Assignment 3 Commentary

For Assignment 3, I decided to do an infographic on the sugar level of bubble tea drinks and the amount of calories in the various bubble tea toppings. I chose this topic because I am a huge lover of bubble tea and there is an alarming and increasing number of Singaporeans who are frequent consumers of the sugar-laden drink. However, as consumers, we often forget or even, intentionally ignore the sugar and calorie content to justify our excessive consumption of the drink. Hence, by doing this infographic, I hope it serves as a reminder to myself to be more mindful of what's in my cup of bubble tea and also to reduce my consumption of the drink.

I referred to an article by Mount Alvernia for the source of my information.

Referring to the rough sketch of my assignment, I summarized the information into a line chart as well as a bar chart so that information can be more easily conveyed to and digested by my target audience. I refrained from overloading the infographic with too much type or graphics in order to not confuse or overwhelm my audience and also to keep the overall design simplistic so that it is easier to understand by a glance.

I was going to use pastel colours in my design as it associates well with the colours of bubble tea drinks and toppings. Also, I find that lighter colours are usually more well-received as they bring about a happier and more light-hearted mood. 

After the critique in tutorials, my classmates suggested that I include an icon of a teaspoon with sugar to indicate the level of sugar in the first graph so that there are more visual graphics and to also make the aesthetic aspect of the graph more appealing. Another suggestion was for me to fill the bar graph with icons of the respective toppings.

However, for the final submission, I was unable to properly design bar graphs filled with icons of bubble tea toppings as it would be rather cluttered and difficult to identify (the toppings in the small bars) due to space constraint. 

Reflecting on my work and design, I find that I am lacking knowledge on how to maximise the use of my Illustrator and Photoshop tools. I am really regretful for the lack of practice through the semester and thought that should I be more consistent in using the applications, I would be able to do much better for this assignment.