Infographics
Work created for the McGill Office for Science and Society
For many, science brings back memories of test anxiety and confusion. And yet understanding how science is done and why is critical for an informed public who need to make collective decisions on topics like climate change, public health, and space exploration. In 2017, I worked as a science communication intern at the Office for Science and Society and often wondered about the relationship between the general public and science. In this role, I was responsible for creating online content that would interest someone with a limited science background. In an effort to showcase the fascinating, abstract and fun aspects of science, I proposed to use my design skills to create visualizations which would attract an audience accustomed to the visual richness of social media. Using Google analytics, I was able to see most users interacted with our content through Facebook on their phone. So I designed my visuals to be optimized for mobile devices.
Below is a sample of this work.
Unlike written word which is read chronologically, graphics can be consumed in any order, and readers are at liberty to skip over some of the information. If I was designing long-form infographics, I tried to create an understandable narrative one could follow from start to finish regardless of the direction, speed, or amount of information one consumed. Using the infinite scroll afforded by mobile phones made this task easier.
Animated GIFs embedded into written articles broke up dry math or science concepts into something understandable. In “There are more ways to arrange a deck of cards than atoms in the universe”, I created graphics to visually demonstrate the highly mathematical concept of factorials.
