The past month or so has been an audacious dive into the unknown waters of information design. I found that its importance not only in the design world but in social communication can't be ignored. There are designers and in fact certain companies that spend all their time arranging complex data into appropriate and effective visual representations. The key word there is effective. In my own trials I found that aesthetically pleasing, and effectively communicated information are a tough marriage. The message or data must always be the top priority but if the design is boring, the message is moot.

I undertook a design challenge from the website informationisbeautiful.net. It's a great site for inspiration, design competitions and awards. The challenge was to visualize the data on Earth's non-renewable resources. The data shows the years it will take for certain resources to run out and what we use those resources for. I was inspired by many organic and geometric organizations of data. The result is a 24x36'' massive poster of swirling data.

One of the concepts I struggled most with was outliers. I watched a webinar by Angela Shen-Hsieh, the founder of GroupVisual.io, and she touched on the importance of outliers to the information. There was such a disparity with some of the numbers I worked with that it was a real challenge to fit them into the design concept.

It was a great learning experience and challenge and something that I hope to explore further.