we could potentially look at some iconography. However, we don’t want this to be too prominent in comparison to the rest of the design sections but just needs to be easy to navigate. 

We can think of this visually as a foundation, such as laying the bricks, or a more relevant context like roots.

Let’s use icons to communicate the key elements that this section should represent.

Something like:

Existing work: Documents

Environmental communication: Megaphone.

We can also see within this section, that specifically this mentions communicating: 

• Climate change (Thermometre/earth)

• Carbon credits (Coins)

• Carbon footprint (Foot)

• Offsetting (Planting trees)

Digital participation: (Cursor or mouse / People using phones.)

Trust: (Thumbs up or big tick)

3. Methods

So this I think is quite a visual thing. As we’re showing process’s we want this to feel sequential, and also for each part of the methodology to be represented in the context of the other phases.

Scoping database/App analysis/ expert interviews

This is the process of collecting and categorising, so needs to represent a process. This means that when we visualise, each stage should come after the other so the order is obvious.

• A. Storing apps, organizing and categorising them

• B. Analysing them

• C. Asking experts about them.

This could potentially be represented in a scene that leads to a discussion with an expert and shows the process of storing and analyzing. If we go a bit more abstract, this could be represented in a way that shows this in the context of a factory, or unrelated scene that we use as an analogy.

4. Research questions

This section poses the questions for the research. In this instance it’s all about unlocking the meaning of a ‘nature based solution’/ sustainability app, how they work and if they can be trusted to combat climate change.

Thinking visually, this provides the direction & starting point which are built/grown from to deliver the findings & results.

We could look at this as seeds, given that they start the process, or the directions whispered to five different swimmers as they start their journey across the ocean. Ok that last one was a bit random, but what I’m trying to get at is it’s good to be creative with your approach to this.

< Section 2: Analysing the text

Index

Introduction

Section 1: The project

Section 2: Analysing the text

Section 3: Moodboarding & visual language

Section 4: Conceptualising & visualising the text

Section 5: Design implimentation