SADIE SOLON

Hi everyone! My name is Sadie Solon, and I’m part of Hollis Brookline High School’s class of 2016. In the proposal I submitted in the Spring of my junior year to be considered for the new Senior Seminar course, I said that I wanted to learn about visual advertising while working with some local group. This could have meant anything from helping one of the local farms tell the community what produce and other products they had to offer, to working with one of our schools many groups and clubs. After spending most of my summer at St. Paul’s Advanced Studies Program learning about the power of media and ways to communicate with a widespread community, I narrowed my project goal down to finding an effective, meaningful way to inform the public of activities going on in HBHS. I already had some experience with graphic design thanks to an Intro to Graphic Arts class offered at the high school, along with four visual arts classes under my belt – fundamentals of art, drawing 1 and 2, painting, and soon AP Studio Art) – so keeping my project visually based was still a priority for me. My final method of choice? Designing and creating infographics about HB’s clubs.

 

About My Sources:

When looking for sources in the beginning of the year, I was hoping to cover three main topics: the background/use of infographics, tips for actually creating the graphics, and sample professionally-made infographics to get a better idea of what I was aiming to make. I found two really great books in our school library – The Power of Infographics by Mark Smiciklas and Infographics: the Power of Visual Storytelling by Jason Lankow and Josh Ritchie – that covered everything I could possibly want to know about the history and growing use of infographics, as well as how strong of an informative method they can be when well-made. Lankow and Ritchie’s book definitely had my favorite explanation of what infographics actually are: when information meets graphic design.

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I also found several articles and blog posts written by people who either make or use infographics as part of their profession. These provided multiple strong perspectives as to how to go about collecting information from different groups, designing charts, creating layouts, and so forth. I also learned how important it is to make sure that I collected all the information from the clubs first and avoided leading questions, then looked for the “narrative” for my graphic to be sure that I didn’t fall victim to confirmation bias. Lastly, I found an amazing website called Virtually which belongs to a company that actually makes infographics for major corporations and companies such as Verizon, Citi, and Visa. On this site was a whole portfolio of various infographics their teams of artists have made in the past, and I could look at these samples for free! This was awesome because it gave me some kind of guide to the potential outcomes of my graphics. To learn more about all these cool sources, check out the My Sources page under the About tab.

 

About My Creation Process:

Once I had gone through all my sources and second quarter began, I worked to make questionnaires for my first potential clubs: Robotics, Red Cross Club, debate team, and more, while also getting  this website up and running. Through the midpoint of the year, I was planning to have my finalized graphics printed in the school yearbook alongside their respective clubs. Because of this, I actually had to begin the creation of my first graphic, using Adobe Illustrator, earlier than I initially expected. As I started working on the Robotics infographic, I learned that it takes a really long time to make a complete graphic. It took me several hours simply to make the screwdriver, chain link, and pencil to be used solely in one small aspect of the final product – and keep in mind, this was all being done in school during our 70 minute class periods.

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Unfortunately, due to extremely short notice of the yearbook deadline and the immense amount of time to complete just one graphic, I was unable to get my infographics published in the yearbook. However, I was able to find a new home for my project after speaking with the head of the guidance department: Mr. Richard Winslow. We mutually decided that the graphics I was making would look awesome as posters to be used during 8th Grade Step-up Day and Freshman Orientation, and that way some of the major school groups would have guaranteed representation at those events.

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The following few months were fully dedicated to creating my final infographics. I ended up settling on five groups, four graphics – the FIRST Robotics Team, the Red Cross Club, the National Honor Society, and the Language Clubs: French and Spanish. Once all four were complete, I saved them as PDFs and headed back to where my project first budded: the library. The librarian, Mrs. Heaton, recently got a super cool new poster printer that can print high quality images up to approximately billboard size, and we were both super excited to see my infographics come to life. Each poster ended up being within 18” by 24” (or vice versa), and they’re laminated to withstand general wear and tear for the next few years. To see my final graphics, click on my tab The Process above!