Rip it up and start again

DEATH AND GRAVESTONE SYMBOLISM

An info graphic for "Life Insurance Finder"

It is reasonably easy to understand, due to the info graphic being very literal, i.e.there is a picture of a skull along with the symbolic meaning of the skull -  simple. There is too much information as some is needed, but a lot isn’t, they could cut down the amount of symbols in it, and show maybe a few from each category. Yes there is a clear focus; it is clearly marked as being about gravestones and the pictograms on gravestones. However on further reading it is brought to us by “Life insurance finder” which is not apparent in it when you first look at it.

The titles help with understanding the meaning of it, but you do need to take a closer look to understand the meanings of all the pictograms, without looking at the print it is just a bunch of death based images.

From looking at it, it is clear that it shows most of the symbols that are used on gravestones, when you look closely at it, there is more information about what the symbols are – this is where you learn from the information. The small print, i.e. the text is the part that gets across the message and gives the interesting information and allows you to learn.

The designer has engaged the user by creating a theme of a ghostly graveyard and the idea of death; the symbols are interesting so it is visually interesting. I wouldn’t say that it is successful because there is so much information, it’s not needed. The information at first looks interesting, but it’s not engaging enough to make you read all the information- 5p a4pages – they could get the message across better on a different format. This is a graphic for online use due to its layout.

The target user is very general, although the company is for finding life insurance – I don’t feel the imagery of death and gravestones is great for targeting people looking to insure their life.

The format of the design is 5 vertical a4 pages joined together to make a long thin gravestone effect. I would say by the way it works that it would be an online document. There isn’t much white space and is jammed packed full of information. There does seem to be a look of a list, the eye is lead from top to bottom through the use of the hierarchy of the titles and subtitles. There is a difficulty when trying to focus on a certain part of the information, the use too many colours, too many subheadings, too many pictograms. The information is all there but it is not easy to get through and decipher, they could have shown it in a more summarised way. The text is all contrasting, which works.

Gill Sans- Subheading

Hand drawn– Heading

Courier - Text

The title being hand drawn and stylized like a sketchy look conveys the feeling of death well as it is ugly and messy, a bit like you would imagine death. Gill sans is used in contrast to the hand drawn text, it is very clean and is more used to help with clarity of information. The regimented look of it does go well with the overall appeal of the graphic; it helps give a gothic feel to it.

The courier type looks like it’s straight out of a typewriter, makes it all look very old, coupled with the background colour this works to convey the feeling of old age.

The symbols are easy and simple to understand; at first glance you wouldn’t know the symbolism behind it, so you have to actually look at the text underneath it get the meaning of it. The symbols aren’t all literal, some are symbolic, which works only because it is what is used on gravestones. The background communicates death, along with the graveyard gates at the top. The text compliments the images well and vice versa.

Colour , it successfully splits the text up, but there is no meaning, it would look the same in black and white, has no real use in making the meaning clearer. The primary role of the colour is to split up the content; I would say this has been done particularly poorly, with no real reasoning behind the colour choices.

The text and the imagery all confer to the same meaning; they are chosen to complement each other in a way to make it look old and like drawings on caves drawn by cavemen. This presents a link to the research that the designer had done. Although I am not sure that the designer did much in the way of research, in my opinion the graphic has been designed by someone who went with their first idea, and had a clear idea in there head what they wanted it to look like, but were happy with their first design.

The style of the graphics do work, they are detailed and in black, which makes them look like there etched of stone, like the way they would be on a gravestone. There is a slight feeling of art nouveau but not enough to say it has been influenced by it. The graphic has be designed to simply look like an old gravestone, this is the style in which it is in, there is not great reference of a period or a movement, but I think this is because they really just wanted to replicate the look of a gravestone and not really think  about anything from a design perspective.

The designer would have looked back in time at more historical designs, looking at how headstones are laid out. Is there a grid? How does the text interact with the symbols? Is there a certain colour scheme? Are a few of the questions the designer would be looking to find the answer to. For the symbols the designer would have would have look at pictogram designs, in particular primal ones and ones that have been already used on gravestones. When conducting the research the designer would have taken a visit to the graveyard and sketched the stones and built up a general feeling of what the graphic should be based on. Although I highly doubt that they did this, I can see the use of Google was high on the agenda of the designer, which is disappointing and helps result in a poor design. The graphic has been clearly format driven, it is to be used as an online resource as it is easy to scroll through, but in print it is ugly and jam packed. I feel there should have been a lot more thought in the design and the stage of finalising the design has been missed out, as there are many flaws in the design itself.