How-to Project Process Book

HOW TO POSTER

Kevin DenchINFO DESIGN

CONTENTSRESEARCH...........................................4

REFERENCE........................................17

SKETCHES AND ITERATIONS...........23

FINAL POSTER...................................33

COMPREHENSIVE LEARNING..........37

4 | How-To Poster: How to Make a Shirt Burrito Kevin Dench: Information Design | 5

RESEARCH

The image to the right is from a chopsticks wrapper. I was initially intrigued by this picture because of the directions. They used a visual communication that helped you to understand, then even placed humorous warnings at the bottom.

The package benefited me because it helped me have a good jumping off point in my research. It helped me to develop a visual language right off the bat because their’s was so cohesive.


The ski-mask directions were really compelling to me. I felt as though I knew exactly what was going on in the picture, and where things were supposed to go. I also liked how they made lighter the things that weren’t as important.

The tent instructions were a really educational approach to me as well because of the call-outs. It is pretty easy to follow along with the directions. I also really liked how the tent was the focus. Whenever there are arms in the picture or something other than the tent, it seems to be colored differently.


The tie tying directions are really clear to me. I also can really appreciate their solution of using the arrow to duck and weave and interact with the object.

Then the Lego® one was pretty informative as well. I remember as a kid using the directions to put things like that together. Sometimes I would just wing it, but that always yielded unsavory results.

I am not sure what is going on with the hand one, but I really liked how whatever was being interacted with was blue, and whatever else was in the picture was outlined.

The needle-working one to the right inspired me to use the arrows the way I did in my project. I found it very informative the way they used arrows, and sometimes multiple arrows, to convey the instruction they wanted you to follow. It is a very clear way to do it.


I found this illustration’s one-stop-shop approach kind of interesting. I briefly considered a way that I could do this within my own project.

It is almost a sub-direction in a directions list. That is what I like about it, it feels complete, yet part of a bigger picture at the same time.

This illustration is simply brilliant. I don’t know if it’s done by IKEA or not, but it says so much about the passage of time, frustration, and it even tells a story. Albeit the end is kind of a morbid way to finish the instruction, but I found this very inspiring.

These directions made me want to add an element of humor to my project, that I struggled to find room for, but couldn’t find. I ended up just making the title kind of humorous.


The tent diagram to the right, in the middle, was very attractive to me during my research. I noted the simple shapes and line quality. The call outs were very simple too. The illustration seems very accurate too.

The briefcase was reference for my work, and the far left illustration is of an IKEA instruction booklet.


The “Beach Tent Instructions” were very interesting. I noticed a little bit of humor the in the design. I also noticed the way they jam-packed information into a small space. It seemed like overkill. The illustrations were pretty clear on their own what you needed to do, in some places.

During my viewing of this image, I thought of if there would be a better solution to these product instructions, and I think a lot of their issues would be solved through hierarchy.

Early on I had considered a concept of Tailor markings on the poster to give it more visual interest. I tried different visual experiments like sketching up some lines on the poster, but nothing looked quite right, so I ended up leaving it off.

Another thing that detoured me was that this is about folding a t-shirt, and tailors aren’t necessarily associated with t-shirts. I associate them more


REFERENCE

Photographs I used to trace from for my project.

with fine clothing than casual wear like a t-shirt.

However, I still wanted a concept and explored a few more options, like screen printing the poster on t-shirt material, but ran out of time and money to do what I wanted to do.


Ultimately I decided to go with this vantage point because it held more visual interest. This was also the angle that had the most potential for what I was trying to do.

Note the rings in the top right. I used my wedding ring to create some of the arrows for my project. I didn’t know how to get the angles right so I just used the angles of something tangible as reference.

In my second revision of the project, I realized people weren’t understanding certain steps that I was trying to portray. So I took much more reference of the actual rolling of the shirt into itself than I did of the folding parts.

I learned a lot when trying to communicate without words. I realized that people would look at my poster and be confused. Then I would demonstrate it without words on my sweatshirt, or something, and they would have an “ah-ha” moment.

Both are forms of silent communication, but one form is much easier to understand than the other. I have not figured out where the breakdown is between my visual representation, and my demonstration.


This is the straight-on approach that I attempted. I soon abandoned it after reviewing the pictures because it was just too flat. There was no dimensionality. In this particular information diagram, I think the dimensionality is one of the traits that makes it a little easier to understand. This is especially true with it being vector artwork.

Once I got to the part where I was rolling the shirt, that’s when the breakdown happened. It just looked like a flat shirt, and it was hard to represent how that shirt was being rolled when it was like that.

SKETCHES AND ITERATIONS


My sketching more-so involved layout rather than what the poster was actually going to look like. I had the idea of what I wanted it to look like in my mind, I just needed a way to organize it so that it made sense.

First, I experimented with a cascading effect. This didn’t work for me because I felt like it cut the page in half diagonally. Compositionally it just wasn’t very beautiful.

Second, I started seeing if there were some shapes that I could use in order to complement the directions, but that was a non-starter because, once again, compositionally it looked pretty awful.

My classmates kept getting lost between steps 8 and 9. So there were suggestions made on how I could make this communicate more.

On step 4 it wasn’t clear that you were supposed to fold the shirt underneath. So I had to make some alterations to make it appear as if it was being folded under.

On step 7 it wasn’t clear that it was supposed to be rolled. So I experimented using a corkscrew for the arrow, but my wife said, “it looks like when you’re supposed to twist your hair on a hair tutorial.”

So I got rid of that and just did a simple shell-type shape.


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(TO THE RIGHT)

I was experimenting with different ways to interpret the instructions. On number 7 I was told to not use the straight arrow so I changed it on my “better version” and put it here for the critique.

On number 8 I wanted it to appear as if you are rolling the shirt, but ultimately this was not the best solution, because it didn’t show any action and the viewer couldn’t tell that you were supposed to roll the shirt. It just appeared as a continuation of the previous step.

On number 3 I wanted to show where action was being performed, so I highlighted and darked different lines.


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HOW TO MAKE A SHIRT BURRITO

(TO THE LEFT)

This was my alternate poster including a deletion of a step to make it more streamlined and I added the briefcase for the shirts to interact with something. The line quality is a little thick on the sleeves in this version, but that is because its a draft.

Ultimately I included a lot of elements from this alternate poster because it was working so well.

FINAL POSTER


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HOW TO MAKE A SHIRT BURRITO

IN THE FINAL

I went with a few different suggestions that I received from classmates and the instructor. I felt they were valid suggestions and I saw them contributing to the overall look and utility of the piece.

I figured that since this is a very user-based piece that I should follow some suggestions.

I used dotted lines to show past actions, and once the sleeves were folded over I used a gray to kind of fade them into the background a little bit.


COMPREHENSIVE LEARNINGIn this project I learned a lot about value, let me explain. The input that I was given by the other students was extremely instrumental in creating a piece that provided a user experience most people would be able to navigate through.

Communication without words is all around us, so it is important as a designer to be able to convey our message(s) without copy. If someone is in a hurry they’ll view the main means of communication and move on.

This exercise, I think, really gave me more tools to effectively communicate in the manner mentioned above.

How-to Project Process Book

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