Exploiting the visual potential of location
I want the user to look at this display and have a quick idea of just how widespread the members of BROCKHAMPTON originally were. To do this, I am relying on a traditional map marked by hometowns of the various members. Each town is labeled with its name. I chose to incorporate hometowns from the suburbs of a larger city into that city, for the sake of the display's clarity. In one display, I simply marked the various hometowns on a map and visually encoded how many members hailed from each hometown. In the other display, I used lines to convey a sense of movement from the hometowns to Los Angeles, where the group currently resides together under a single roof. In both displays, I subsetted maps of the UK and Grenada to account for members from there.
I tried to keep my display fairly minimalistic, like my model. I left a fair amount of whitespace and used high contrast. I simple shapes with colored fills, no outlines, and thin lines to augment these shapes.
I used the white background and dark grey primary color from my color model for much of my displays. I used yellow, red, and blue from my color model to augment my displays as the colors of the informational features.
I used the wide, bold all capitals text for the section title. I used the light, condensed subtitle text to mark the city names, and I used the normal paragraph text to mark the circles with the appropriate number.
This map would occupy the middle-right section of my display as it needs to be big enough to see clearly, and serves as an interesting centerpiece.
Critique
Adi
With the first display, he felt that the title helped make the meaning of the map pretty obvious. He quickly noticed the dots across the maps that were labeled with a number and a location. He understood these dot numbers as the amount of people from this location, although it wasn't explicitly labeled. He felt that it gave a good general idea of the distribution across geographical area, but that it would have been nice to see the specific members and where each was from. With the second display, he appreciated the more personal feel of knowing where each member was from, but that it was a bit cluttered overall and hard to read due to the small complex shapes. He suggested making changes to increase the contrast between the yellow lines and the background, as they get lost across the water.
He preferred the second display because he felt like it gave more of a personalized story as to where the specific members came together from. He also liked how they all clearly link together in Los Angeles and required less thinking to figure out.
He found that my visual language model matched up pretty well with my model due to the line thickness, but suggested that I perhaps use only vertical and horizontal lines, as they are featured more prominently in my model. He also suggested perhaps using icons as in my model. He thought that removing the background from my portraits would also make my image more similar to the model. He thought my colors overall fit pretty well with my color model but that I could experiment with using the background color instead of dark grey for my numbers. He found that my title font wasn't bold enough for the text model, and that I should make my letters all capitals to fit better with my model. He thought my suggestion for the layout/placement made a lot of sense.
Response to first critique
Based on this feedback, I decided to use the second display's idea of showing where specific members are from and also incorporate more color. Additionally, I increased the boldness of my title text.
Chelsea
In both displays, Chelsea saw a map of the US with black filled and white outline. The title/ header told her that the content will be about where Brockhampton is from. The first display on the left had leading lines with a circular dot pin pointing a location on the map. Inside each dot was a number inside. At the other end of the leading line was a label of the city and state in which the dot was pointing to. The colors of the lines varied between 3 colors. Something that Chelsea wasn't clear on was what the numbers inside the dots represented since there were multiple 1's and 2's. She didn't understand if there was a pattern or meaning behind the numbers that she was supposed to pick up on. As for the left display, Chelsea saw many leading lines being spread out from one focal point - LA. She assumed that this meant that all the members of Brockhampton are in LA, but originated from where ever the leading line went to. She noticed that there are more circles on this design than the last and that instead of numeric values in the circles, there was a black & white image of a person per circle. Overall, from both designs, she got a good grasp of how widespread the members of Brockhampton are from.
Chelsea preferred the right display more than the second because it was easier for her to understand that the circles represented people due to the different headshots of individual people. The first design had numeric values left for interpretation, so she had no idea what that represented. She did however like the simplicity of the first design better since there seemed to be less lines cluttering the graphic like the second design. She suggests either adding a legend or some sort of explanation to the first design to make it clearer or find a way to simplify the lines in the second design. Perhaps have the lines removed and a yellow outline around the circle images as some type of color encoding that traces back to the star without having to explicitly use lines to do so. Basically, meet the both designs in the middle.
Chelsea thought that the usage of photographs in the second display matched the visual language model well. The usage of circles in both display also matched the model. The icon of a bull and circle outline around it she thought would be interesting to do for the second display's photograph circles, which can be emulated by adding an outline fill to them. She also thought that the leading lines were emulated well since she can see them being used throughout the model to differentiate between sections. What she did point out was that the line weight for the leading lines in the model seemed a little bit thinner than that of my displays. As for the color, Chelsea saw it used very apparently in the first design, where yellow was the most prominent, then teal, then orange, which was exactly like the model. For the second design, only one color was used, but she thought it was appropriate since there was one focal point. Adding other colors would have separated the information to different categories or meanings. For the leading lines in both the visual language model and color, they seem to be black, whereas mine were various colors. Typography model matched well and the layout seems to make sense to Chelsea where I intend to place it.
Response to second critique
Based on her advice, I incorporated the color from the first model into the composition of the second model. I also tried to match my line stroke thickness to that of my model.
Ben
With the first display, he noticed the title immediately. He found that the clarity of the title made it easy to get an idea of what the map was about. He found that the right display immedately showed that there were different people coming together, while the left display was more simplified and didn't give that unifying symbolism. With the right display, he felt that it intuitively showed that different people are coming together
He preferred the second display because it showed how the different people came together. He enjoyed the different colors of the first display, and suggested incorporating these colors into the second display to indicate the quantity of people coming from each location so as to provide a more immediately obvious visual encoding.
In terms of my visual language, he suggested incorporating an outlined icon like the UT logo in my visual language model. He saw how I used similar graphical styles with lines and shapes. He suggested splitting my typography into two lines would match my model better and make it more readable. He also suggested removing the state borders to make a cleaner and less distracting display. This would make the headshots stick out more. He suggested tinting the photos to bring in more color, but felt that my color model lined up well overall with my display. He thought my layout idea should be fine.
Response to third critique
Based on his feedback, I chose to augment the second display with the colors from the first and incorporate colored outline circles with my existing member portraits so as to make them pop off the page a bit more.
I want the user to look at this display and have a quick idea of just how widespread the members of BROCKHAMPTON originally were. To do this, I am relying on a traditional map marked by hometowns of the various members. Each town is labeled with its name. I chose to incorporate hometowns from the suburbs of a larger city into that city, for the sake of the display's clarity. I used lines to convey a sense of movement from the hometowns to Los Angeles, where the group currently resides together under a single roof. I also used color to show the difference between different cities, as there are varying quantities of members from each city. I subsetted maps of the UK and Grenada to account for members from there.
I tried to keep my display fairly minimalistic, like my model. I left a fair amount of whitespace and used high contrast. I used simple shapes with colored fills, minimal outlines, and thin lines to augment these shapes.
I used the white background and dark grey primary color from my color model for much of my displays. I used yellow, red, and blue from my color model to augment my displays as the colors of the informational features.
I used the wide, bold all capitals text for the section title. I used the light, condensed subtitle text to mark the city names, and I used the normal paragraph text to mark the circles with the appropriate number.
This map would occupy the middle-right section of my display as it needs to be big enough to see clearly, and serves as an interesting centerpiece.
Critique
John
First off, the title stood out to him as a bold and clear message that the display would be about where BROCKHAMPTON is from. Then, he saw that there were many icons that convened at Los Angeles, giving him the sense that these different people joined together from different locations across the US and the UK. He saw that most of them were from Texas with a few from the East coast, and that the star meant that Los Angeles must have been something special. He was unsure what the colors meant, since tehre was no display to show them.
He preferred the revised display because the colors give it some extra contrast and help the viewer to tarck where the lines are going and what is going on.
He saw that my circles came from the career percentages section of my visual model, and saw that I took solid lines from my visual model as well. He also saw that I made the images greyscale to match my visual language model.He thought that my title matched my typography model clearly. He felt that my colors matched up pretty much spot on, with a lot of light grey and near-black speckled with various colors from my color model.
Rose
Rose was immediately drawn in by the many connecting lines in my display. She found them to give her a quick feeling that these different people were all coming together in Los Angeles from different places. She wasn’t sure about using the star as an icon, but felt that any icon would work well in this position and would not compromise my display. She liked my usage of different colors and felt that they helped to differentiate different cities from each other, although they didn’t seen encoded with a clear and evident meaning to each color.
She preferred the revised display to the previous displays because she felt that it combined the strongest elements of each of the first two displays (color of the first one and composition of the second one) into a much stronger and more complete-feeling revised display. She also appreciated how I restructured the insets of the UK and Grenada into a cleaner structure.
She thought my visual language model was reflected in my thin lines, use of horizontal and vertical lines as dividers, and in the ringlike circles that surrounded my portraits. She thought the colors were very representative of my color model, and she saw my typography as a good fit to my typography model, for I used bold heading text and thinner, more condensed label text elsewhere. She thought that my proposed spot for the display would work well in my layout.
MacKenzie
She notices immediately that the main change is in the color of the lines and markers. She is not quite sure what the colors are supposed to encode. She likes that I have encoded the information, but suggests including a key so that it is more clear for the user what the various keys mean. A paragraph of background information (even a sentence or two would be helpful). She also suggests using a different color other than yellow for encoding the information as well since the star is yellow and she wants to associate the yellow-markers with the yellow star. Overall with a few tweaks of additional information, MacKenzie says this could be a very compelling graphic.
Because MacKenzie doesn’t understand what I tried to encode with color, she prefers the first model. If I include a key and background information, she thinks this second iteration would be a lot more useful to the viewer. She also would prefer increasing the size of the markers so that the faces are more clear.
With the first display, MacKenzie can immediately tell that this location display is about Brockhampton, but isn’t immediately sure what that means. She suggests including a paragraph for context unless its already explained earlier on in my graph. From the images, she guesses that Brockhampton is a band. She notices that the markers are a bit small, and since she isn’t familiar with Brockhampton she isn’t sure who the faces are. She likes that all the lines go back to Los Angeles so that she has a good idea of where it all began. She also thinks I did a good job of incorporating foreign countries with the US into a singular map that isn’t jarring.
MacKenzie thinks I did a good job of creating a minimalist theme in my graphic, as there are simple lines, not a lot of detail on my map, and not a lot of extra frills. She suggested perhaps lightening my leader lines even more so that they’re subtle just like my VL model. MacKenzie said I did a good job using the colors form my model. She wouldn’t change much about the colors besides perhaps intentionally deviating from the model so that Los Angeles’ star is a different color from the leader line. MacKenzie sees that I completely capitalize my titles just like my typography model. She also says I did a good job of choosing a heavier font for my title, and a lighter font for my labels on my graphic. MacKenzie thinks that putting this as a center piece could definitely draw in the viewers’ attention. She just suggested making sure I’m intentional about giving enough context so that the users aren’t confused. She’d also suggest increasing the marker sizes if this is going to be the center piece of my graphic.
Final design