Freelance work: Infographic poster

I haven't had time to do much freelance work recently, but I was interested in this project. I was commissioned by an IT team from a local art school (Falmouth University). They had just completed a year-long project on developing a system for standardising and organising course descriptors. It was a complex project with many twists and turns, people joining the team and different challenges along the way.

For a final meeting, organised by their funders at JISC, they had to display a poster that explained their project, alongside 30 or so other projects. They were conscious that, as an arts organisation, they had to have something that looked the part, hence my involvement.

After an initial meeting, and a few emails, I asked them to give me a spreadsheet of all the significant dates / milestones connected to the project, and to assign team member(s) to each one:

I wanted to represent each team member as a coloured line, and each event as a circle with matching colours. I then allowed these to follow an undulating line, representing the different directions that the project took as it went along.

I did a couple of detailed sketches to begin with on paper (partly to reassure the client that something was happening!)

Then, I drew the final version in Illustrator, starting with the big wavy line:

And then following it with the others:

And adding in the events:

It quickly got quite complicated:

Just about squeezed it all on!:

And then had to reduce the size a bit a the end to fit in the necessary text. I love Illustrator so much when I need to resize an entire poster or something:

And the final version:

I'm very pleased to hear that not only was the event a success, but that the design also managed to net them a "Best Poster" award.