Hey everyone,
So I’ve been tasked in class to research data/statistics/demographics of a certain subject, and once that’s done, create a “target market research graphic” for prospective clients. This is in addition to the other design responsibilities for the assignment.
Now, I’m trying to craft a rough draft of this thing in Illustrator, a program I barely know how to use.
I have all these disparate studies, data numbers, etc, from different sources that I’m trying to translate into one cohesive infographic.
One problem I have is trying to sort the information.
One study is simple, that it cites men and women users at 55% and 45%. Makes sense.
But another study is saying that the highest amount of users are under 24 at 1%, whereas the second highest amount is between 25-30 at 0.8%.
Huh? If it’s at 1% wouldn’t that be the lowest?
That’s an example of what’s confusing me with trying to understand and synthesize this data. I feel like that alone is it’s own assignment.
As far as the design aspect goes, I don’t know where to begin.
I don’t have any experience with creating data charts. I’ve seen pie charts, bar graphs and line charts before but usually in magazines or on a website, and they are usually just to reference 1 or 2 statistics at most.
Oh well, it’s gotta get done.
Right now, I’m trying to make a this infographic by age, education, gender, location, income, etc etc in time for the deadline.
But I’m frozen.
I’ve given up on trying to do something creative with design, and just want to make understandable, functioning charts to convey the information I do understand.
Bar graphs for example.
So I’m in Illustrator drawing out rectangles, guessing how high the bar should go.
Then I think, isn’t this supposed to be accurate?
If I was using a pie chart for example, I couldn’t just eyeball the the percentages, because it’s likely it would be off.
I found out that I could input numbers into Excel to create a pie chart, but that itself took some time, and even then, I can’t just copy and paste the pie chart into Illustrator. I’ve been screenshot-ing it, then opening it in Photoshop, then trying to redraw it in Illustrator again…
it seems like it’s taking forever.
So my question is this:
Is there starter course, or lessons that you can take in order to understand this stuff and create it?
I don’t even know how to create grids, let alone how to create statistical information.
Did anyone have classes where they went over this more in design school?
I just feel like I’m in over my head.