Colors

I wanted to create a cover image for HARTS, and to stay simple and clear. I chose purple and gold because HARTs is located near Harrisonburg and James Madison Universy, and it seems to be creating a good harmony with those two colors. I added stroke features to different words to make it stand out itself. I also used a drop shadow for the HARTS logo. I did not know what to do with color assignment, so I had very limited time frame, but if I were given more time, I would definitely find better colors to create a poster like this. This can be added to our HARTS graphics as one signage, or it can be a name card for a HARTS.

Special Topic Presentation: Data Visualization

Our group had Data Visualization as our topic, and the video was saying that how visualization has impacted our daily lives strongly in every topics and environments, and how it has gotten easier for people to see information at once with visual-aids. According to wikipedia, it says "According to Friedman (2008) the "main goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means. It doesn’t mean that data visualization needs to look boring to be functional or extremely sophisticated to look beautiful. To convey ideas effectively, both aesthetic form and functionality need to go hand in hand, providing insights into a rather sparse and complex data set by communicating its key-aspects in a more intuitive way. Yet designers often fail to achieve a balance between form and function, creating gorgeous data visualizations which fail to serve their main purpose — to communicate information" Data visualization affected our lives so much, and we are so used to have it with us, it seems like we will be confused and lost if we do not have any visuals with certain infomation. So we had about 18 examples in our presentation, with different visuals to support the idea. There were tons of different ideas and types of various visualization such as graphs, timelines, and posters. We gathered few and put it in a prezi presentation which is another form and tool of visualization.

Icons ans Supporting Elements: Infographic of Conceptual Framework

My partner Rachael and I wanted to come up with a creative design, and that is why we went with the tree branch idea. We tried to use different colors for different competencies, so that it looks clear and nice, and anyone can easily define what competency belongs to an icon that is in a tree. We also wanted to stay with calm colors so that it won't hurt viewer's eyes but at the same time it had an impact so that it stands out itself. We were struggling when we were creating icons for couple competencies that were unclear in descriptions, but in the end, it worked out pretty well. We also had a little bit of a problem when we were to come up with the right words for each competency but Professor and other groups helped us to find the right wording. I think it looks perfect, at least to me :).