Mock-up/Ideas

I began my mock-up by making a quick sketch of a woman's face from one of the beauty pages in Elle magazine (Fig. 1, seen below). 

Fig. 1

I outlined the sketch in permanent marker so I could trace the image for my different ideas (seen below). 

Ideas

My first idea would be a data visualization of the most common words used in two beauty articles from four women's magazines, in the October Issue. I would use wordle.net to generate the most frequent words used for each magazine (I may limit the number of words to 20 or 25). I would then assign each magazine to a different colour. In order to reflect the information visually, the most frequent words used for each magazine will be represented in the shape of a typographic portrait. Four different colours or shades will be used to signify the four women's magazines. The user will be able to click on/off of the magazine titles to the left of the typographic face to refine exactly what words the different magazines used in their beauty articles. I thought a young woman's face would be the best way to reflect the information visually, because a young woman is the target demographic for each of these magazines and beauty articles are centered around the woman's face.

My second idea is very similar to the previous one, but instead I would focus on the hair articles in each women's magazine. Thus, the data visualization would work exactly the same, but the typography will only be placed in the hair and the face would be an illustration or a water colour painting.

My third idea is similar to the first one, by which the data visualization will focus on the beauty articles across the four women's magazines. However, this idea will be upon a black background and as the user clicks on a title of a magazine the visualization will highlight a section of the woman's face and the word cloud adjacent to it.





Bibliography

Fig. 1. Lloyd- Evans, J. (2013) Beauty Elle. [Photograph] (London, Elle Magazine). 

Initial Inspiration

I created a data visualization last year and so I wanted to use my existing knowledge in this area of digital media and create another visualization for this creative project. I began with reading David McCandless's book named Information is Beautiful (2009). He describes his book as, 'miscellaneous facts and ideas, interconnected visually. A visual miscellaneum. A series of experiments in making information approachable and beautiful' (McCandless 2009, p.2). His book displayed a range of information, covering various categories, which was visually engaging and aesthetically pleasing.

For initial inspiration I focused on my main interests. As a young female I'm very interested in fashion and beauty and after my degree I hope to pursue a career in the women's magazine industry; thus I thought I would combine both of these interests and focus my data visualization on the fashion and beauty articles in leading women's magazines. I really like McCandless' visualization named In 25 Words or Less, Most common words used by (in)famous columnists (Fig. 1, seen below).
   Fig.1                                                                            The visualization reflects the most common
words used by each journalist, with the larger words being the words which were used most frequently. One idea which stimulated from this visualization, would be displaying  the most frequent words used in beauty and fashion articles, but in the shape of a woman's body or face. This has been demonstrated by TBWA/Chiat/Day when they were hired to produce a series of typographic portraits to promote the 51st annual Grammy awards. An example is seen in Fig. 2, with their portrait of Thom Yorke from Radiohead (TypeTheory, 2009).

Fig. 2

Another data visualization which interested me was McCandless' visualization on salad dressing, Salad Dressings, All in proportion (Fig. 3, seen below). 

           Fig. 3                                                   I like the outline of the salad dressing bottles and the different

colours used to indicate the different ingredients used to create the salad dressing. I thought I could apply this to my idea with the women's magazine articles and draw an outline of a woman with different colours used to indicate the most common colours mentioned in the fashion articles.




















Bibliography

Fig. 1. McCandless, D. (2009) In 25 Words or Less, Most common words used by (in)famous columnists. [Diagram].

Fig. 2. Thom Yorke. (2009) [Illustration] At: http://www.typetheory.com/?p=741 (accessed 2 October 2013).

Fig. 3. McCandless, D. (2009) Salad Dressings, All in proportion. [Diagram].

McCandless, D. (2009) Information is Beautiful. United Kingdom: HarperCollins UK.

TypeTheory. (2009) Grammy Typographic Portraits. Available from: http://www.typetheory.com/?p=741. (accessed 2 October 2013).