OUGD503: Penguin Brief Research and Experiments

After talking through some of my initial ideas in a mini tutorial, it was put to me that I should expand my ideas into more economic and data related visuals and so I looked into means of data visualisation and some work by Stephanie Posavec (as it took has this spread out/messy quality)

Using these new inspirations I produced some sketches for a few more designs, these included geometric patterns, images inspired by data visualisation and playing on the 'split' nature of many of the subjects covered in freakonomics, like the chapter comparing teachers to sumo wrestlers (I felt a design based around this comparison was a more suitable choice over klu klux clan and real estate agents or legalised abortion and crime rates.

I began to experiment with some of my ideas and attempted to produce them in a digital format. When it came to producing a cover inspired by data visualisation I sudden realised that I would struggle to produce it seeing as I had no data to visualise. I attempt googling tutorials to see if there was a pattern or random generator that could replicate the look of my research images- I even considered gathering some data but topped myself early as I really hate gathering statistics.

So I had to find a new way to represent the aesthetic of data visualisation without any data- so I went onto the Freakonomics web page (which has become a successful blog following the release of the first book) and looked through some articles. I found a post called 'Why are Kiwis so Cheap?' and realised that the inside of a kiwi looks similar, if not a simpler version of the data visualisation images and so I tried to digitise and play around with the image to see some results.

I also began playing with fractured patterns, creating a 'shattered' look to the cover design. It was fairly simple to produce but very difficult to make look good- the key is a strong colour palette and using each colour in the correct proportions. I figured this design really summarised the unknown correlation between different stats and results, it remains a whole rectangle with bizarre twists, turns and angles, much like the information provided in the book.