- is the information clear and scannable? [ie. can one get an overview of the intent quickly]
- is the information telling a clear story about your topic?
- is the information graphic compelling, elegant and stylish with a strong attention to detail?
- is the structure of the information graphic innovative and witty?
- is the information graphic convincing / persuasive?
- have good decisions been made in terms of typography, colour, use symbols, line and visual hierarchy?

For the final marking these were condensed together into basic terms: clarity / narrative / innovation and wit / polish and attention to detail.

In terms of the actual marking, reward [especially] was given to conveying something which suggested more than just the straight presentation of the fact and data but begun to introduce / explore creative ways for finding relationships, having wit [which is harder and different than being funny] and using visual metaphor [but in sympathy of the content]. In the case of these three examples this was done well.

For the LOVE poster, the presentation reflects a train of dialogue or cluster of thoughts which journeys around a setting impling not only a literal place, but also supports a framework of interactions and ideas which are grounded or up in the cloud. The treatment is also playful and light-hearted and gives the reader a sense of enjoyment, enhancing the experience of something which can be so insular.

For the DRINkFO, in their data collection they had a lot to play with and toyed with trying to suggest it all together in one form. One of the breakthroughs for them was seeing a simple solution for separating the content out by just repeating the same map but suppressing info that had already been established [street names, pubs], since the new content didn’t depend on it. The treatment of the three diagrams on the right successfully matches the type of content being presented too - the first about everything moving towards one location. The form resembles a clump of hair in the shower, like if you run your finger through it pulls it to one point with areas which are more dense than others. Its form is quite loose too to suggest the that people don’t travel on the main streets or in straight lines and cut through spaces. In the second, using the metaphor of an air travel diagram where one teleports from one location to another and space in between is hard to comprehend [when intoxicated] and its more about jumping from bar to bar. And the third, the map is taken out and its more about volume / density over time than exact path so it suggested as a typical trend diagram.

For the SHOES group, again they were confronted with conveyed a lot a info but made intelligible decisions about how to present this a still rich but also clear and unambiguous manner. The final poster is structured very well as a sequence of progressive info revealing or confirming alot of assumptions [esp. of the Exchange vs. South D]. What was great to see also was a considered balance of hand-drawn and cleaner elements which really add a character to the content [which is often lost in stale vector illustration]. Nice metaphor used with the footprint / map used too and using loose shapes that suggest location to present different content within [volume of shoes types and amount through colour coding]. The text supplements as well really help with the reading of the design and spell out explicitly any potential interpretations. Overall, very smart decisions made.

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With the main poster, groups were asked also to provide a concise research document to help articulate the conscious graphics decisions made towards the final design. Normally for these sort of process documents students treat/present them as a chronology of there process which personally I think rarely works from an interest standpoint. So it was insisted that groups do the reverse and start by discussing or dissect the final design first and then discuss the process in relation to that rather than trying to invent a process which never happened which also helped groups filter out what was actually significant.

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I fully agree Stu, with your comment about expectations of students. It really relies on the support they are given, the standard of work that are established early on and the momentum which is given for the project. In terms of this project, I was overwhelmed and stoked with the quality of the work, but this depended a lot on how they got there. After the first submission we had a debrief lecture, which highlighted the big issues with the designs to the whole class [as I mentioned in the post]. This helped them so much and left them time up their sleeve to address it, step up and to take it further. The students mentioned too, that wow, we never get this opportunity usually where its all dependent sink or swim on the one big hand-in. it seems even though students know, they need to be told and assessed accordingly half way through that their work is not up to snuff and not at the end. One thing I forgot to mention was that when the groups handed-in their final, it was a pinup exhibition with drink, food and music etc. I think the idea of presenting their work in front of their peers in this context help motivate them to try and impress on each other. Thanks also goes to my wonderful tutors Sian and Tracey.

I would love to read your comments and/or those of your tutors on these students’ works. I’m very interested to know how these cases above were assessed. I’m particularly interested in innovation in this field. i’d love to know what innovations you observed within these submissions.

I’m also very impressed by the quality of the work from 2nd year students. i will post the work of my first years shortly. These too, I believe, show that we can expect much more of our design students early on. A guiding hand and a good brief will bring out the goods even among fairly inexperienced designers it seems.