As for the Infographic, I’ve been inspired by the following (classifier, Flom & QUIT--Anony-Mousse, 2021). I did like the way of using a cluster and the area or distance to represent something on a scale. Therefore the ideas I’ve generated are all based on this concept.
Development of the Infographic
The first idea is a space divided in 2, an area for those who are not satisfied and the other for those who are satisfied. The further they are from the middle line on the right the happier they are. The further away they are on the left side, the more unsatisfied they are. The middle line was actually inspired by the Ying and Yang symbol, a well known symbol, also representing 2 poles, a good and a bad.
As for the visual element to be placed within the space, I was still quite blurred at this time. The very first idea I got was the eye, since it’s a well known sign of ascension within the spiritual field. So I did an eye that could be divided in different sections to represent each aspect of a person that I wanted to display. The interesting thing about this idea was that I had a similar idea of a closed eye to display the ‘non believers’ if I ever find a way to put them in the design.
The second idea was very similar to the inspiration just clusters revolving around a center. I wanted it to be as such since it forms a vortex which somehow relates to a gateway to the spiritual realm.
I did the design in AI, however, the whole thing looked so odd. Therefore, I tried with a more refined eye, ‘the eye of horus’ which is yet another well known symbol. The following idea comes from a class activity we had whereby we were asked to come up with 50 different signs based on our concepts. It did look more refined indeed, but as I was changing the colors it was odd again.
Upon a few reflection, I came to realize that the Mandala was a symbol used often in Indian and Buddhist festivals. As from (Buchalter, 2013) Mandalas are important therapeutic tools promoting focusing, wholeness and healing, often referred to as the wheel of life. ("BBC - Religion & Ethics - In pictures: Buddhist Wheel of Life", 2021) Therefore, I decided to go with a Mandala.
My first idea with the Mandala, I simplified the Mandala a lot to the point that it looked like just a normal flower. The reason was I didn’t wanted to have unnecessary ‘petals’ and I plotted each data on a single ‘petal’. Since the idea looked no more like a Mandala, I was recommended to make it with it’s complex different layers, and different shapes after each layers where this time, each layer will represent a data.
I did encounter a few issues with this method since I rotated it on an axis and the shapes were not as accurate as I need them to be. There’s a mistake in the proportion of the Mandala, however since the design was colorful and will be made smaller on the infographic, it help hiding this flaw.
After plotting each individuals I realized that there were no dissatisfied practitioners, therefore, I removed the middle line. I used a warm color as the background since it relate to the Indian and Buddhist culture, where you can find many warm colors. Each colors I used to represent the data was chosen based on some ‘color psychology’ or colors one may see within a culture of religion, altered slightly to provide a variety of them to allow me to have a lot of information displayed on the infographic.
I used a curly but mixed with a ‘bit of squareness’ font since it was both serious yet still interesting and somehow expresses the flexibility of spiritual practices. Then for the text I used a quite serious font with serif to sort of make the text look old school, since spiritual knowledge are from our deep past.