Concept

There were so many different types of infographics on Pinterest and I liked many of them, but I was particularly drawn to a rather simple looking one which combined photographs with illustrations. I’ve always wanted to try drawing stuff onto a photograph, so I figured I’d try that out for this project. I wanted to do a brief summary of Hougang, so I decided to have different sections in my infographic -the derivation of the name and the past, the current times/stats and notable places in Hougang.

Process

To start off, I had to go back down to Hougang to get photos that I could work with. The hardest photo to get was the one of the HDB void deck. It took a long time to get the shot in my head. So, these are the original photos, before any editing or drawing.

Then I cropped the photos, drew on them and edited them so that the white illustrations would be clearly visible.

Originally, I tried incorporating the information into the photos themselves, but it ended up looking a bit too messy for my liking. So while I was compiling the photos together, I decided to put some of the info into hexagons and I ended up keeping to that for the entire infographic. I tried to make the photos appear more integrated into the design by combining the photos with the hexagonal pattern.

Since the colours of my photos were mainly blue and grey, I decided on a monochrome + grey palette and decided to make use of gradients to transition from blue to grey and vice versa. And here’s my final design!

Reflections

The drawings took longer than I expected, but I was happy whenever the photo turned out pretty cute with my illustrations. The hexagons definitely took a lot more patience than I expected, but I liked how it held the entire piece together. And I love gradients, so I was more than happy to include it in my work. HAHA. Although the feedback I got from Joy was that it looked more like powerpoint slides than an infographic, I guess I was pretty happy with what I created. It was the first time I’ve ever tried to create and infographic, and even though it was stressful and I ended up getting confused about what an infographic really is, I’m really glad that I got a chance to try! But I’ll probably take a break from infographics for now. Hahaha. I’d love to try my hand at it again in the future, though!