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Lab 2: Biofuels Pie exercise

biofuels Pie

Modify the Biofuels pie

Make a copy of the "biofuelsPie.ai" you created and name it "biofuelsPieModifications.ai". To make room for your modifications, either create additional artboards or make your existing artboard larger (use the artboard tool artboard tool for either).

The point of doing the modifications described below is to practice using the tools with less precise direction, and to use the visualization concepts you just learned.

* REMEMBER: It's easy to get caught up in getting this done so you can turn it in. If you find yourself feeling tempted to do so, I'd suggest you resist that temptation since you won't learn much -that's just a waste of your time. Remind yourself that the point is to learn Illustrator so you can use it in your next project or your next job.

DO ALL 4 MODIFICATIONS listed below (and be sure to include the comments as described):

Modification 1. Create a display of the biofuels data using a different chart type. Make a note about whether this seems to convey the information more or less effectively than the pie. There's no right or wrong answer. An important skill to get out of this class is the ability to think about what makes a visual effective or not. We'll talk about various concepts to consider, but you'll also want/need to develop your own insights and intuitions and the way to do that is to practice looking and thinking.

Modification 2. Make a copy of the pie (this is a good time to use "paste remembers layers"), and change the colors. Use different colors for text/wedges/arrows/background - be creative, but have some justification for what you do (i.e. don't be randomly creative - be meaningfully/thoughtfully creative). Add a note about what you've done and why (consider using different shades of a single color, or using the same color for all of the wedges).

Modification 3. Use the chart tool to recreate the pie and change the order of the wedges to something that seems meaningful to you (whether by size or by type). Add a note about how this affects the effectiveness of the presentation.

Modification 4. Find an image somewhere, paste it into this file, and use colors from the image to color the pie wedges.

SECOND FINAL PRODUCT: biofuelsPieModifications.ai

Design principles to consider

VISUALIZATION/DESIGN PRINCIPLES:

Uses of Color:

encode
evoke
highlight
set tone

Uses for text in visuals

label
add precision
annotate

Text placement

place text as close to the visual element it refers to as possible

Edward Tufte says avoid Chart Junk