18 September 2006

A visual thinking assignment

This is an assignment for students in the information design program at Bradley University. But anyone else is welcome to try it as well.

Your assignment is to read and synthesize two articles by Kevin Kelly, and create visual communication materials that clearly and visually communicate the key concepts in a visual form. There are two products that you will create for this assignment:

1. A 24-inch by 36-inch poster designed to be hung on the wall. This poster should not require anyone to explain it -- it should fully explain itself, including why you should read it.

2. A brief PowerPoint presentation that can be delivered in 5 minutes or less. This is designed to be presented by a speaker. In fact, you will present it and your presentation will be part of your grade.

Here is a link where you can download the files.

This assignment is due Monday November 6, or Tuesday November 7, depending on which section you are in.

If you have questions about the assignment please post them as comments on my blog, Communication Nation.

Good luck!

Update: The assignments are complete! And the project was a lot of fun. See the results.

Keep in touch! Sign up to get updates and occasional emails from me.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dave

thank you so much. Great information graphics 'challenge' for the students. Talking head will be a good intro.

I have to say though that the camera position looked like it was a permanent set up looking over the bed - very kinky!

Talk to you later
Gary

Anonymous said...

Mr. Gray,

My name is Joe Oddo and I am a student in Robert Rowe's class. I had a quick question about the audience that we will be presenting to. How much should we assume that they know about the white pages and should they be given a brief overview during the PowerPoint presentation?

Thank you very much
Joe Oddo

Unknown said...

Hi Joe,

You can assume a general business audience. Assume they have not read the white papers and have not heard of Kevin Kelly.

You can assume they have a general understanding of the Internet and probably have heard of Wired magazine. You can also assume they have an interst in learning more.

Anonymous said...

This was a great assignment. It was very challenging on many levels, including the fact that the readings contained a some interesting statistics.

One thing i like to do - which we neglected to do this year - is a statistical data problem in which students have to visualize or compare very large or very different quantities. An example I have linked below shows statistics on hate crimes. It compares values of 5, 25, 754, 1,390 and 4,321; and represents each instance as individual item. I have always like this one, it was done by a student several years ago.

link to image

Unknown said...

Update: The assignment went very well and was a lot of fun. See the results.