In my last semester of college, I took 'Information Design 1' with Doug Scott; it ended up being my favorite course of college. The 'Three Trips' assignment became my favorite assignment of that class, because it gave me a chance to do a deep-dive into information design, and compose an entire visual design system for the first time.
There is a beauty in figuring out how to elegantly and effectively communicate a large amount of visual information. I would love to work with information design more in my career, in whatever form it may be.
The assignment was create a map or diagram that showed the route of three trips: (1) my house to Ryder Hall (the art building on campus), (2) my house to my hometown, and (3) my house to any international city - I chose Auckland, New Zealand.
Each trip needed to show at least 10 kinds of information, such as date, time of journey, distance, temperature, speed, signs, buildings, bridges, landmarks, plants, animals, or historical data. The overseas trip also needed to show a visualization of how all the time was used, starting with entering the beginning airport, and ending with exiting the destination airport. This included all flying activities, like waiting, checking luggage, security, baggage, sleeping, eating, watching movies, and listening to music.
However, instead of three total trips, I decided to show every possible way of travel for each trip. The first, from my house to campus, can be accomplished by walking, driving, longboarding, or taking the train. For the second, from my house to my hometown (Denver, Colorado), you can drive by yourself or with another person, or you can fly. The last trip is to Auckland, so flying is the only option, but it involves a layover in Los Angeles.
The final poster is below, and beneath that are zoomed-in poster snapshots, so you can see the details.
I started by planning out the details of each trip. For Trip 1 (local), I mapped out left turns, right turns, stoplights, and street-crossings for each of the four modes of transportation: walking, longboarding, taking the train, and driving. Google Maps supplied travel times and distances for three of the four; I relied on my personal experience to gauge the longboarding time and distance.
For Trip 2 (Boston to Denver), I have experience with both driving and flying in either direction, so I relied on my personal experiences, and Google Maps distance/time information. My family and I are accomplished at road trips, so I made a 'standard' day of driving 8 hours per person.
For all the digital work I do, I'm analog at heart—I always start with pen and paper. I had to draw out each trip (and subtrip) to scale. I taped together a poster of the final size (at the time, 24 inches by 36 inches), and drew initial sketches of the layout. Using a scale of 2 hours = 1 inch, I mapped out the timing of all Trip 2 subtrips (solo driving, duo driving, and flying), and all parts of Trip 3 (airport, flying, layover, flying, landing).
With the layout planned, I assembled everything together. My second version included a key explaining each symbol and colored line, and lots of text labels, like "Walk to Tremont Street" and "Wait for next train."
During critique of my draft for Trip 1, my professor showed me that I didn't need a whole key, or any text labels; symbols like a walking person or a longboard would show the action. In the next draft, I replaced all the labels with symbols, and changed the right and left turn symbols from blue with L or R, to lighter blue with a left or right arrow. In subsequent drafts,
During critique of my draft for Trip 1, my professor showed me that I didn't need a whole key, or any text labels; symbols like a walking person or a longboard would show the action. In the next draft, I replaced all the labels with symbols, and changed the right and left turn symbols from blue with L or R, to lighter blue with a left or right arrow.
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